Thursday, October 23, 2008

...

I couldn't think of an appropiate title, which is quite normal given that I'm blogging after..6 months! Think I should give this one up and create a whole new one?
I figured I'd blog now given that I'm exceptionally bored, well, bored is a bit of a stretch. Non-enthused, would be more like it, but you can't blame me, look out the window! (For people who are reading this much later, it's the monsoon season in Chennai and the rains have been fairly frequent this year) No one wants to work early morning when it's cool outside. The entire pace has slowed down completely and it's not just me. Everything and person at home is just feeling 'blah', and the cats, umm well, the cats are always like that, so I can't really spot the difference.

Coming back to what I am doing now, I am a French teacher and Course-coordinator at INaWORD Centre for Languages in Adyar. I work half the day and sleep off the rest. Teaching full time is HARD WORK! Well, the entire year's sort of been leading to this, what with teaching English first and now French. I work a lot more than I used to before!
I teach French to ICSE students and some StateBoard students. The ICSE program is fun in the sense that I get to set the portions and the paper (there is no textbook). For the people who followed the 'Mantra' at school, my God, isn't it the most boring book ever!?!

Course-coordinating as such doesn't really take up much of my time, I work from 9 to noon and I'm done, only to have classes again in the evening.
Besides all of this, I also managed to complete my 1st Level of German =), which I can assure you is not a big deal. But hey, I did pass (and well) and am pretty gut.

Guten Tag, Anusha!
Guten Tag, Herr Dr. Iyer!
Wie geht es Ihnen?
Danke, gut! Und Ihnen?
Sehr Gut!
Dr. Iyer, Sie haben ein lächerlich Gesicht!
Was?!!!

It's ok. We all make mistakes.
Unrelated note: If you believe, as I do, that listening to the right song can really change your mood, then : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpvNM9kj6d8
If you can understand Punjabi, that is.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

One more month to go.

For the unfortunate few who wait for me to blog regularly, here's my next bit of information. I've got exactly one more month here in Beaune and (even better) only two weeks of work left. I'm off to Paris on the 9th and then to Barcelona on the 16th. I've even been practicing (practising?) my Spanish, base stuff though, to help me find a road, find Karla if I lose her, how much does this cost?, thank you very much Sir/Madame/Miss, motherfucker and Where is my Latin boy? (Think this'll do?)

For the two weeks of work left, I've got parties (known as goutiers here) with the students planned for most of the hours anyway. The only problem is that I have to invite the teacher too. Other than that, I have last-minute presentations to make on India. For some reason, everyone's realised that the only Indian assistant they've had or ever will have is about to leave and they need to profit from her presence. Profites-en bien.

I've already seen Paris before, so I've scheduled another visit of the things I missed the last time although I'll be seeing la Tour Eiffel many times.

Last update, I got a tattoo =).

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Hehe..

OOh, I'm being RECKONED!!!

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Back from the holidays.

As much as I hate to admit it I'm back from the holidays to work for 5 weeks before the next set of holidays start again. I met Anbu and Ranjana (two other assistants) in Anbu's city (Dunkirk). I left with Jeff on the last day of school and came back on the 3rd of January.

Dunkirk's a nice city where the people are more fun than the city is. We went to Lille many times and even to Belgium and the Netherlands. For and Indian it's tough to imagine that one can visit 3 countries in just one day. The vacation seemed to pass off really well with shopping, sight seeing, ice skating, ridiculous-dip-in-the-sea on New Year's day (if I'd died of pneumonia, all I can say is that it would have been totally worth it), meeting new people, but, most importantly, speaking in uninterrupted english for 2 weeks. So much so that I'm still having problems settling back to French even now. Sigh.

Thanks to Anbu I managed to have Indian food for the 2 weeks, but I still would recommend Fish and Chips and Belgian Waffles over Chicken Biryani anyday.

I'll be updating the photos and videos soon. Look out for them on my orkut account.