Tokyo or Bust

Even when it's not Saturday night and the mariachi bands aren't aye-yay-yay-yaying in full swing, Puerto Alegre is noisy as all get-out. So is Lower-Haight beer*-swilling utopia Toronado. I think Chris decided to split his bon voyage party between the two places so he could show off his "teacher's voice." (It's booming.)

Chris, who earned his TESOL MA at SFSU (where I'm slogging through the English Literature MA program), has been teaching English as a second language at the Academy of Art for what seems like a really long time now, but he's leaving Thursday for Tokyo, where he'll teach 10 1.5 hour classes each week to students at a private university. He's got a one-year contract, a subsidized studio apartment, and a mile-long line of friends waiting to stay with him once he gets settled. Sounds good to me!

While Chris preps for Japan, I'm prepping for my visit to the French consulate tomorrow afternoon. It'll be the first big powwow (is "powwow" totally un-PC? And do I care if it is?) with the men and women who will, ultimately, decide whether my future includes another stint in Europe. I'm so exhausted from all the paperwork that I don't even care whether they accept my proposal or not.**

* After some sleuthing, I discovered that there is some truth to the Duvel/right-wing conspiracy theory; turns out that a Duvel logo found its way onto an anti-immigration flyer put out by racist Belgian political party Vlaams Belang, but this rebuttal (en francais) by the Duvel peeps denies support of VB, saying, essentially, that it's a harmful rumor and that they don't align themselves with any political party. Hmmm ...

** it's probably just the exhaustion speaking. But maybe not.