My husband and I got back Sunday night from a quick road trip to Los Angeles. He only had a few days off at the tail end of Holy Week (not two weeks like the rest of the country, thanks again un-Mexico). We had originally planned to spend the time kicking around southeastern Arizona ghost towns with the in-laws, the highlight of which was to (hopefully) be a night at a haunted B&B in Bisbee which, apart from the usual spooks, features a hooker-haint who reportedly entertains guests with an otherworldly strip-tease from the foot of the bed. The in-laws had not been informed of these particular details; they are not believers like us, and we figured we’d mention it (or not) after the fact, if we managed to stay a night there.
Alas (or not so deep a sigh), plans changed. My husband’s great uncle died, and my in-laws decided to go to the funeral in L.A. instead. We decided to join them A) out of respect, B) because we’re not sure how many more opportunities we’ll have to seen my husband’s aged grandfather in this world, and C) why the heck not? Neither of us had ever been to that part of Cali before (he used to live in the Bay Area, but had not ventured that far south). I admit that at first I was hesitant; the image I’d always had of L.A. was a plasticky one, and didn’t think I’d find much to do since I’m not in the slightest interested in buying a StarMap and stalking the Pretty People. Gack. I couldn’t care less. What’s a Hollywood-apathetic girl to do? LOTS, we discovered. Much to my pleasant surprise, I *heart* L.A. We seriously tossed around the idea of living there. Quite seriously. Now I want desperately to find a job lucrative enough to take up residence in Santa Monica, maybe Pasadena. More accurately, I want my husband the attorney to bring home sufficient bacon, and post-PhD I’ll get a gig at one of the many universities. Because, let’s be honest, a humanities professor is never going to make that kind of money.
In retrospect, the drive out may be evidence of a lapse in good judgment. We left fair Peñasco at a late hour and drove through the night in shifts, pulling into the L.A. metro area around 6am. Ouch. We stopped in a Kmart parking lot and tried to sleep a bit, to no avail. So, we found an ATM that dispensed spendable green dollars instead of multi-colored pesos, procured some breakfast, loaded up on diet Coke, and made a day of it. By the time we checked into our hotel late that afternoon we were zombies and it took my thirty-something body longer to recover than I’ll admit, but we still managed to have a rip-roaring good time.
Among the joys we crammed in:
-Driving around the city and taking in the view of Angelino humanity in its mind-boggling heterogeny
-The Getty Museum, where in the portrait gallery we discovered my brother’s eerie twin, a Fulano-de-tal 16th-century financial advisor to Carlos V
-Lunch at one of those macro-biotic vegan cafés, because we needed to cleanse after eight hours on the road. After salad-spare weeks in Peñasco, it was delicious mouthfuls of green heaven.
-Strolling Santa Monica Boulevard, including some shopping in which my husband scouted out a very pet-able velvet jacket for me. Why is it that my husband is always the one to spot my best shoes and jackets?
-The carnival rides on Santa Monica pier and requisite funnel cake (after the rides).
-People-watching on Venice Beach.
-Truly talented street performers, including Russian acrobats!!
-Black bean soup, jerked chicken and fried plantains at a Caribbean joint.
-The LaBrea tarpits and the Page Museum. I discovered:
1. I love sabertooth cats just as much as I did as a little kid;
2. While they may have gone extinct millennia before the Grimm Brothers and a continent away, paleolithic Dire Wolves are straight out of a fairy-tale nightmare;
3. I have a new respect for paleontologists, particularly the black ooze diggers, since during the course of NO archaeological excavation did I ever get as sticky-filthy as they do.
-Navigating Pasadena to meet a friend, followed by his guided driving tour of much of L.A. In comparison with my current environs, even the seedier areas didn’t seem so bad, given their paved roads, minimal trash in the streets, and lack of third-world dogs.
