Life Skillz

I am like a problem-solving machine over here today. Usually I have little to no life skills to speak of, but today I am having an uncharacteristically successful day. I am kind of scared to go cook dinner, because I figure the stove will probably explode or something - you know, as a sort of cosmic getting-things-back-into-balance gesture. Anyway... I feel the need to document my success before that happens.

Problem A: Finding a coursebook from which to teach French. Our language school has recently decided that it offers French courses as well as English, and that I am in charge of them, being the only person on staff that speaks any French. (Actually, the conversation went kind of like this: "hey, Christen, you speak French, right?" Me: "uh... yes..." Boss & co.: "Great! So, I'm going to give you this course at..." and that is how I came to be teaching four different French courses, two of which are Business French, no less.)

Anywy, the difficulty with this is that, while we have a great big library of stuff for teaching English, ranging from Business courses to English for Medicine to this awesome book which includes a game of pronunciation bingo (yeah, shut up - you know you wish you got to play pronunciation bingo), we have nothing for French. So every time we (read: I) get a new French course, I hop on the train to Bologna and visit the Feltrinelli International and pick out a coursebook. (Right now we have four different courses with four different purposes at three different levels, but I figure sooner or letter something will repeat and I will be *so* prepared when it does.)

So, yeah. This morning I had no classes, so I got on the train and, three hours later, there I was with two copies of a new textbook and the accompanying cahier d'exercises. (Workbook.)

Problem B: Said French book does not come with a class CD although it frequently suggests that you listen to one. The language-teaching world is fraught with such trickery. "CD included!!!" the workbook will tell you, and you will glance at the back cover and see a CD securely attached there, labelled "Student CD", and you'll go on your merry way, thinking you're all set. No. You're not. That's the student CD, which has the audio tracks for the exercises in the workbook. This ensures maximum awkwardness when you pop the sucker into the CD player and go all "okay, now we'll listen, and match the dialogues to the pictures" and then a list of vegetables or something blares out from the speakers. No, what you want is the Class CD. This is somehow much more difficult to obtain. For example, the one I wanted has to be imported from Belgium or something equally ridiculous for the low price of 70 or so euro. Yeah. Right.

So I went online and did some googling and managed to get all hooked up with this illegal downloading thing and downloaded the tracks I needed and burned them onto a CD and labelled them neatly with my little purple-ish labelling pen and voila! Fatto. (It was all very sneaky. I have never downloaded anything like that in my life, so now I feel very underhanded. But 70euro for a CD? Really? I could hire actors and record my own for less than that. Maybe.)

Problem C: We need about ten million copies of every other CD on the planet because we only have one of each and they are somehow all in the trunk of the Boss's car. No worries, y'all. I'm on it. Just running a little illegally burned CD cartel from up here in my room. Yup.

Problem D: After this eventful day and only two hours of teaching (that end-of-the-year slump is approaching fast, methinks), I hopped in the car at 10pm (because of course those two hours of teaching would need to occur between the hours of 7 and 9) to find that it had no gas. Which is not a situation conducive to my making it to Uber-Fancy Local Fashion Thing Headquarters on time for my 8am class tomorrow. So I took myself to a gas pump and wrestled the cap off (and I do mean "wrestled", quite literally) and outsmarted the machine with my mad counting skillz (yes! I can count to six! yay!) and put gas in the car. Here's hoping it was actually the regular old senza piombo and not something crazy that is eating away at the car's insides as we speak.

Problem E: I have a mild cold but I am a wimp and it feels like something is trying to push my eyeballs out from behind. Solution: tylenol. Yay.

Goodnight.