"eet eez layk waypeeng mahy [bahtt] weez seelk"

I censored the title a little bit, but I finally watched the Matrix earlier this month and now know where it comes from.  I had always thought the guy who first said it to me was making fun of me for speaking French.

So Trisha asked me to teach her some French a while back and we've at last gotten around to it.  We spent a good portion of a two-hour drive learning verbs.  I like camping, I like eating, I like bicycling and so forth.  When we got back home I made her a PowerPoint presentation so she could see a picture, say what they were doing in the picture, then click on it and see it in writing, then click on it again and hear me pronounce it out loud.  It's pretty much my super basic mini vocabulary lesson style from teaching days.  And no, this did not form the core of my classes either.  Here's my favorite picture as a sample:

 

Yep, I'm a budding artist.  I actually prefer these Microsoft Paint renderings over real images for a few reasons.  1 is that it saves me the time of drawing something decent, or finding it online.  2 is that I get exactly what I want.  3 is that I felt like the more personalized the pictures, the more students remembered the word.  It's interesting, therefore remarkable, therefore they remember.  And let's throw a 4 out there: I actually think it's fun to draw--to see if I can actually make a picture of something I like and see if it's recognizable :)

In the words of Bill Cosby, I told you that story so that I could tell you this one.  Today at church, Trisha talked to one of the French-speaking members who asked how I'm doing (I don't attend right now because I felt I should limit how much I get out of the house).  In a moment of supreme language skill--meaning circumlocution: that most valuable skill in foreign language learning and communication--Trisha realized she did not know how to say "sick".  Instead she came up with the best description for Mono that she could: Il aime dormir (he likes to sleep).  How true!  Fortunately the lady didn't take it as I feared: that I'm skipping church because I don't want to wake up at 8am.  Rather, she helped Trisha out and said: Ah, il est malade!  Le pauvre!  (Oh, he's sick!  Poor thing!)  Actually, I kind of like awkwardness so it might have amused me to get a different kind of welcome when I get to start going to church again.

Speaking of awkward, I have a good friend who saw me walking up to a building she was studying in.  She opened the door as I was walking up and yelled out "Hey Eric!  How's the Mono?!" loud enough for the entire block to hear.  She was completely sincere, nice, and good-intentioned and I totally appreciated the welcome and care.  But it's a really good thing I don't mind divulging very personal information to most anybody.  I thought the awkwardness of the whole situation was pretty funny.

And finally, I have now had one of my greatest successes of my lifetime.  I've had some really big fears and some things I don't do well.  I honestly do try to overcome them by looking from another perspective or by experiencing.  Eyeballs is a big one, and I learned to wear contacts.  Swimming was another, and I learned to swim a 1/2 mile a few summers ago.  Baking cookies is a skill I have never had.  I can fail at that faster than I could run a 100m in high school.  Mind you, I've baked cheesecake, pound cake, normal cake, bread, biscuits, dutch oven cobblers, not to mention cooking dinners from scratch and making up my own recipes.  Successfully.  Somehow, cookies were a totally different animal.

This month, I tried basic Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Joy of Cooking.  Fail.  And then Chocolate Cinnamon Cookies from a website I like.  Not good.  And lastly Brown Sugar Cookies from the same website.  The pattern pretty much followed the new Star Wars movies, except that my last attempt wasn't just mediocre, I aced it!  This may be the best cookie I've ever eaten.  I could be wrong, but it is definitely up there.

It Hurts

Smee: I've just had an apostrophe.
Hook: I think you mean an epiphany.
Smee: Lightning just struck my brain.
Hook: Well, that must hurt.

     All these years I've told myself and everyone else how much I love learning languages.  "So what are you going to do with your life?"  That's always the hardest question to answer.  "Find someone to pay me to learn more languages?"  I haven't had much success in that endeavor, other than my MA so far.  I'm not good enough to translate in anything, not even French.  The Peace Corps doesn't pay, and it would probably look bad at this point if I couldn't put any food on the table.  I had sworn off intelligence work for various reasons, plus as much as I like Matt Damon I kind of wonder how long he spent memorizing those dialogues in other languages.  I think Matt Damon wasn't really a super spy who spoke several languages perfectly.  So that left me with the plan to get a PhD in Linguistics.
     That PhD transformed into Applied Linguistics (teaching languages) or Second Language Acquisition (how we learn them).  Both are super fascinating to me, as much as linguistics and foreign languages are generally.  And that's the road I've been hoping to be on for the last while now.
     And I would like to follow that road.  But what really gets me jazzed is learning new languages, visiting new countries for more than just quick two to three week trips.  More like several months, to see what people are really like, and actually experience their culture.  To get to the point where I actually participate with them and dislike some things and like others--so it's not all exotic anymore, but real.  And also I'd like to get paid to do it.  And not just work in hostels or cafés the rest of my life.  I want to provide a real service to the world: help people.  And I also do actually like my college life a lot of the time.  But where am I going to find a job that provides that?
     So, <fanfare> and note the beginning citation once again, enter a new character: Foreign Service Officer.  My uncle told me once that I should look into the State Department.  I did.  I remembered the website as being crummy and that I had a hard time finding anything I was qualified for.  That was years ago and much less college degree.  Their website is better now and I just had the thought to check it out, which led to the discovery of the FSO job.
     Just what is an FSO?  An FSO is a person who goes and lives in different countries, travels, is expected to learn the language to a reasonable degree, helps people directly, gets paid, gets a Federal retirement and seems to have more time off than a student (or than I did as a student).  And as one friend told me, the people there are all highly qualified and therefore make up a great atmosphere.
     I signed up to take their test, which is like 2 or 3 weeks from now.  I'm gonna fail.  I'm pretty sure I don't remember what the deal with Roe v Wade was or even when it was, or why or how or who in the world they were.  That's going to be a problem.  But the test is free, and it could be a good experience to see how I should be studying for the next time I take it.  If I miraculously pass, then hopefully I can go through their process quickly enough to have an offer at the same time as other grad school and job offers.  Hopefully.
     Maybe it's not all that I romantically dream it to be.  Then again, maybe it is.  There's a lot of neat options out there and hopefully one of them will want me enough so that I won't have to panhandle in the streets.