-Giving gursha to my husband and aforementioned friend in a dimly lit and delicious Ethiopian restaurant (if you’re scandalized, get your mind out of the gutter and look it up). Quote of the evening: "If I’d known what kind of food they have over there, I’d never have sent money to the Ethiopians when I was a kid". –Our friend, after swallowing a mouthful of spiced lamb and lentils.
-Live Coltrane-imposter jazz at a club in VanNuys.
-Copious quantities of ice cream and gelato.
-And yes, we spent a little less than an hour in the bustle in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and got an eyeful of the freakshow in the surrounding blocks. Mostly I was surprised at how tiny Carmen Miranda’s footprints were in the concrete.
-But we didn’t get to go on The Price Is Right. No chance for Drew Carey to tell me to ComeOnDown!! This is why we have to go back. (That and a garlic restaurant I heard about).
All of that, and we squeezed in the great-uncle’s half-day funeral and some good visiting time with my husband’s family. The interment was very nice and good words were said, but the cemetery was insane. It sits on a steep hillside overlooking the valley. It has a beautiful view (for what that may matter to the deceased) but the graves are set in a precarious slope and I worried for the welfare of the more senior members of the family and for all of our ankles as we hiked up to the open grave. I guess when level real estate is at a premium, one invents (barely) workable solutions.
So, I know I have to take into account that I’m living in a place that makes all infrastructured civilization hover on paradise, but I really was taken with the city. Yes, the traffic is hell, but better than Atlanta or Mexico City. The beach is just as pretty as Peñasco (but much colder, *shiver*). The views are gorgeous. The people are friendly. The air was surprisingly clean (maybe the smog is a summer problem?). The weather was beautiful. It is refreshingly cosmopolitan—even mentioning the ethnic diversity seems redundant. Fresh vegetables and fruits are plentiful year-round. "Organic" and "locavore" are options, not mystery concepts. Name a cuisine and it’s available to satisfy my cravings and curiosity. Every heat-level chile known to man is in somebody’s cooking. It is the Vanity Fair; the seeker can find anything and everything she might want or need. I understand why so many people want to live there. Maybe me, too.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Déjenme en paz
I'm having a crappy day today. I just am. This happens sometimes. And here's the silver lining: When I live in a place with few friends and one close one, the only person to look at me and ask "are you alright?" is my husband (that would be my one close friend). No friendly acquaintances or polite strangers picking at the cracks in my unconvincing I'm-okay mask. Heck, I don't even have to wear one! It's a relief, really.
I'm an optimist.
I'm an optimist.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
¿Por qué no la compartes?
Mexicans must think I am the stingiest person in town.
Silly norteamericana that I am, I assume that my neighbors prefer that I keep it down. That’s how it is at home, right? I shut the windows and keep the volume at what I think is a reasonable level.
Not my neighbors. When they put on some music, they open the windows and crank it so high that the already dissonant strains of banda are further distorted—the volume at which both bass and treble buzz. Unfortunately, buildings here are not typically insulated against either weather or sound, and so it comes right through the walls. And it goes late into the night, even on weeknights. Businesses do this, too, so that when you drive past the music rattles your wheels and your teeth. It certainly gets my attention.
I am dubious that it has ever crossed their minds that there exists a person such as I who cannot stand banda or norteña, because it seems to be universally adored in these parts. How on earth could someone not love this music? If you want to try it out yourself, search “Los Tigres del Norte” or “Alicia Villareal” on youtube and you will not only hear it, but be dazzled by the costumes that I, in my close-mindedness, have deemed ridiculous. (Parenthetically, if you want to see some scary-tight mariachi pants, look for Alejandro Fernández and you’ll get some cheesy ballads out of it, too).
So now I feel stingy, because I don’t share. In fairness, I’m afraid that if my music competes with theirs an ugly volume war will break out. I have memories of this from my freshman year in the dorms. Would they mind, though? Maybe it’s unfair to say this, but banda and norteña are already so cacophonous to my ear that it might not make a difference. Sure, add more sound! they might tell me. Let’s all bring something to share! It's a bad musical potluck where the flavors of all the dishes clash. I don’t, though. Out of shyness and a desire not to offend my neighbors (without really knowing that it would offend them), I keep my music to myself.
