Goals for June 2009 - results
07.01.2009 
17h07Let's see how my June goals worked out:
Goal 1, to stop biting my fingernails, is still an issue.
Goal 2, to run 30 miles in the month of June, was cut short when I was mugged and injured. I'm still unable to run. I was on pace to make 30 miles by today, which is annoying !
Goal 3, to work on (and finish) website projects, was also hampered by the mugging. Over the past two weeks, I've found it hard to concentrate on websites enough to work. I've started working on them again, but of course have not finished.
Goal 4, to spend 15 minutes a day in complete silence, was working well for a while but thrown out the window after the attack. I'm hoping to get back into it now, but it was hard to be silent over the past two weeks.
Goal 5, to spend less time on the Internet and more time doing things, also went out the window.
I can only hope that July will be better for goals !
back in Paris but not for long
06.30.2009 20h48i've been somewhat preoccupied these past few days, so i would like to apologize for not updating. I'm doing well, and while the bruise on my ankle isn't healing as quickly as i'd like, it seems to be getting better. Slowly.
Damien's finishing up at his middle school (he finishes officially tomorrow), and on Thursday we're heading to Poitiers to go to Futuroscope.
We found a neat, not-so-expensive bed and breakfast in a chateau not far away:
I can't wait for the school year to be over ! I've got one or two projects to work on this summer, but I plan on relaxing a bit too. Despite not having much teaching this year, it's been relatively stressful, between the constant traveling back and forth to paris (and to boston), all of the work I've been doing (websites and thesis), and then getting mugged.
I'm ready to relax !!
vulnerability
06.25.2009 21h40I've had some interesting conversations over the past week or so about feeling vulnerable. After being attacked the way I was, I've been more aware of my vulnerability. I might pretend to be a strong, independent woman, but when it comes down to it, I'm no match for two or three medium-sized youths. Coming to terms with just how vulnerable I am has been occupying my mind off and on since my mugging.
In a weird twist of coincidence (if you can call it that), my sister was robbed on saturday while out at a bar. The robbers stole her iPhone, iPod, and digital camera. So in less than a week, both of us were made forced to become more aware of just how unsafe the world really is.
I'm hopeful that my negative and cynical view of the world will return to "normal" over the next couple of weeks (thanks to my wonderful family and friends, and to my newfound decision to be aware of EVERYTHING around me).
I'm headed back to Paris tomorrow (accompanied by Alison who's also heading to Paris for the weekend), and then Damien and I will be driving back to Auvergne at the end of next week. With a little stop at Futuroscope for our PACS-moon !
I'm doing ok, thanks
06.22.2009 19h15Hello everyone, thanks for your support over the last week or so. I'm doing ok.
The worst part is feeling like everyone is out to get me, that there is danger around every corner. Not that I've left the apartment that much over the past few days! But I'm just worried about becoming so paranoid.
The slight bruising to my face is all but gone, and the bruise on my leg has turned an ugly yellow color. I took a picture so you could see:
So while my physical injuries are healing, I'm trying to do the same for the recurrent thoughts that keep running through my head, especially at night when i'm trying to sleep. I think about that moment when the guy grabbed me from behind, when at first i thought it was Damien joking with me, and then the instantaneous terror i felt when I realized that something was seriously wrong. I hope that the memory of the terror will dull as time goes by.
Another problem I have is work. I'm supposed to head back to Clermont tomorrow night in order to give exams on wednesday and thursday, but I have a medical certificate saying that I'm allowed to skip work through Wednesday. I could ask my fellow teachers to cover for me - i mean, i think they'd understand - but at the same time, that feels like somewhat of a cop-out. I'm physically ok to work, so why should I get out of it? I'm a little scared of taking the metro and the train by myself back to Clermont, and I don't want to feel weak, so I haven't asked for any time off. It's only 2 days, in the grand scheme of things. If i didn't have to work, though, i would just stay in Paris with damien until we drive back to Auvergne on July 1 or 2. Decisions, decisions !!
Turns out it is dangerous around here ...
06.18.2009 11h34Last night, I went for a short run in the Parc de la Courneuve, a huge park about 15 minutes away from Saint-Denis. The problem is, the city of La Courneuve is known as a relatively dangerous area. I thought that the park would be ok, especially for a short run at 6:30pm, with lots of people around.
Damien drove me to the park, as he had decided to read while he waited for me to finish my run. I tucked my ipod into the front of my running shorts and started running. I often look around me to make sure that no one is trying to sneak up on me.