Enough with the Mono y Mono jokes already. It's still not funny.

This is how I remember the conversation anyway…

Doctor: So Mr…Young.  How are you today?
Eric: I’m pretty sure patients don’t come in to slap you on the back and ask how the game was.
D: Let’s take a look at you.
…
D: You look sick.
Eric: I could have told you I looked sick even if I were wearing a paper bag on my head.  Did you see the rodent-sized critters setting up subdivisions on my tonsils?
D: You’re so smart, here’s some antibiotics.
Eric: How about let’s do some testing instead of guessing at it.  Maybe we could gag me for a Strep test?
D: Okay.
Eric: And here are some of my other symptoms.  And how long I’ve had them.
D: Oh my
Eric: “Oh my” is right.  What other tests can we imagine up while I’m in here paying for this visit?
D: How about a blood count?  And mumbo-jumbo test?  And weird Martian-word test that you can’t pronounce.  Oh, and maybe HIV too.
Eric:  Sounds like a good start, is that it?
D:  We could do a urinalysis too.
Eric:  Hmmm, that sounds effective.  Yes, let’s try that.
…visit with lab-tech…
…wait a few hours for phone call for first result…
…wait another day for next results…
<ring><ring>…<ring><ring>
Eric: Yes?
Lab-tech: Looks like you have Mono.  Are you married?
Eric: Shut up with the “where’d you get mono if you’re married joke” already.  I will have heard it 30 times by the time I write this blog post.  Geez, and now you too, imaginary memory of lab-tech girl on the phone?
Lab-tech: Oh by the way, whatever you do, DON’T TAKE  THE ANTIOBIOTICS that the doctor prescribed.  You’ll get a bad rash and it’ll really hurt.  Or you'll wake up naked in a pool of goo with leads attached all up and down your spine in the middle of some robot's harvesting field.  I'm not sure which.
Eric:  Hmmm, good thing the doctor warned me about this ahead of time.  I wonder if I can sell amoxicillin back...

I realize everyone was a lot more competent than this.  And yes, there was more than one visit involved.  And maybe a few of the details are getting fuzzy after a full week.  But that doesn’t take away my right to remember it all happening this way. 

Where in the world is Carmen...I mean Eric

So, it's that time again.  No, not the time for the "Wheel of Morality, turn, turn, turn".  Nor is it time to turn the page because the chime rang "like this".  No, no.  It's time to figure out what to do with our lives.

There are a number of things that make this tricky for us.  #1 is that no woman wants a dead-beat husband.  That's the biggest blow for me.  While in most scenarios Trish can come up with a much higher salary than I can, it somehow just won't work out for me to watch TV professionally.  #2 seems to be that our expertises take us to slightly different areas.

We've put in quite a few applications to various things.  Not that I'm wishy-washy and can't make up my mind what to do with my life.  Mostly.  Really, it's just that there are sooooo many neat things to do in life.  I don't just want to dabble in a bunch of them and never be expert at any.  It's that I want to be an expert in a bunch of them.

Worse yet, the traveling I did with the military and elsewhere left an insatiable desire to keep seeing more of the world.  Allow me to explain just a little:

Vienna, Austria

Iraqi friend I met in Jerash, Jordan

Wadi Mujib, Jordan.  Best water slide in the world

15 minute swim from my barracks, Okinawa

Indian music shop, Singapore

Singapore

small military outpost in Thailand

South China Sea

البدرة, العراق--albadra, Iraq

near Cataract Canyon, Moab, Utah

For every crummy memory I have of a place, I think I have at least a half dozen good ones.  I can't decide on a single factor that makes it all so enjoyable: the people I'm with, the people I meet, what I'm doing, the excitement of a new place, learning a new language...you name it.

