Thoughts here, thoughts there

Sitting in my room now, preparing lessons...just put down a book of poetry I was perusing for potential material, though so far nothing's struck me as quite right for the students. I hear the Yemeni assistant T. cracking an egg in the kitchen, preparing his dinner -- and all of a sudden, this quiet, compact domestic noise sets my mind wandering. Next door I can hear G., from Italy, talking with her boyfriend. Outside there is full-blown wuthering: it is a windy, tempesty sort of day -- the kind of day where no tree seems like it could be deeply rooted enough to be safe. And I am here, at home, in my apartment, listening to it all.

It's funny how walking down a hallway to the sound of T. singing in Arabic, or the jingle of Y's Chinese keychain has so quickly become familiar. I love to think about the noises that have been absorbed under the heading of "domestic sounds." The egg being cracked in the kitchen here is the same as it would be anywhere -- less common (for me, at home) would be regularly hearing the sounds of my housemate's languages. But here, now, it all feels so normal. It's amazing how quickly we adjust to these things, and it's why I try to pay as much attention as I can to the little surprises that pop up here and there. They so quickly lose their edge and blend into the background of what you're used to. And when you're in the midst of a drastic move, in which EVERYTHING is new at once and, in a matter of time, almost EVERYTHING starts to feel normal, it's hard to know how to preserve that feeling -- that moment where you saw x, y, or z for the first time -- and it shocked you.

Of course, some moments of shock are easier to remember than others.

Take, for instance, a recent trip to the butcher's stand at a weekly market. While waiting in line to buy chicken, I became distracted in looking at an unfamiliar hunk of meat, prominently displayed at the front of the glass.

"A," I asked (for I was with the German assistant), "what is that?"

"What?"

"The thing that's all rolled up."

"Cow tongue."

WHAAA?! My jaw dropped (perhaps not unlike the former owner of said tongue) -- but, as my mother later pointed out to me, it's mostly Americans who would be surprised by this. Our squeamishness in regards to the "ugly" parts of meat says a lot about the way we think about food, I think.

With that said, my reaction to the cow BRAIN being sold to the woman in front of us -- a brain sitting in tupperware and SOAKED with blood, Quentin Tarantino-style -- still seems quite reasonable.

~

And one last thought.

I don't think I will ever adjust to how terrible the radio is here. Not that I'm in any way savvy in regards to music, but listening to the radio is actually OPPRESSIVELY awful. It's as though some national French broadcasting company took the cream of the crop, threw it all away, and decided to use nasty sardine water instead. It. Is. Terrible. The songs that they play have rhythms that are so PAINFULLY awkward and slow you feel like you're slogging through mud in boots that are too big for you. You just pray and pray that you'll get through to the end and it'll be clear, but no! On comes a techno song whose chorus features a sullen man repeating the name "Barbara Streisand" and you think to yourself WOW. So THIS is how it's going to be. It's maddening in a teeth-gritting, eye-twitching sort of way. Just plain awful.

But that's okay. There's always CD's of Harry Potter in french, which make for a much better listening experience.

That's all for now!