I was about 23 minutes into my run when someone covered my eyes from behind. My first thought was that it was Damien, playing a joke on me, but in the next instant, another person grabbed my foot. I started screaming bloody murder, hoping that someone nearby would come to my rescue. The man behind me wrenched me around, trying to throw me to the ground, while the other man started punching my left ankle.
I kept screaming as I felt a hand near the waistband of my running shorts. I immediately thought that they were going to try to rape me, but in the next moment, i realized they were trying to steal my iPod. The man behind me grabbed it, but I grabbed it back, as I continued fighting and screaming.
Nobody came to my rescue as the man behind me started punching me in the head, trying to force me to let go of the iPod. After a few punches, i realized that my life is not worth the price of my 4-year-old iPod classic 30gb, and I let it go.
The two men ran off into the distance as I continued screaming and crying on the ground. The whole ordeal had lasted maybe two minutes, max. I couldn't run after them because of what the second guy did to my ankle. People finally came over to help, with a number of them calling the police.
I asked one of them to call Damien, who was waiting for me in the car. Thank god I can memorize phone numbers! She said to him, "Your girlfriend was just mugged", but he thought she had a wrong number until he heard me talking in the background, telling him how to get to where I was. He ran as fast as he could and arrived just after the police did.
I tried to stand and it was really painful, so the police called the firemen to come take me to the hospital. I gave the police the whole story, and they got some details from the people nearby who had witnessed it.
The firemen arrived, put my leg in an inflatable bright-orange cast, and loaded us into the ambulance. [Side note: what they say about les pompiers is true ... they ARE hot!] Went to the hospital, got x-rays, and found out that it's not broken. Got a prescription for painkillers, anti-inflammatories, and crutches for 5 days. I've got some intense muscle spasms in my back, on the right, from when they twisted me around to wrench me to the ground, so I can't move my head very much. I've got some slight bruising on the side of my head, and one small mark on the side of my nose near my eye from when he grabbed me from behind.
The police will never catch the @*(*$! who did this, because they took off and have probably already sold my iPod. We still have to go file a police report, just in case.
I'm ok ... more shaken up than anything else. Apparently these two guys were following me for quite a while, making sure that I was actually running alone, before they attacked. They were maybe 19 or 20 years old, and are probably "earning money" by attacking people and stealing things. I was somewhat distracted between my thoughts and my music, and they took advantage of that fact. And being a girl doesn't help either.
I was planning on training for a half-marathon, but I'm not sure that i'll be able to train while I'm here in Paris, unless I can find a training buddy to run with. I will no longer run alone in any park in Paris, especially not with an ipod. And if i have to postpone my long runs for when i'm back in Clermont, then that's what I'm going to do.
I really, really hope Damien gets transferred back to auvergne next year, because i'm not sure how long I can take this.
Internet friends
06.17.2009 14h23Making and maintaining personal connections is one of my prioriies in life, which is why I enjoy studying and analyzing the Internet. In just a few years, the Internet has grown to be the main way that people stay in touch.
My blog celebrates its 8th birthday this month, and over the years, I've developed a pretty strong following. Mainly people I know, such as friends and family back in the US, but I imagine that there are also quite a few strangers, "lurkers" who stop by but never leave any comments.
Thanks to blogs, Facebook, and the assistants in france forum, I've made a number of "Internet friends", that is, people I talk to online whom I've never met in person. Most of them are fellow ex-pats living long-term in France. We read each other's blogs, we leave comments, and we send emails when necessary.
I've also received a number of emails from people wanting information about moving to France, moving to Clermont, etc. I became good friends with Justin before he actually moved to Clermont to teach at the high school where I was an assistant, and then we became even better friends as the year progressed.
I write this because I received an email yesterday from a French woman who lives in the US, more specifically in South Dakota. She had emailed me once before, when my family was traveling in Wyoming and South Dakota, to try to meet up, but she lived too far east. This time she's in Paris, and we're going to meet up tomorrow for coffee.
In addition to helping me keep in touch with friends and family, the Internet is helping me enlarge my circle of friends and acquaintances!
If i could go back in time ...
06.15.2009 10h34If I could go back in time, there are a number of things I'd do differently. Nothing major, of course, but little things that I've been thinking about a lot recently.
For example, back when I was learning how to drive, I would have learned how to drive a stick shift. I remember Dad telling me how it would be a good skill to have, but as an "i know better than you do" teen, I ignored his advice. Now that I live in France, stick shift is the way to go, and while I can get by relatively well, there are certain things - like hill starts! - that still freak me out. Damien and I plan to practice this summer so that I can get up to speed, but it would've been better to have learned way back when.