I am beginning to suspect that ¡sube la radio! is as important in north Mexican culture as ¡Viva Villa!.
Silly norteamericana that I am, I assume that my neighbors prefer that I keep it down. That’s how it is at home, right? I shut the windows and keep the volume at what I think is a reasonable level.
Not my neighbors. When they put on some music, they open the windows and crank it so high that the already dissonant strains of banda are further distorted—the volume at which both bass and treble buzz. Unfortunately, buildings here are not typically insulated against either weather or sound, and so it comes right through the walls. And it goes late into the night, even on weeknights. Businesses do this, too, so that when you drive past the music rattles your wheels and your teeth. It certainly gets my attention.
I am dubious that it has ever crossed their minds that there exists a person such as I who cannot stand banda or norteña, because it seems to be universally adored in these parts. How on earth could someone not love this music? If you want to try it out yourself, search “Los Tigres del Norte” or “Alicia Villareal” on youtube and you will not only hear it, but be dazzled by the costumes that I, in my close-mindedness, have deemed ridiculous. (Parenthetically, if you want to see some scary-tight mariachi pants, look for Alejandro Fernández and you’ll get some cheesy ballads out of it, too).
So now I feel stingy, because I don’t share. In fairness, I’m afraid that if my music competes with theirs an ugly volume war will break out. I have memories of this from my freshman year in the dorms. Would they mind, though? Maybe it’s unfair to say this, but banda and norteña are already so cacophonous to my ear that it might not make a difference. Sure, add more sound! they might tell me. Let’s all bring something to share! It's a bad musical potluck where the flavors of all the dishes clash. I don’t, though. Out of shyness and a desire not to offend my neighbors (without really knowing that it would offend them), I keep my music to myself.
I am beginning to suspect that ¡sube la radio! is as important in north Mexican culture as ¡Viva Villa!.
Friday, April 3, 2009
¿Mentirosos?
There’s a little something about the culture here that’s been frustrating me. I know that I should accept it, that I’m the foreigner that therefore I should be the one to make the adjustment. That’s all good and well. Fine. I’ll say that I have adjusted to it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be frustrated by it. I’ve overcome exasperation, at least, and am settled at annoyed acceptance.
Here it is: in my book, Mexicans lie. Only the don’t think they’re lying. They would likely be extremely offended if I called them on it. Lying, you see, is deliberately and maliciously obscuring the truth. They aren’t doing that. It’s the opposite of malicious. I’ve gathered that they believe they’re making sure I’m happy by telling me what they think I want to hear. They are going out of their way to make sure I don’t get upset by telling me something unpleasant. In a way, it’s very considerate of them.
When I moved to Mexico for the first time in 2003, I learned early on that keeping things pleasant and making sure everyone is happy is an overarching cultural value here. I think this is part of why it can take so long to get some things done here; you can’t proceed until you’re sure that everyone involved is not only on the same page, but happy about it. I’ve observed repeatedly that meetings, conversations, classes, dinner—anything, really—stops and hovers at smoothing over upset feelings, and we can’t move on until we’re satisfied that no one in the room is upset. Reflecting on it now I think I’ve unconsciously picked up on that in my teaching, because I find myself repeating “¿todo bien?” and looking around the room for consternation. If people don’t grasp it, I give additional examples, alternate explanations, memory tricks, whatever works, until the confusion passes. I don’t need them to be happy about it, though. They can loathe the subjunctive with their whole souls for all I care, as long as they can conjugate and know when to use it.
