Cope (Monday, 2010 August 9)
Someone bleached the entire well. All of it. I thought I was just smelling something funny, but I asked a local, and she explained that it was to kill microbes, and that if you don’t bleach the well, you could get "the gane" (although I have no idea what that is). I guess I’m safe. Not sure about my laundry.
This morning Claude asked me to borrow my dictionary. He wanted to look up some words: "will", "forget", "was". Considering the likely sources of English text, I’m assuming it’s something he got from his ladyfriend (another stagiaire). Hope it’s good.
This evening, Hyacinthe brought some friends home; one of them apparently has a crush on Christelle. This was completely obvious to me even through the language and cultural barrier within a matter of seconds. I have to assume Christelle knows too. Hope that works out too.
The language test seemed to go OK (although that’s what I thought last time). I really have to start finding the time to work on my presentation for Thursday. I decided to count the quiz for 10 percent of the grade in both 3e and 5e; grades are in, and tomorrow we calculate averages for all the students in our classes.
There’s a chart here that we got (today?) from "resiliency training"; the stages of life here for Organization volunteers. I’ll try to include it in full at a later date, or find a link to it. For now, the important part is "Month 2": "Too much structure. Too much routine. Group constancy. Fatigue. Impending assignment." leading to "Withdrawal. Anxiety. Restlessness. Easy irritation. Low tolerance for frustration." Suggested interventions: "Explore independence. Visit other volunteers. Make plans for first three months. Visit new site. Establish relationships with volunteers and staff. Gather skills for immediate use." Instead I’ve been spending a bit of time online and hacking when I get the chance. Today’s discovery: emacs’s visual-line-mode which does word wrapping correctly (more correctly than longlines-mode).