now what?

It's Monday, ten sixteen AM and I have finished what it is i had to do
today! already! and ugh. now what? i really dislike going in to ask my
boss if she has anything else for me because usually she doesn't and i
feel like i'm interrupting her. it's kind of funny in this office -
there are so many androgenous names you'd think it's a women's rugby
team. Most of the people who work in this office and/or to whom i file
mail are named either Pat or Chris (well, shortened from names like
Christine and Patrice); there's also a Jo. Honestly, there are six mail
files for people who go by the name Pat. why? WHY? i'm thinking this:
this is the nursing administration office, so we don't deal directly
with nurses per se, but their directors and supervisors (who are nurses
as well.) so we have a bunch of people who are in charge of other
people. i am thinking the androgenous names are so that these women can
impose the maximum amount of their power. i guess it would be more
intimidating as a new nurse to know that your boss' name is Mark than if
you knew her name was Mary. maybe? or probably there is no reason behind
it, just a coincidence. or maybe women with ambiguously-gendered names
are naturally more power-hungry than others?

this weekend i had to drive to ghetto-land to take my spanish
proficiency exam. it was ridiculous. i am so glad i didn't waste any of
my time studying! ok, so they give you five hours to finish a bunch of
reading passages with about three easy questions if you're
spanish-literate, and to write an essay in the target language, and to
speak for two minutes in said target language. the questions were
ridiculously easy. most of them were asking what was the main idea of
the passage? i could see how it might be difficult for a person who has
just gone through all the spanish classes without any extra-curricular
effort. someone who, for example, decided to major in spanish because it
was easy or because they couldn't think of anything else in which to
major. i, however, not to brag or anything because this is just how it
is, learned more outside of the classroom than i ever did within. for
the past four years i've been writing emails in spanish (and when i
write an email i actually take the time to write details, depending on
the recipient), reading novels and short stories and magazines and
newspapers in spanish, IMing with friends in spanish (ie, friends from
argentina and chile) so as to learn the coloquial terms of the country
in which i'd be living, listening to music in spanish and watching
telenovelas, not to mention having lived in a spanish-speaking
country for one year. i could write my own course on independent
learning of a foreign language! It all started when i came back from
argentina the first time (it was what started this whole affair - i went
to Salta for one month and absolutely loved it.) that first month i
could speak enough spanish to get by, but i could not understand people
when they spoke to me unless they spoke very slowly. so upon my return,
i realized that it was going to take a lot of extra effort to actually
become aurally and orally fluent in this language. i emailed one of my
professors and asked her if she could recommend me any books by latin
american authors. my first book ever in spanish was como agua para
chocolate, by (shoot i forgot the author's name, but she's mexican.) of
course, it wasn't easy to get through those first few books in spanish.
i was spending more time i think looking words up than actually reading!
however, after a while i would just get tired of looking the words up
and i would either guess the meaning of the word or figure it out using
contextual clues or looking at the roots and prefixes and suffixes of
the words. that is how i learned to be resourceful, and how i realized
that in spanish there are so many words that come from the same root.
plus i was going on the whole idea that if in english, reading a lot
increases your vocabulary, it must be the same in spanish. and what do
you know? it was. to increase my aural fluency (i'm not sure that's an
actual term, but it means to be able to understand people when they
speak to you) i bought CDs by Shakira and Mana. i would listen to the
song, make what i could of it, then look at the lyrics and begin to
understand what they were actually saying. i started watching
telenovelas on telemundo. i remember how conveniently there was an
argentine novela, provocame (you know, the one with chayanne), so that
helped me get used to their accent. and i found that with the more words
that i had learned from looking them up 7834920973 times during my
reading, the more i was able to understand people when they spoke. so
when i returned to argentina in 2002 i had absolutely no problem
understanding what people were saying to me. it was kind of an amazing
transformation.