This happens frequently when I’m trying to get my hands on something that I need, and the store is out of it, or the person I need to talk to isn’t in. For example, I go to the grocery store, actually several of them, only to find that everyone is out of tomatillos. Yes, we are in Mexico and there are no tomatillos. In the wasteland of Sonora where nothing will grow, everything has to be trucked in (it gets pricey, hence the outrageous cost of living here) and the trucks aren’t always reliable. They get held up at state and international borders, military checkpoints, tollpoints, and other nonsense that hinders efficiency. I digress—back to the tomatillos. So, I ask the produce guy if they have more in the back. No. When will there be more? This afternoon, he says. Naïvely satisfied with his answer, I come back in the afternoon. No tomatillos. This goes on for three days, every day someone telling me that the truck will be here later in the day. Finally I find some at a fruitstand. They are sad looking but acceptable, and I take them home and roast them and turn them into the salsa that I have been madly craving for four days (by the way, convenience foods haven’t made inroads here, so I have to make most things from scratch. That’s right, I can’t buy fresh salsa at the deli. What deli?) Even if they don’t carry what I’m looking for, never have and likely never will, they smile at me, shrug, and say “tal vez mañana”. Mentiras. Which leads to another important lesson for living in Mexico: “Mañana” doesn’t necessarily mean tomorrow. It means, “not today”.
There is an exception: at the bank, they are straightforward with the truth. Of course, you can’t fudge telling someone that the wire transfer number is correct when the transfer won’t go through, and you can’t tell someone that their debit card has arrived when the mail from Mexico City hasn’t shown up for over a week and a half. So, they tell me what I don’t want to hear, and yes, the truth is frustrating. I can take it in stride, though. It helps that they deliver the disappointing news with the sweetest voice they can muster.
And that’s my culture clash. I am still the foreigner (and how). No matter how Latina I may be, I grew up in mainstream culture in the United States. It’s difficult to reconcile my black-and-white, Puritan North American ideals of truth and lies to the gentler Mexican concern for avoiding the unpleasant, even if the solution is short-lived. I hate to admit this, but despite speaking the language, trying to understand and adapt to the culture, blah, blah, blah, I am still an Ugly American. True, I don’t go in for loud public drunkenness and insisting that everything be done in English and US dollars, but I accepted some time ago that I will never go native in Mexico, especially not rural northern Mexico. My first instinct is still to say what’s on my mind, and to share what information I have when someone asks for it, even if the truth isn’t happy-making, because I assume that when someone asks a direct question they want a direct answer. If I don’t know, I say so. So, my automatic reaction is to think that Mexicans lie. I’m sure they think I am rude and blunt (with some justification). So, I try to bite my tongue and resign myself to repeated petitions for goods and services I might require, for people who dodge my questions with a pleasant voice and a big smile.
So, um, thanks? Gracias, México, por preocuparse tanto por mi bienestar. Sé que solo quieren que lo pase bien.
Here it is: in my book, Mexicans lie. Only the don’t think they’re lying. They would likely be extremely offended if I called them on it. Lying, you see, is deliberately and maliciously obscuring the truth. They aren’t doing that. It’s the opposite of malicious. I’ve gathered that they believe they’re making sure I’m happy by telling me what they think I want to hear. They are going out of their way to make sure I don’t get upset by telling me something unpleasant. In a way, it’s very considerate of them.
When I moved to Mexico for the first time in 2003, I learned early on that keeping things pleasant and making sure everyone is happy is an overarching cultural value here. I think this is part of why it can take so long to get some things done here; you can’t proceed until you’re sure that everyone involved is not only on the same page, but happy about it. I’ve observed repeatedly that meetings, conversations, classes, dinner—anything, really—stops and hovers at smoothing over upset feelings, and we can’t move on until we’re satisfied that no one in the room is upset. Reflecting on it now I think I’ve unconsciously picked up on that in my teaching, because I find myself repeating “¿todo bien?” and looking around the room for consternation. If people don’t grasp it, I give additional examples, alternate explanations, memory tricks, whatever works, until the confusion passes. I don’t need them to be happy about it, though. They can loathe the subjunctive with their whole souls for all I care, as long as they can conjugate and know when to use it.
