We here in Apartment 8 suffer from an Internet addiction. You might be surprised to hear this since I almost never blog. But one of the symptoms of my addiction is that I never use the Internet to do anything useful or good, like keeping in touch with my friends using something other than poisonous Facebook. (I don’t even log into Facebook that often, making it yet more difficult to determine what it is I do with all my time.)

Anyway, I have resolved to change this. I will either do something worthwhile on the Internet or I will go outside and remember that I live in France and my life is amazing. Today I went out and made a not-that-great drawing in the park close to our apartment. That’s a start. I have even written a few e-mails (not Facebook wall posts!) to friends of late.

Other than being a junkie, here are some things I have done lately:

• Made gorgonzola-pear-walnut risotto with an arugula salad for dinner last night, inspired by La Tartine Gourmande. It was not a disaster, if not quite as good as last week’s leek risotto.
• Watched half of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with two middle school girls that I tutor in English, stopping every fifteen minutes to quiz them on what happened. I was not slacking, I swear–their mom suggested this as a lesson.
• Got my bad students to be excited about our lesson. We played Scrabble and they came up with “crazy,” followed by a victory dance. After that, they cheated like it was going out of style, but there was at least one good moment.
• Had my 21st birthday, with lots of nice people and two delicious cakes (strawberry and orange). Followed by Indian food, which was decent for France. Still not spicy, but tasy enough.
• Received a raclette appareil as a birthday present from Joe, so we can relive our delicious meal in the Alps once we live in coldest Wisconsin.
• Went to another fun dinner party with one of Joe’s teachers and various other people. The wine was incredible–from Beaune–perhaps because one of the women at the party owned the vineyard. Learned the French for “to frisk” (fouiller), hope I won’t have much call to use it.
• Finished reading Frankenstein, in order to better quiz my poor students about it. They have to pass an exam at the end of the year. Why Frankenstein is the book of choice for French high school students, I don’t know.

Writing about Morocco is on my to-do list, although my to-do list has an unfortunate habit of never becoming a done list, since it includes such items as “Finish reading Le Comte de Monte-Cristo,” “Keep in touch with everyone you know,” “Plan the whole rest of your life,” and somewhere, way down at the bottom, “Learn French.”

I’m not sure why I can find time to tell you what I cooked last night but not about going to a new country and having adventures with my favorite person in the world. Probably because I feel like the latter requires some kind of writing skill that I have yet to develop, and that makes me put it off. I should probably just put my head down and power through.

Posted in Bourgogne, France, French, Joe, best-laid plans, blahblahblah, food, teaching by rachel