(no subject)
Wake up. Snow! Ugh... where are my boots. Late, as per usual. Arrive at Arabic class in the art building with an inch of orange juice in a quart carton and a couple of breakfasty bars. Sit down at miniature desk next to all of the art installations and wonder if I'm sitting in an exhibit. Swig OJ from the carton, decide I probably am, and finish today's assignment.
Class. Class is good. I want to keep studying this language. The instructor explains about colors in Arab culture, and we ask if she's angry and disillusioned because she's wearing red and black... but we have to write a paragraph about our ideal boyfriend/girlfriend, ugghh...
Across campus to the library, back hurting a bit because I didn't properly stretch, take the one pill I have on me, stretch a bit, and print out the readings for my evening Radicalism in the Middle East (I know, I know) class. Read, a little loopy from the pill, and send out some emails. (This gets more interesting, I promise.) Work in library. I used to be alternately afraid and disdainful of the library, but it's quite nice today, as I've brought my laptop (which I don't usually do out of respect for the back).
Facebook tells me it's my roommate's bday! Awww. I consider posting on his wall, but then it will look like I just learned it from facebook, although that is of course true.
It's still snowing, and the wind has gotten rather blustery. I still don't know about my boots.
Back at the office, heat up food I so smartly remembered to bring for dinner, seeing the fellow student from my advanced syntax class from the fall (with the term paper I still haven't finished). She's finishing printing her thesis proposal; I am not writing one.
Put a picture of an angry-looking emu on my office door. Stand back in satisfaction.
Evening TESOL class. I presented on Tuesday, so I just sit back and watch, and it's interesting. Should have taken this class last year, but it's still useful and fun. How nice is it to finally have your classes be useful and fun?
Evening Radicalism/ME class. Open up my laptop and grope around for my non-teaching folder, and, oh-no! Where are my readings? Where is everything but... well... my teaching? Where is that letter of recommendation due on Monday that I got from my teacher today?
Fidget through discussions of civil society in the ME and the imposition of western views on the separation of church/state (if that sounds like a loaded phrase, it's because it is). Dart out at the break to run over to my office, folder is not there, quickly check TESOL classroom, not there over, run through some mini-snow banks down the hill the library. Check the table I was at and then the bathroom (I have a horrible habit of leaving things in bathrooms), and then go to the info desk, whose lady sends me to security.
I knock on the door of security and a lady says come in. I come in and ask if anyone turned in a green folder. She says no. I ask if this is where it would be turned in, and she says yes kind of brusquely, so I say thank you and I'll check back and turn to leave. And she says with a kind of edge in her voice, I can't help you like that, and I'm like, huh?, so I turn back around and she starts asking me more questions while making a note in her log. She asks if my name's anywhere on it, and I think and say it's definitely on the papers from my Arabic class, but those are in Arabic. She says she doesn't read Arabic, and I say well maybe she could make a note that that's what's in it to help her identify it, and then her face kind of lights up and she barks, Melissa! and a red-haired girl comes in and starts talking to me in Arabic (after the librarian lady tells her about my papers &c).
So the red-haired girl is talking to me and I'm trying to decide if she's a native speaker talking slow and formal to me or another student, but she's another student, and I think "What's the Arabic for trained monkey" and look for ways to end the conversation. I try to remember what green signified in our class earlier today, but I can't remember, and the red-haired girl isn't helping. After a minute or two I manage to extricate myself, and I run back up the hill and arrive only a couple of minutes late for the second half of class.
But my back still kind of hurts, and I know I look funny with my cheeks flushed and sitting up all straight with my lumbar roll for support. The professor's transliteration of a couple Arabic words is wrong, and I realize this interests me at least as much as abstract discussions about political theory. I take some notes, which I forget to save on my computer, but I remember most of them in my head.
It's still cold and windy, and I come home to my green folder lying on my bed.