This happens frequently when I’m trying to get my hands on something that I need, and the store is out of it, or the person I need to talk to isn’t in. For example, I go to the grocery store, actually several of them, only to find that everyone is out of tomatillos. Yes, we are in Mexico and there are no tomatillos. In the wasteland of Sonora where nothing will grow, everything has to be trucked in (it gets pricey, hence the outrageous cost of living here) and the trucks aren’t always reliable. They get held up at state and international borders, military checkpoints, tollpoints, and other nonsense that hinders efficiency. I digress—back to the tomatillos. So, I ask the produce guy if they have more in the back. No. When will there be more? This afternoon, he says. Naïvely satisfied with his answer, I come back in the afternoon. No tomatillos. This goes on for three days, every day someone telling me that the truck will be here later in the day. Finally I find some at a fruitstand. They are sad looking but acceptable, and I take them home and roast them and turn them into the salsa that I have been madly craving for four days (by the way, convenience foods haven’t made inroads here, so I have to make most things from scratch. That’s right, I can’t buy fresh salsa at the deli. What deli?) Even if they don’t carry what I’m looking for, never have and likely never will, they smile at me, shrug, and say “tal vez mañana”. Mentiras. Which leads to another important lesson for living in Mexico: “Mañana” doesn’t necessarily mean tomorrow. It means, “not today”.
There is an exception: at the bank, they are straightforward with the truth. Of course, you can’t fudge telling someone that the wire transfer number is correct when the transfer won’t go through, and you can’t tell someone that their debit card has arrived when the mail from Mexico City hasn’t shown up for over a week and a half. So, they tell me what I don’t want to hear, and yes, the truth is frustrating. I can take it in stride, though. It helps that they deliver the disappointing news with the sweetest voice they can muster.
And that’s my culture clash. I am still the foreigner (and how). No matter how Latina I may be, I grew up in mainstream culture in the United States. It’s difficult to reconcile my black-and-white, Puritan North American ideals of truth and lies to the gentler Mexican concern for avoiding the unpleasant, even if the solution is short-lived. I hate to admit this, but despite speaking the language, trying to understand and adapt to the culture, blah, blah, blah, I am still an Ugly American. True, I don’t go in for loud public drunkenness and insisting that everything be done in English and US dollars, but I accepted some time ago that I will never go native in Mexico, especially not rural northern Mexico. My first instinct is still to say what’s on my mind, and to share what information I have when someone asks for it, even if the truth isn’t happy-making, because I assume that when someone asks a direct question they want a direct answer. If I don’t know, I say so. So, my automatic reaction is to think that Mexicans lie. I’m sure they think I am rude and blunt (with some justification). So, I try to bite my tongue and resign myself to repeated petitions for goods and services I might require, for people who dodge my questions with a pleasant voice and a big smile.
So, um, thanks? Gracias, México, por preocuparse tanto por mi bienestar. Sé que solo quieren que lo pase bien.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
La mera verdad
As previously mentioned, I recently updated my résumé and CV. It makes me feel so pretentious and slightly dishonest, using all that drivel-licious terminology that abounds in résumés. Yes, I accomplished the stuff I said I did, but there’s so much more to the story. Here are a few examples of what I’d really like to have said:
Spanish Instructor, University of *****
-Introduced students to the idea that communism isn’t so bad, relative to fascism and/or the imperial yoke.
-Let slip that practicing Spanish conversational skills while slightly tipsy (though not drunk) is a great way to gauge how much you really do know when you’re uninhibited.
-Showed films and played music that would get me totally fired in a K-12 setting. “Me gusta marijuana, me gustas tú”. Gracias, Manu Chau, for your fine illustration of the use of indirect object pronoun structures. And seriously, Almodóvar nudity is only sexual in really creepy ways. What I am supposed to do, show them children’s shows like Xuxa? The woman was a porn star. At least Todo sobre mi madre gives them a peek at Spain’s post-Franco, wahoo, free-for-all cultural liberalism.
