The first two rules you learn in blogging is
1.) to post regularly to maintain your readers' interest.
2.) never break rule number 1.
Though it seems like forever since I wrote last, it hasn't been that long. What I have been doing in the meanwhile is trying to scrape the mold off of my body. With the exception of one day, it has rained here every day since May 10th. Some days it rained all day, but few. Most days it rained for an hour or two with dark bloated "I am going to get you" clouds still lurking above ready to pounce upon us with more water.
The good news is that I lucked out with the State Exams. My days of confinement have whittled down from seven to four. The first of the series is out of the way and it took less than half a day. Yowzer! June 2 did not include me, but I was uncertain. Due to a typo, I was exonerated from June 9, they decided they did not need me on June 16, so that only leave BA State Exams on June 23 and 25th. Well, I do have a doctoral dissertation defense I need to attend on June 7th, being made part of the committee without my raising my hand to volunteer. They needed to fill a minority quota and I was it. I believe I am the ONLY US native speaker with a doctorate in the entire university. Being the largest university in Central Europe and one that offers 68 Masters degrees, this is quite something. I would venture to guess that the number of native English speakers of any nationality with a doctorate, within our university system, would still be few enough to stuff all of us into a phone booth and still have room left over to dial home.
As I said, I was uncertain about today. I had filled the exam dates on multiple calendars. One of the calendars has all of the dates for exams. Other calendars had some of the dates, but no remarks. Then dates were added and deleted, causing much consternation and confusion as when I needed to be where. To avoid mental conflict, I went into school this morning, found my name was no on any committee, but went to my office to work.
I spent from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm working on my classes for the fall. The first day of classes for me is September 14th, yet here I am in June working on the course syllabi and schedules, finding new and hopefully better books, and so on. This is because I have such a hefty "To Do" list for this summer, mostly work filled and not necessarily fun in the fashionable sense of the word, that time is too precious to waste. Three of my classes are no squared away, checked off of the list. One is almost complete, but I am changing books, so need to read it again for scheduling. Then I am teaching a new masters level course Social Problems in the US. After ordering six books for that class to decide which to use, I had them send to a friend who consults here often to bring back from the US. What slipped my mind was that she was married in March, so though I had the books shipped to her home, she had been at her husband's home, 150 miles away. Now those books will not be arriving until August when she returns again. The joys of teaching out of your own country.
Speaking of books, Frommer's owes me 10 copies of my own book. They contacted me for shipping info, but it turns out that they will ship them from jolly ole England, where they have not been printed yet. That puts me on hold. It would seem reasonable they could spend a few extra to ship from the US, where it has been out for weeks now. We have received five phone calls for bookings from the US. Strangely, they prefer that to e-mail or even using our Jajah free call button on the website. Go figure.
As I said, I was uncertain about today. I had filled the exam dates on multiple calendars. One of the calendars has all of the dates for exams. Other calendars had some of the dates, but no remarks. Then dates were added and deleted, causing much consternation and confusion as when I needed to be where. To avoid mental conflict, I went into school this morning, found my name was no on any committee, but went to my office to work.
I spent from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm working on my classes for the fall. The first day of classes for me is September 14th, yet here I am in June working on the course syllabi and schedules, finding new and hopefully better books, and so on. This is because I have such a hefty "To Do" list for this summer, mostly work filled and not necessarily fun in the fashionable sense of the word, that time is too precious to waste. Three of my classes are no squared away, checked off of the list. One is almost complete, but I am changing books, so need to read it again for scheduling. Then I am teaching a new masters level course Social Problems in the US. After ordering six books for that class to decide which to use, I had them send to a friend who consults here often to bring back from the US. What slipped my mind was that she was married in March, so though I had the books shipped to her home, she had been at her husband's home, 150 miles away. Now those books will not be arriving until August when she returns again. The joys of teaching out of your own country.
Speaking of books, Frommer's owes me 10 copies of my own book. They contacted me for shipping info, but it turns out that they will ship them from jolly ole England, where they have not been printed yet. That puts me on hold. It would seem reasonable they could spend a few extra to ship from the US, where it has been out for weeks now. We have received five phone calls for bookings from the US. Strangely, they prefer that to e-mail or even using our Jajah free call button on the website. Go figure.
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