The French did boudin first, but the Cajuns did it better.
Things that have pissed me off…
This afternoon I taught a new class for the first time, and they were easily the wost class I've had so far. They were a 2-class, so they didn't speak English very well, but rather than clam up like most of the 2-classes, they just decided to be loud and disruptive in French. The hour could not be over fast enough. Afterwards I told Madame G about it - assistants are supposed to report any discipline problems to the teachers, immediately - and she said she wouldn't leave me alone with them next time. Fortunately next time is two weeks away.
For dinner in the cafeteria tonight they served what they claimed was boudin, but it certainly didn't look or taste like any boudin I had ever seen. I couldn't get it down, so I went to kitchen and had a bowl of cereal instead. (I recently found a French cereal that is exactly like American Honey Smacks!) Nakeisha didn't eat the boudin either, but Sara did, and when Nakeisha asked her in amazement, "You actually like that stuff?" Sara replied, "No, of course no, very bad," and cotinued eating. She has a remarkable talent for eating even the most disgusting cafeteria food.
As some of you know, I've been trying to make YouTube videos ever since I got here but haven't been able to. I really wouldn't mind being unable to make videos so much, but suddenly the school computers aren't letting me visit YouTube at all. Every time I try to go there, the "C'est interdit!" blocker comes up, telling me that it's a pornographic site. I know it sounds pathetic, but I'm scared by the thought that I wouldn't be able to log in, moderate comments, or edit video information (which I do regularly) for a very long time - possibly not until April. I simply can't not log into YouTube until April. There's not an Internet cafe in this small town, but if I have to, I'll find one, wherever it is, and start going there regularly.
Things that have made me happy…
This morning I got two pieces of mail, one of them a check from Mom, one of them a package of magazines from Grandma (and getting packages from home is like Christmas). Two of the magazines Grandma mailed me were old issues of The Sun from 2003 and 2004. I was floored by them, because Sara had a subscription to The Sun at that time, and I remembered these two issues clearly, even though I hadn't seen them for such a long time. Sara and I were living in our old apartment, and we used to read Readers Write to each other every time we got a new issue. When we were done reading them we stuck them on the black end table, next to the pink couch, and later I stacked them beside my bed - this was before I moved my mattress into the closet - so I could reread Readers Write and Sunbeams before I went to sleep.
Adam scanned several pages of The LSU Gumbo and e-mailed them to me. It was wonderful to finally see some of it, because I worked so hard on it last year and have been waiting so long to see how it turned out. One of the articles Adam sent me was "LSU in the Rain" - it's hard to read those words now and know that I wrote them over a year ago.
I finally got a key to my very own classroom. It's less than half the size of all the other classrooms, but that's okay, because I don't feel fully comfortable in front of rooms that big anyway. Today I decorated my room a little with posters I had stolen from the LSU Union Art Gallery and brought with me here. One of them is a poster of "Where We Live," a show of photos taken by kids living in a FEMA village. It's a powerful feeling to look at the photos of those kids standing between the white trailers, a world away from France.