ESL Instructor, ***** Hispanic Community Center
-Developed a serious chip on my shoulder about those Chicano Power jerks who tell me that I’m not Hispana enough and accuse me of having "brown shame". Because, you know, it’s not like there are non-Mexican-American Hispanics in the world.
File Clerk, ***** Oil & Gas
-Lost last shreds of tolerance for mind-numbing paperwork.
-Lost last shreds of tolerance for petrochemical engineers and geologists who think they’re smarter than the rest of us, yet stare at me blankly when I make a quip about anything non-scientific. Say, a witty literature joke. Shakespeare who? Faulkner what? Isn’t that a dirty word?
-Almost turned to drink, but applied for grad school instead.
Reading tutor, ***** Elementary school
-Pulled kindergarteners’ fingers out of their noses and other orifices all stinkin’ day.
-Became adept at wiping noses without getting the boogers on my fingers. (If you're wondering, yes, I washed my hands. My poor chapped hands).
-Expanded my vocabulary of childish insults, way beyond "poopyhead".
-Headed off drug deals between kids who pass stuff for their parents. Those brown bags were not always lunch, I tell you.
I wonder if I’d get a job with that version. It does highlight some of my more unique experiences and qualifications, after all.
Spanish Instructor, University of *****
-Introduced students to the idea that communism isn’t so bad, relative to fascism and/or the imperial yoke.
-Let slip that practicing Spanish conversational skills while slightly tipsy (though not drunk) is a great way to gauge how much you really do know when you’re uninhibited.
-Showed films and played music that would get me totally fired in a K-12 setting. “Me gusta marijuana, me gustas tú”. Gracias, Manu Chau, for your fine illustration of the use of indirect object pronoun structures. And seriously, Almodóvar nudity is only sexual in really creepy ways. What I am supposed to do, show them children’s shows like Xuxa? The woman was a porn star. At least Todo sobre mi madre gives them a peek at Spain’s post-Franco, wahoo, free-for-all cultural liberalism.
ESL Instructor, ***** Hispanic Community Center
-Developed a serious chip on my shoulder about those Chicano Power jerks who tell me that I’m not Hispana enough and accuse me of having "brown shame". Because, you know, it’s not like there are non-Mexican-American Hispanics in the world.
File Clerk, ***** Oil & Gas
-Lost last shreds of tolerance for mind-numbing paperwork.
-Lost last shreds of tolerance for petrochemical engineers and geologists who think they’re smarter than the rest of us, yet stare at me blankly when I make a quip about anything non-scientific. Say, a witty literature joke. Shakespeare who? Faulkner what? Isn’t that a dirty word?
-Almost turned to drink, but applied for grad school instead.
Reading tutor, ***** Elementary school
-Pulled kindergarteners’ fingers out of their noses and other orifices all stinkin’ day.
-Became adept at wiping noses without getting the boogers on my fingers. (If you're wondering, yes, I washed my hands. My poor chapped hands).
-Expanded my vocabulary of childish insults, way beyond "poopyhead".
-Headed off drug deals between kids who pass stuff for their parents. Those brown bags were not always lunch, I tell you.
I wonder if I’d get a job with that version. It does highlight some of my more unique experiences and qualifications, after all.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Cohetes
My husband has a friend who is getting a master's in development at UCLA, and since he's a relatively short drive away he and some friends came down and spent last weekend with us. When people are in town to visit us we tend to shell out a little more cash on entertainment, to make sure our guests enjoy themselves. So, we eat out more, go out on fishing boats, rent ATVs to ride around the dunes (not my idea), etc. Oh, and buy fireworks. Domestically produced fireworks. I pause here to remind my fair readers that quality control and manufacturing regulations are not the what they are north of the border.
