Branuary '09

Classes started back in full on the 19th of January, and on the same day I received an email from one of my American lectrice friends stating that she would not be returning to Nancy.  Her reasons for staying in the United States are rather ambiguous, and for me it came as quite a shock.  It is hard to describe how fine-tuned the dynamic was in our group of close friends, but it was something rare, and now that she's gone, it's just not quite the same.  The other problem with this is that the rest of us have to cover her hours.  I took her two hours of law class, which I thought would be a breeze since I figured I could just recycle the stuff I have been doing with my master's law students, but it turns out the subjects are already planned, and the first five weeks of the class are devoted to--law suits related to water ownership.  Now I work hard (often too hard) to make sure that all of my classes are interesting and fun, and well with the selection of this topic has made that just about impossible.  

And then, well, you know today was one of those days where everything just falls apart.  After spending all Sunday brushing up on my water-related court cases and lingo as I was instructed (and cooking a lasagna 15 because it was my turn to cook for Lunch Bunch!), I got to class at 8 in the morning (dragging the lasagna) to find that the students had not been assigned what I was told they had been assigned and couldn't even discuss it.  But I still got through both classes alright.  Immediately following was a class of my own for which both the worksheets and the video cassette I needed were missing-but I somehow got through 2 hours of productive class anyway. Recovering the classes was really exhilerating, and I don't think the fact that I was improvising every second came through.  I can't attribute this to any sort of ability of mine but to the fact that after you gain a certain amount of teaching experience, you just develop all of these tricks to pull out of your hat until you are (almost at least) never stumped by these situations.

Well on to happier things....Saturday was my birthday.  My friends first came over on Friday for a quiet evening in, and then on Saturday we went out to a Cuban restaurant then to a bar and then a dance club.  It was such a great night.  My friends were really sweet about making sure that I had a good time.   And as you probably know, I always enforce a month of birthday celebrations ("Branuary").  It all started at BSC during the January term when every one travelled and came back at random times at the end of January...so every time someone got back we had to re-celebrate, and well my birthday ended up lasting for weeks.  So the tradition lives on, and since most of my friends have summer birthdays, everyone's down for it.  It's kind of a slow time--post-Xmas vacation, wintery weather, and classes are getting started so it's nice to have a reason to celebrate.   The height of Branuary celebrations will be our trip to Berlin, which we have all reserved and book for the middle of February, can't wait.