About my reading

Shakespeare & Co, Paris

I currently have a lot of time on my hands: 97 hours per week, assuming eight-hour nights and a fifteen-hour work week (we’ll get to that in a second.) I’m an English assistant in France, which means that I am not a teacher, and no longer a student, but in a kind of stage-like limbo (stage can be closely compared to the English internship) that involves leading conversation classes with high schoolers for twelve hours a week, preparing for about three and doing my own self-guided studies in Spanish, German and comparative literature in between. I get paid relatively well for my short work week, which means that I can afford to live downtown in Troyes (my city placement in France), eat fruits and vegetables from the organic section of the local market, and use my savings to see a little bit of Europe and buy a lot of books. In short, my life involves a lot of basic English, basic French, some accidental Spanish when I mean to speak French, and some very complicated classic literature in all three languages.  I’ve taken this seven-month opportunity to share with my friends and family, and anyone else who is interested, my random experiences with living, reading and writing in three languages, teaching in my native one, learning a fourth and seeing the world from a resulting jumbled  perspective that usually leaves me feeling blissfully content and at home, or miserably confused and cold (I am, after all, originally from California.) I do my best to post here frequently, but that frequency can range from once to five times a week. I try to document my adventures in real time, but if nothing interesting is going on, I’ll fall back on what I know best: literature and how it relates to my circumstances. Feel free to drop by on occasion and leave a comment or start a conversation. Reading, like learning or traveling, would be nothing without the discussion it inspires.

To hear more about my daily life as an English assitant, and the type of students I work with, I recommend the following posts:

1. How I survived drowning in a sea of champagne terminology
2. The circus is in town
3. The best museum you’ve never visited
4. How I survived drowning in a flood of stereotypes

Other than that, feel free to use the “Musings” sidebar on the home page to navigate your way through the many subject matters floating around my disorganized brain. Preferably with a glass of wine in hand.