Ride the wave

Well, yesterday was only mildly successful in terms of class registration. The French university system is just a joke. I think I'm going to write a letter to Sarko, congratulate him on his wedding, commend him for telling the metro drivers that no, 35 is a ridiculous age to retire -- and then ask him to issue some kind of executive order mandating that the universities make course catalogues and put them online, then instate online registration. I don't want to say the French are lazy, but they kind of are. Ok, maybe lazy is not the write word. Grossly inefficient. Yeah that's it.
Anyway, first I went to the international student office to ask for a new ID. It's been over a month since it was stolen but I too am lazy and honestly I don't have much use for the thing. Anyway, naturally it was a completely different process than before. Keisha lost her wallet a while back and when she went in, she asked for a new one and got it in 15 minutes. This time, the douche bag made a request for me, then told me to bring 10 euros to the bursar's office to pick it up. What the fuck, man. Then I went over to the FETE building to find a class schedule. Nothing was posted outside the office, oooooooobviously, but I did see my grades. I got a fucking 17 in oral. Nanterre can suck it, I knew they placed me too low. And a 13.5 in written, which isn't outstanding, but rather good considering the highest grade in the class was a 14.5 and only two people got that even. So I'm definitely satisfied. Then next I went back downstairs to look at all of the bulletin boards and finally found the FETE schedule, which of course has like no classes I can take. All the level 3 classes are on Monday and Thursday, so I think I might just forgo oral altogether this semester. This is a level two written at 8:30 on Wednesday morning (fuuuuuuck) but I need the credit and probably the practice too. And I'm taking history of France and the French with MICEFA. So that leaves me 6 more credits to scrounge up. I might take a lit class on Friday (fuuuuuuck again) and after some effort at the English department I found a translation class. We'll see. I emailed MICEFA with my woes and they said to ask the international office where to find classes. I need to email the French department head at home as well. If all else fails, I will take a frickin' American civilization class just for the credit, even if it doesn't count toward any degree. Sad. Maybe I can get GE credit for it? I do need to take some sort of American government/politics class.
Today was a looooong ass day. The kids are killing me right now, I think they're getting spring fever. It feels like spring. This morning the ground was frozen in Marly and it was cold as a mother fucker, but when I was going home at 4:30 it was 16 degrees outside. Anyway, I've been doing a lot of screaming in class lately. This morning I had some sort of psychic revelation and I decided to take a later train cuz I didn't have any work to do before class. I got to St. Lazare at 7:30 and the 7:18 train that I usually take hadn't even left yet. So I hopped on and patted myself on the back for being clairvoyant. But then, since there were two trains nose to ass in the same direction, they made us get off at Garches and wait for the 7:33 train. So I frooooooze for like 10 minutes. So after a long day I was overjoyed that for the first time in mooooonths, I didn't have to go to class on Thursday night. Glory hallelujah. And even better, when I got home there was a package slip (Ugg boots or flat iron -- the suspense is killing me) and a letter from the family I worked for in San Francisco. I sent them a card and some chocolate Santas for Christmas, partially because I adore them, and partially as a shrewd business move because I really want my job back in June. Anyway, the letter was great. All about how the boys are good and they say that they miss me after their new babysitter leaves (haaaaahahaha). And the dad was offered a spot on the SF planning commission but he turned it down and he's waiting until the boys get older to run for public office again. And the mom (she's a CBS reporter) is trying to get out of journalism and into production. And she told me she's voting for Obama. For some reason, her telling me that just felt really intimate and familiar. Plus I'm not surprised cuz her husband is like Barack's doppelganger. Anyway, I'll definitely be sending them birthday presents and hanging up their pictures on my wall.