why all this passion to learn a language perfectly and fluently? i
don't really know. it could be my perfectionism. it could be that i can
learn romance languages pretty easily (did i mention that in eigth grade
i won some kind of prize in a national french contest?) it could be that
i fell for MP hard and made my utmost goal to live in that country. but
if that were the case i would have abandoned my study of the language
upon my second return from argentina. or it could be, as one of our good
friends has suggested, that through some twist of fate i have un alma
latina . the only latin roots i can think of are french-canadian, which
was a great-grandmother on my mom's side. but that doesn't really count.
maybe it's a combination of it all. but even before argentina i had so
much motivation to learn the language fluently. i remember when i first
started spanish we were in san juan for four days before going on a
cruise, and i remember being on the local beach and trying to tell a kid
that he couldn't go in the hotel pool because he didn't have a key. but
after a semester and a half of taking spanish i still hadn't learned the
word for key! i hadn't yet learned how to use the language. and i was
very disappointed. i even asked my counselor if there were some kind of
accelerated spanish 1. there was not.

so all this kind of ties in to my whole philosophy of foreign language
(though spanish really isn't that "foreign") learning. i hate to see
kids who are in a language class just to get credit for it. i'd rather
he spend his time doing something else than hating the hour he spends
every day in his spanish class.

the funniest thing happened last monday at my french class. there is
this one guy in there who doesn't put forth any effort. we had a sub
that day, who spoke to us pretty much the whole time in french (it was
challenging but totally worth it.) we were going around saying our
answers to questions, and chantal (the sub) was correcting our
pronunciation, which is so important when you're learning a language.
she got to this guy. she repeated the same word like three times, and he
made very little effort to pronounce the word correctly. then she asks
him if he didn't like being in class? and he said, it's boring! then she
starts giving him a hard time (in a joking tone but you could tell she
was offended and serious), asking him why is he here if it's boring?
after this he was left quiet and blushing. this was right before our
mid-class break. the kid did not return afterwards. i was hoping it
would be for good, but he was back on wednesday. i told mary who was
sitting next to me that he's probably one of those guys who's in college
just for the frat parties. sure enough on wednesday he was wearing a
pike's shirt.

ok enough about spanish/french/language-learning. this week i am going
to look for a new job and if i get one i'm going back to argentina and
chile (maybe stop at ecuador on my way there) until i have to be back
here. first i have to find out about the type-29, but then, definitely
will search for ESL jobs.

what else did i do this weekend that i haven't already recounted...

yesterday i sweat every toxin and then some out of my body. my sister
and i worked jump crew at the horse trials. which meant that we had to
sit outside in the middle of the stadium course and pick up poles and/or
entire jumps before the next horse gets on course. it was a pretty big
course, and at first we wondered if we'd be the only two people helping
with the jumps? but there were some other workers standing on the
perimeter of the course who dealt with the jumps that got knocked down
the most. keri and i just handled the rails that got knocked down from
the interior jumps.

it was hot and sticky. i had put sunscreen on but would have been fine
without, as we got to sit in the shade pretty much the whole time. i
kept rubbing this brown film off my skin (i think it was from the dust
sticking to the sunscreen. gross.) and standing up so as not to get a
wet spot on my ass.

the funny thing is that they were paying us ten$ an hour to be there!
usually i volunteer at the horse trials every year. last year i
volunteered as a jump judge for xcountry and a timer for stadium. i
would have done it for free, but hey if they want to pay me, i have no
problem with it! this year was a little different - since a new person
(a dumbass, for sure) was elected to be in charge of the forest preserve
district, they had to cut the event, which is usually three days, down
to two days. they had been doing it that way for years - probably since
they started having a horse trials. i think what they changed was the
rule about temporary stabling and leaving trailers overnight. usually
they'd set up temporary stalls for the competing horses on the grass
(and it was totally ecologically sound). but because of the new rule or
whatever, they weren't allowed to do that this year. so people would get
a stall for one night, then would have to turn it over to another
person. my mom was in charge of the stalls. she said it was a complete
mess and if she had been a competitor she would have been pissed (it's
her own fault though, she needs to learn how to use excel!)

ok so for an hour and a half i have been inactive. i wish they'd give
me something to do! i need to go out to my car and get last week's copy
of TIME. there's a PEOPLE on the table over there. i usually don't read
people but in the absence of anything decent...