There is a bizarre, pyromaniacal pleasure to living in a place where recreational explosives are totally legal and can be bought on the roadside. This was our first adventure with Mexican fireworks, which have alarmingly short wicks. In the desert around town there's nothing to burn. Except us, that is. Nobody caught on fire, but we did have a few that went off right next to our heads, and more than a few bottle rocks that shot not up, but horizontally, sometimes straight at us. One shot straight under the car, and for an arrhythmia-inducing moment we all worried that it would go off under the gas tank. I guess it didn't, because it's all in one piece and unscorched. It was a hoot. It reminded me of younger, more devious days driving down long country roads, shooting bottle rockets out the car windows with wild cousins. Those were the days.
Sigh. There are some aspects of our little strip of desert-meets-the-sea that I will miss. Some. Thank heaven for Wyoming.
There is a bizarre, pyromaniacal pleasure to living in a place where recreational explosives are totally legal and can be bought on the roadside. This was our first adventure with Mexican fireworks, which have alarmingly short wicks. In the desert around town there's nothing to burn. Except us, that is. Nobody caught on fire, but we did have a few that went off right next to our heads, and more than a few bottle rocks that shot not up, but horizontally, sometimes straight at us. One shot straight under the car, and for an arrhythmia-inducing moment we all worried that it would go off under the gas tank. I guess it didn't, because it's all in one piece and unscorched. It was a hoot. It reminded me of younger, more devious days driving down long country roads, shooting bottle rockets out the car windows with wild cousins. Those were the days.
Sigh. There are some aspects of our little strip of desert-meets-the-sea that I will miss. Some. Thank heaven for Wyoming.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
El curriculum
Ah, the tanking Mexican economy. It's predicted that the peso will fall to twenty-to-one against the dollar by summer's end. I predict sooner. To fill you in, when I was in Guad last summer the peso had fallen just barely below ten-to-one last summer, where it had been in a steady hover for years. When I was there in 2003, some days it got close to nine-to-one. We avoided changing money or withdrawing with US ATM cards on those days. This January, 2009, it was at twelve. February, 13.5. By March first, it was at fifteen. Today, it's at 15.5. It pains me every time I make a transfer from Santander to our US account. I miss the ten-to-one days.
The local economy is really in trouble. So much so that I'm looking for jobs in Colorado. We're not sure how long it will take my husband to wrap up here, but now we're old hands and spending a few months apart. It still sucks, but at least we know we can live through it successfully.
This, of course, is requiring me to update my résumé and my CV. I haven't done that in, oh, about three years. Gack. I thought it would be fairly easy, until I realized that my old CV was on my old hard drive, the one that crashed a little over a year ago. An IT angel at my husband's office was able to recover my non-duplicable data and sound files, but the rest was a loss. Imagine my bitter surprise when I found that it was not, in fact, backed up on my thumb drive as I had hoped.
So, I have spent the last couple of days reconstructing my employment and academic history for the last ten years. Gack. It's as hard as it sounds. God bless the internet. It's unsettling how many names I have forgotten, and even the name of an organization I worked for.
Cross your fingers for me. I'm bilingual and bi-literate, surely someone will hire me. . .
The local economy is really in trouble. So much so that I'm looking for jobs in Colorado. We're not sure how long it will take my husband to wrap up here, but now we're old hands and spending a few months apart. It still sucks, but at least we know we can live through it successfully.
This, of course, is requiring me to update my résumé and my CV. I haven't done that in, oh, about three years. Gack. I thought it would be fairly easy, until I realized that my old CV was on my old hard drive, the one that crashed a little over a year ago. An IT angel at my husband's office was able to recover my non-duplicable data and sound files, but the rest was a loss. Imagine my bitter surprise when I found that it was not, in fact, backed up on my thumb drive as I had hoped.
So, I have spent the last couple of days reconstructing my employment and academic history for the last ten years. Gack. It's as hard as it sounds. God bless the internet. It's unsettling how many names I have forgotten, and even the name of an organization I worked for.
Cross your fingers for me. I'm bilingual and bi-literate, surely someone will hire me. . .
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