I also remember Grandma and my parents trying to impress upon me and my sister the importance of thank you notes. While I knew they were right, my time was too important to "waste" writing boring thank you notes (and apparently I was too self-centered!). Now that I'm older, I have come to understand how important is it to appreciate and recognize the generosity of others. In fact, the best part of giving a gift is knowing how much it is appreciated by the receiver. I now make it a point to write thank you notes for all of the generosity that comes my way. When Damien and I were in the US, one of Dad's customers gave him 4 tickets to go see the Red Sox the night before we flew back to France. I sent him a nice email thanking him, and I also sent him two beautiful postcards of Auvergne.
Back in high school, I remember my French teachers saying that we didn't have to learn to conjugate the "passe simple" tense, only recognize and understand it. Well, now that I'm writing my thesis in French, I have to use the "passe simple" tense that I never learned how to conjugate. If I could go back 15 years, I would tell my younger self to start learning it, in order to avoid additional complications later in life. Luckily it's a very literary tense (and therefore practically unused in everyday speech), but when writing a research paper, it's required.
Speaking of high school, I'd go back and tell my younger self to chill out. School is not the be all and end all of life. Just as important are relationships with other people and time spent nurturing those relationships. While dedicating myself to schoolwork catapulted me to the head of the class, I didn't spend much time or effort cultivating my social skills. I would advise my younger self to continue to strive for academic success, but to pay more attention to developing social skills.
Speaking of websites ...
06.10.2009 0h29After a long year of work, my colleague Francois and I have finally finished the cutlery website.
If you want to order some knives or scissors or other various items (warning: you have to be in France and ship to France), or even if you just want to have a look (the Tourism pages are well worth a browse): Coutellerie Pradel-Redan.
[There's no English translation yet, so everything you see will be in French. But Francois' photos are amazing and the site is worth a visit !!]
Goals for June 2009
06.10.2009 0h08Goal 1 - to continue the fight to stop biting my fingernails. It is possible, I just have to find the willpower not to put my hands near my mouth.
Goal 2 - to run 30 miles in the month of June. I want to run another half-marathon in the fall (and possibly a marathon in the spring), so I need to start upping my miles now, at a slow and steady pace, so that I don't injure myself. I just recently bought a new GPS running watch with built-in heart-rate monitor, so hopefully that'll also encourage me to run more!
Goal 3 - to work on (and finish!) all of the website projects that are hanging over my head. Some of them have been lingering for a while now, and some of them are recent, but I need to get ahead so that I can spend the summer working on my thesis and spending some quality time with my conjoint !
Goal 4 - to spend 15 minutes a day in complete silence. After cleaning out some old boxes, i rediscovered my knitting needles and have started knitting again. Knitting in silence at the end of the day, right before i go to bed, gives my body and brain the time to relax so that I can sleep peacefully.
Goal 5 - to spend less time on the Internet and more time doing things. Like reading a book, writing a letter, or writing in my diary. There are plenty of other things to do that do not involve my computer. Maybe if I spend less time "surfing the Internet", I'll want to be on my computer when it's time to work on websites.
What are some of your short-term goals at the moment ?
Goals for May 2009 - results
06.10.2009 0h01As you probably know, I started my "goals for the month" back up again at the beginning of May. This results post is long overdue, so let's get right to it.
Goal #1 was to eat lunch and dinner at the table. I've gotten better, but I still find it hard to sit at the table when I'm by myself. Now that the living room is changed around, I'm hoping to keep trying to make this an ingrained habit.
Goal #2 was to run at least three times a week, even when I'm in Saint-Denis. I'm proud to say that while I might not have been 100% consistent, I feel like I'm getting back in shape. I've already run 4 times in June, and it's only June 9. And tonight i was running half-miles at an 8:30/mile pace, which is pretty fast. I've also gotten Damien interested in running, so on the weekends we go to the Parc de la Courneuve when we're in Paris and we run together.
Goal #3 was to update my website more often. I've made a concerted effort over the past week to update every day, and sometimes twice a day. I've even posted some new pictures (and I still have more to post, they're coming soon!)
Goal #4 was to achieve a better balance and harmony, that is, to learn to concentrate on one thing at a time. This one is going to take some time, because it's hard to go from being a constant multi-tasker to focusing on just one thing. But i'm getting there!
And last but not least, goal #5 was to stop biting my fingernails. I've been semi-successful, in that some of my nails have grown longer (right now i'm 5/10), but I'm still having trouble keeping them out of my mouth, especially when I get nervous/anxious/bored.
Onto the goals for the month of June ... !
