Toutes Directions

Things were starting to go better last week.

Then Friday night I found out my mom got some really bad news about her job, and that my parents' marriage is really on the rocks.

I've been feeling really out of it since. I tried working on my grad school application, but I couldn't write anything. I'm supposed to be working on things for my volunteer position with Habitat et Humanisme, but I can barely focus on that. Perhaps the biggest indicator of my stress is my lack of interest in food. Normally I take pleasure in cooking and finding recipes and things, but we've eaten pasta and salads recently because I can't focus on anything more complicated. I've even lost half a kilo in the last week.

My dream career is working in a non-profit or for the local government, like a museum or municipal library or historic monument. The problem with that is that in France almost all of the jobs in that sector are "civil servant" positions which means passing a competitive exam for which you have to have European citizenship to even apply. Which means that if I ever want to work for a museum or a library in France, the soonest would be around age 30, after the wait to become French, taking the test (and it's not easy), and then applying for a position once I pass the test. As the woman at ANPE said "It's not impossible, but let's look at some more probable career choices...." And in the meantime I don't want to keep tutoring English, but it's the only thing that works for now. I feel like being American condemns me to teaching English, at least here in the south.

If I want to have to have professional satisfaction, I'm starting to think it won't happen in France. But if B and I are going to move back to the States, that means getting married, and among other things that means dealing with the monster that is my parents' relationship, unless we elope (which would be my choice).

But the States have become foreign to me in many ways and France is a much better place to be when unemployed in terms of benefits, health coverage, and transportation (all areas of life except finding a new job, pretty much). Apart from my unemployment situation, life in France can be really good. I wonder if moving back to the States would reverse that: more professional satisfaction, difficult personal life/leisure time, etc.

I'm starting to make friends here and feel at home in Toulouse, but I feel frustrated by how difficult it is to keep in touch with American friends. Few have land lines with long distance and prefer to just use their cell phones, which means they can never call me, and most aren't very good at emailing either. I know that if I want friends to keep in touch with me I have to make an effort to keep in touch with them and let them know that it's important to me to hear from them, but it's disheartening to go back to their Facebook profile and see the message I left 3 months ago and realize I never got a response.

En fin bon. I needed a change of scenery and to check out some botanical gardens, so I headed to the Jardins du Museum this afternoon. The Natural History museum here in Toulouse recently opened a preserve/garden in the north of Toulouse and I'm organizing an outing with AVF in a couple weeks. I didn't want to lead a bunch of people there without having visited it on my own first, so I took the metro to the end of the line and walked to the gardens. I got some great pictures and I'll try to post them soon.

I think it was exactly what I needed and I'll try to change the pace again tonight and do some things I haven't done in a while but enjoy, like reading Sherlock Holmes or baking.