No Verb

This will likely be my last post from Europe, pending some terrible flight delay disaster. And although I certainly can’t wait to get home for quite a few reasons, I’m actually not terribly excited to leave Paris. It is beautiful and warm and delightful, and I’ll miss Lori. But in just over 24 hours, I’ll be in Arizona, maybe even eating Mexican food. Goodbye Europe. It’s been real. Real real.

That is what I am now. It was happy and sad simultaneously, but mostly happy. I said goodbye to Mandi and Michelle and Tiffany and headed out to Paris! I am now here with Lori and the weather is perfect and beautiful and we have eaten beaucoup de chose (such as pounds of cheese, ice cream, and baguettes and chocolate). This is quite an excellent way to end my trip, if I do say so myself.

Here is one story to entertain you until I write again (since I know you just sit around waiting for me to write more): Yesterday, Lori picked me and my copious baggage up at the train station, and we decided that taking a taxi home would be the most appropriate course of action. Lori found a taxi, asked him if he could take us to her house, and received this response, “There’s too much traffic. The metro is that way,” and pointed toward the nearest metro stop. What? You cannot be a Parisian taxi driver and only decide to work when there is no traffic! This is one reason that the French get mocked in America; don’t they realize this?

Until I arrive in Paris, that is. One more day of school, which will be simultaneously sad and a relief. My suitcases are 3/4 of the way packed, I’ve mailed a box off to the States, I’ve taken care of the phone fiasco, I’ve filed my ID paperwork for leaving, I’ve got an appointment to check out of the apartment, and I have dealt with my proof-of-legal-status-in-Germany-before-attempting-to-clear-customs-issue (that makes it sound worse than it actually was. The military just didn’t want to prove to anyone that we had in fact been here legally). Germany and the U.S. military join up to create a team that doesn’t allow anyone to leave the country easily, but I think I’ve foiled them and will be able to sneak out.

I’ll be in Paris Friday evening, where Lori and I plan to do a whole lot of nothing, or whatever it is that gets rid of stress. I plan on doing a whole lot of consuming of French food before leaving the continent, and really, who can blame me for that?

Monday evening, I can see my family, finally live in the same city as Chris (for the rest of our lives, I might add), cuddle with my dogs, and flop in the pool. And a lot of other crazy looking-for-a-job stuff, but I’m not thinking about that for now.

Quoted verbatim from an essay that was turned in today:

“A guinea is an animal. Then makes noise, sleep, food, and a lot of love. Do not squash or get the no air. Pleas do take them on the neck they are screaming laud. You need to clear them ever two week.”

They make a lot of what?

“Does anybody know what ‘first come, first serve’ means?”

“Is that a website?”

Mandi and I successfully made it to Worms on Saturday (where Martin Luther nailed up his theses on the door of the church), but not without first having to fight everything DeutscheBahn (German rail) stands for. Apparently on a soccer weekend, they throw out all previously scheduled trains, move trains to other tracks, and nobody feels compelled to announce this. We were standing on the platform (under the sign that promised our train would arrive soon) when a man came over and asked if we were going to Ludwigshafen. When we said yes, he said, “Well, it is a soccer weekend, so you’d better get yourselves over to track 2. Macht schnell!”. We machted schnell, but arrived at track 2 to see our train disappearing around the bend. It was amazing, we caught the next train to Ludwigshafen 30 minutes later and arrived in a train station that looked like Disney’s Tomorrowland abandoned and 50 years later. Creepy. The people-mover soon arrived to take us to Worms, where we found excellent churches, a really cute town center, a cool old Jewish cemetery, and an old German lady who insisted, in very emphatic German, that we feed the welfare birds. I won’t even go into how I feel about feeding birds. It was quite a delightful day…

So on this day when my grades were officially posted by NAU (yes, they did get it together in the end), I started the day with a pretty fun headache and I sort of floated my way through the day half-conscious. After school, I promptly went to bed and slept for two.five hours (I just took quite a lot of liberty with the use of a period. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. I’m a college graduate). Mandi and I then watched the Simpsons (the episode when Bart goes to France). We’re about to go home and make banana bread AND brownies from scratch, drink champagne, and (guilty confession) watch “From Justin to Kelly” (the movie featuring the first American Idol winners). I know you’re jealous. 10 more days until I come home.

The text of a card I received from some of my students today:

“Yes, you must go, and I must not try to tempt you to stay. Go now. Good-bye. Good luck. Go. (Inside) It’s sort of a shame, though. I was about to make you some macaroni and cheese…yummm…cheese. But go.”

“O for a falc’ner’s voice/To lure this tassel gentle back again”

Apparently I’ve been wasting my time all of these years directing my fear at ravens. Ravens: trash picking, cunning, nasty, dark birds that they are are not nearly as scary as Peregrine falcons. Peregrine falcons are the fastest creature alive; they can reach up to 190 mph while in a dive. They approach an animal silently from behind so that they don’t create a shadow to reveal themselves to their prey. Basically, if a Peregrine falcon is out to get you, you’re done. And all this time I’ve been afraid of ravens.