I'm applying for PhD programs in second language acquisition and teaching.  I LOVE learning foreign languages and I LOVE seeing other people catch on too.  Few things excite me more than seeing somebody's light bulb light up and few things depress me more than seeing someone get bogged down by a language and not like it anymore, because the first scenario is so definitely attainable in any language by anyone anywhere.  Trisha just discovered this post:  http://zenhabits.net/fluent/  by a guy who writes this blog:  http://www.fluentin3months.com/  It's a guy who goes around learning new languages for a few months at a time.  He says he sucked in school but now he's trying his own approach, following his own intuition.  Honestly, as a language teacher, language learner and language lover...the whole point of the classroom is to get students to the point that he's at...loving the language enough to start making discoveries on his on.  I think it's neat he can do that without school.  I think it's faster with some schooling.  But the way language teaching is often approached I really don't blame him for going it on his own.

But there's the next stumper.  Why can't I get paid to just learn languages?  We're looking into a job to teach English in China.  I've never studied Chinese, but after French, Chinese has held more fascination for me than any other language.  Working in Moab taught me that the "right" answer is not always the "best" answer.  Instead of pumping up my resume just a bit more and spending a summer doing schooly stuff, following my heart taught me a whole new dimension to life: doing something because you love it.  It makes work not be work anymore.  It makes success not just a check mark or a line of text.  It makes it a smile, or a friend, or a memory that lasts a lot longer than what we often define as "success".

Shoot, if we can teach English in China, why not do it in France?  Or anywhere in Europe?  Trisha's not nuts about the Middle East.  I'm okay with that since she's okay with East Asia and Europe.  And why just teach English?  Why not get real jobs over there?  On the one hand, it would be nice to keep messing around, visiting new places and enjoying just living!  On the other is "thing #1" from above.  Having health insurance, retirement and a roof to come back to are things I've come to value immensely.

So...
1) PhD in SLA, AL, or Ling
2) Teaching English in:
     a) China
     b) France
     c) Somewhere else
3) Lecture at a community college in:
     a) Arabic
     b) French
     c) Linguistics
4) Figure out how to translate and work from home
5) ?

So what's the right answer?

2010 in pictures, sort of. Not really

I'll go from best to worst.

 We stayed at my sister's house for Christmas--I love my sister.  Well, they got a 3D puzzle for a few dollars from a local Goodwill-type store.  You know, the kind of puzzle that retails for anywhere from $50 to $200.  Well, we decided to buy one as soon as we got home, also from Goodwill.  We paid $5 and I just found it online for about the same amount of money.  We spent the last day and a half of our vacation putting this thing together, and then we're taking it back to Goodwill.  Best $5, 2-day date we've had in a while, I think.

Next on the list: the Christmas beard.  I was growing it out so I could just trim it back to a mustache.   My wife is almost adamantly against mustaches.  I disagree with her on this one, whole-heartedly.  The only reason people think they look sleezy is because of what Hollywood has done to them: portraying them on all the villains.  I feel a law-suit coming on....  So the good news is that I grew out the Christmas beard.  The bad news is that I shaved it for New Year's day.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots.

 Ya, this one was because of the Princess Bride.

I have to admit, I am very proud of this last picture.  I realize it looks like a British used car salesman, but it's still awesome.  Actually, I think that's why it's awesome.






Alas, I get sick of the facial hair itch, and I don't want to bother my wife more than 1 month out of the year and so I will not keep it.

And the truly bad news is that I just got diagnosed with mono.  Yep, the virus you get in high school that makes you want to sleep all day and do nothing.  Fortunately I just got it in my last semester of my Master's program when I have to write my MA report and apply for PhD programs and jobs instead of like my sophomore year of high school, or any year of high school when I had real obligations and work to do.  On the other hand, getting it as an adult has its advantages.  First of all, the symptoms are not as bad.  I scored a 101 degree fever twice, instead of 102 to 104 degrees as I have heard about.  And the sore throat is not very painful.  Just feels like I have a sheet of paper in my throat instead of pins or sandpaper like I remember from childhood.  Okay, so that's the only plus side I can see, but it's a good one.  I opted to not upload pictures of me being sick.
     So it seems that I've had these symptoms on and off for the last month.  However, I recall needing inordinate amounts of sleep since I moved to Austin.  I've never needed 8 hours before, and for the last 1.5 years I've been really sluggish if I get anything less than that.  Ya, I know.  A year and a half is a lot even for mono.  But since I walked to school most every day no matter the weather--we're talking a 20-30 minute hike to school with my massive backpack in the Austin humidity.  And after that it's been a running program that has pushed me quite quickly--I was planning on my first half marathon in April.  And then I started onto a weight program.  And I've been dehydrated.  I mean: me, dehydrated.  Anyone that knows me knows it's impossible for me to get dehydrated with how much water I drink.  All that adds up to finally explain some things.  I had thought Texas was just cursed or something.