Thursday, April 14, 2011

SemiChaotic

Things are in a state of flux.

For one, the crew that's been putting in sewer pipe across a local field is back today with their heavy equipment. Always a pleasure to hear that deep thrumming noise. These are the same people that would every so often do something that was so noisy, our house -- which is about half a mile away from their construction site - would vibrate from it.

For another, our insurance company said they're sending the payment for our totaled van. Actually, they say they sent it, but our bank doesn't seem to know about it yet. Somewhere in the interweb, our money is floating, floating. Lets hope it gets to us and not to someone with the same name who lives in Argentina.

For a third, we were informed today that the people who arrange the French exchange students had screwed up, and the girl we'd selected is not available -- more precisely, not available to us; apparently, she's slotted for Mananas, Virginia. I know: my first thought was then change where she's slotted for! But apparently that's just not done. They asked us if we'd like a different girl, who is actually pretty attractive except for two things -- one, she's been to the United States before, so we wouldn't get the pleasure of being her initial contact (not a big deal, but still....) and two, in her awkwardly worded introduction letter (she grades herself as the lowest level of English proficiency, and that seems to be right -- her English looks to be on the same level as my French), she talks about her hobbies, and mentions that she 'loves to make party'. We're not party people, and we wonder how she'd feel about being here for three weeks and not a single party to be had. (Actually, there might be one - my niece is having a graduation party, and we'd planned to take whatever kid we got). Still, would this kid be incredibly bored? We don't think she'd like that. We wouldn't like that.

I am, though, practicing for whomever we get: Le chat n'est pas autorisé à aller à l'extérieur.

2 comments:

genderist said...

Oh dear... I'm not good at making party.

That paired with poor english would scare me.

Cerulean Bill said...

Well, we found that mime worked pretty well last year. Plus, this time around, I'll have a year's worth of studying French, so I will have a shot at communicating. And as they remind me: these kids are coming here to improve their English, so they're expecting to have to stretch themselves a bit.