Six Things

Leah tagged me a few days ago, and after a busy, tiring, and half malade week, I'm finally getting around to it. So here we go, my first tag (!) and six things you probably don't know about me:

1.) I'm a huge nerd. Okay, this may not be something you don't know, because I think I've written about it on here before. But it really is true, I am a huge nerd. I always liked school and I still really like learning, especially about history (and current clinical practice in oncology, but that's another bag of worms). I plan my vacations here in Europe around seeing cool historical stuff because that's what I like to do on vacation. After years of lamenting my complete lack of coolness I've embraced my inner nerd and I am not ashamed of it. Clearly I was never very popular in school :(

2.) I really like rap and hip hop. It is a total non-sequitur with the above, but it's true. I can rap along to most Ludacris songs, and if you get me drunk enough I've been known to do it in public. You could say that I have an eclectic taste in music. When I put my iPod on shuffle I often have Jay-Z followed by opera followed by John Mayer.

3.) Ben and I are no longer together. He broke up with me about a month ago. He says that he's just not capable of being in a new relationship yet (after a very complicated history and nasty break up with his ex) and that it doesn't have anything to do with me, he has no idea why he feels this way, etc blah blah blah. Basically when I got back we had one good week and then things got weird, and finally I had to force him to break up with me. When things started getting weird I told him that we could just try dating and see how that went but he was insistent that he wanted to be together with me, and then clearly that didn't work out .... I don't know, it's all very confusing. It's been hard, not only because we built a really strong connection during those months when I was in the US when we were talking on the phone or emailing every day, but also because I was expecting to come back and have him there, and he's not. And then of course there's all the usual break up garbage. I mean, I know that we had a rather unconventional "relationship" and we weren't really "together" because we spent so little time physically in each other's company (especially compared to how much time we spent apart), but being forced to speak to each other (and we could talk for hours on the phone) really forced us to get to know each other, to know a lot about the other person and to see if we were compatible together. So in summary, as you can all see I'm totally incapable of starting or maintaining a normal relationship. Blah. I sandwiched this in the middle on purpose so that it doesn't make the end of the post all depressing. Let's forget about it and move on to number four...

4.) I really like those silly coffee dispensers they have in France. I'm not a big coffee drinker (only with milk and sugar, and of course in France you aren't allowed to put milk in your coffee so I don't drink coffee here, and it really bugs me that you can never get it to go except at Starbucks), but I like the thé nature and cappuccino. For only 40 centimes you get the same amount of liquid that you get at a café for €3. And the stuff tastes pretty good too! In fact I am sipping a thé nature while I'm writing this. And speaking of tea, why don't the French put honey in their tea? They always offer you sugar, and we all know that the superior tea sweetener is honey.

5.) In general I'm a pretty calm person and not too many things make me very upset, but beware if you get me going about politics. I was a poli sci major in college, and politics is something that can bring on very passionate reactions from me, including telling people they've been brainwashed into believing Republican nonesense (even if the brainwashing bit is true, you really shouldn't say things like that, it's rude). I just feel very strongly about public policy, specifically health care and social welfare policies, and I let my emotions get away from me. I mean, these are policies that determine the well-being of millions of people, you have to make sure it's done right. So it's probably best not to get into political discussions with me. Let me be crazy in my own head and we'll all pretend that I'm not two steps from being one of those psychotic people who rant on cardboard boxes on the corner.

6.) I am bordelique, as the French say, or in English, I'm messy. This doesn't mean that I'm dirty, because I am a germaphobe. Bordelique means that I accumulate stuff, mostly teaching stuff, and have nowhere to put it but generally around my room. I try to set up an organizational system with pochettes and hanging file folders and boxes so that everything is in a logical order, but it just doesn't work, because the next day when I come home with my teaching stuff I'm just going to throw it on top of the pile instead of in the hanging file folder or pochette where it belongs. And then things get really unorganized because I take multiple classes' photocopies to school in the same pochette, even though every class has a different pochette, and then don't reorganize it when I get home, so when I'm looking for it I can't find it because it's not where it's supposed to be. I'm hopeless.