1. Today started out kind of cloudy and cold, but it is actually sunny and warm at this point. Warm enough that we could take our students outside to watch the DoDDS European Soccer Championships, and I only wore a sweater over my long-sleeved shirt!
2. Thomas Kincade makes me want to throw up. Once Chris and I went into a Thomas Kincade gallery and when Chris asked if they had any paintings of cats, the lady responded, “Tom doesn’t really do animals.” Apparently she and Tom are on a first name basis.
3. I ate Mexican food for lunch today. In Germany. It was weird.
4. I have to go now and see about getting my phone service terminated because I am leaving here IN ONE WEEK!!!

ahhh…i’m so happy. so, so happy.

I’ve been observing AP and Honors classes over the past few days, which has been astounding, to say the very least. The AP teacher actually APOLOGIZED for his students’ lack of motivation that day as they were diligently taking notes and asking interpretation questions on Beowulf. I was already confused about the eerie silence in the room that came from no one whining, “Miss Clau-daaaaaaaaaay…You’re sooooooooo meeeeeeaaaaaaaaannnnnn. You’re always making us dooooooooooo stuff…we haaaaaaaaaaaate doing woooooooork…” And he was apologizing! I almost fell out of my chair!

Despite all of my own personal complaining about and mocking of my students, I really will miss the little rats. Most of them at least. They may be the least motivated in the school, but they are pretty damn funny. One offered to braid my hair tomorrow during class so I can look like “all of us black folk”. How can I pass that up?

Unfortunately, these are the types of conversations I have to overhear as a result of letting kids eat lunch in my classroom:

“If you have a scab on you, just lick it.”
“I have a scab! I named it Steve!”
“See, I licked my scab!”

I may offend some with this statement, but “Top Gun” is a pretty terrible movie. It is playing on the TV in the internet cafe where I am unsuccessfully trying to find information on Rotenberg, which is where Donnie, John, Mikayla, and I are going tomorrow. Really, it is so cheesy, and the dialogue is awful. Here is a sample:

“What’s your name?”
“Maverick.”
“That’s your name?”
“Actually it’s my call sign.”
“You’re a pilot?”
“That’s right. a naval aviator.”

Who was in charge of that little piece of dialogue? It’s terrible. Well, according to a random website I just found, Tony Scott directed it. Too bad about that. You lose Tony Scott. One interesting thing, however, is that while Donnie and I were making a rather misdirected (read: lost) drive to Frankfurt Hahn this morning, we heard “Highway to the Danger Zone” on the radio. We definitely rolled back the top of our little Twingo (yeah the Twingo with the roll back top is another story for another day) and sang along. And now “Top Gun” is on. Somebody is trying to tell me something. I don’t like it. I’m going to end this post now, and it is about as misdirected as “Top Gun” as our trip to Hahn.

I found out last night that one of my favorite students was involved in a really unpleasant issue at school. Really unpleasant. And he was the last one I would have expected it from. He is so polite and kind and funny and innocent seeming. I was so profoundly disappointed when I found out, and I haven’t seen him yet because he is suspended, but I know I’ll be kind of upset when I do. I just wish high school kids wouldn’t do such ridiculous and stupid stuff…

So apparently last night I started a cross-continental panic attack with my post on freaking out about graduating. I was freaking out for no good reason (other than the fact that NAU is often confused about its own graduation requirements, apparently). As far as I know, I’m graduating. Sorry for the confusion!

I am suddenly right now freaking out that NAU will decide I can’t graduate for one reason or another. I wouldn’t put it past them. They probably have some sort of secret requirement that no one told me about, or because my French advisor was impossible to ever contact, there is probably something important missing for my minor. I feel really kind of light headed and fuzzy right now. Maybe I need to go home and call NAU and ask for some reassurance. However, I have been told stuff by them before and then someone else tells me something completely different (such as the case with my math requirements). I’m really really paranoid because of their inconsistencies, and I won’t feel better until my degree posts online, or better yet, until I have an actual diploma in my hands. And even then I’ll probably wake up in a cold sweat some nights thinking that it never all happened and I have to get a job at Subway again. I hate this.

“About love? No, ma’am. I’m an 18 year old boy! I got hormones ragin’, but I ain’t in no love!”

1. I’m going to go home in a few minutes, and I am going to watch the episode of “Freaks and Geeks” where Sam, Bill, and Neil fall in love with the new girl and they play “Rosalinda’s Eyes” as well as other Billy Joel favorites. And then maybe the one where Sam’s dad buys him an Atari, because that one makes me cry a little bit.

2. Some good words are albeit, zookeeper, and geologist.

3. I’m kind of in love with Harry Potter, and I can’t stop watching the trailer for the new movie coming out in November. Watch it here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/harry_potter/thegobletoffire/

4. My friends Jamie and Becky are done student teaching and they leave tonight. Donnie leaves on Friday. I’m feeling abandoned.

5. My voice is a little bit loud. People have told me to quiet down my whole life. Well, guess what? Teachers are supposed to have loud voices, so there.

Tiffany: “I’m tired of you all sitting around and sleeping. Stand up!”

Sanchze: “This ain’t no Kanye West video!”