Waitressing?

August is almost over aaa!! I seem to have found two jobs, a babysitting job for durring the week and a waitressing job for the weekends maybe? I'm not entirely sure how long the waitressing job is going to last, maybe they told me but maybe they didn't... in any event it's great experience and I'm getting paid. So woopie! I've been working there a week now, it's called "Le Colorado" after a late 70's american sitcom about the founding of the state of Colorado (never heard of it). I just started taking orders which is awesome. It's a family restaurant and I do the afternoon shift, and like any typical french bistro there are two entrees and two apetisers that change daily, along with the sides. It's definitely an engaging job, very physical and lots of memorisation. Plus I have to get used to all the food vocabulary; goujonette for fried fish, oh my goodness there are like a million different types of fishes they eat over here...

So I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this job durring the school year, but it's allowing me to become accustom to serving tables in french, which is great. Honestly if being a waitress doesn't work out for me it's not the end of the world, it's not a particulairly low stress job and I'm not phenominally jaw droppingly gifted at it, which isn't a big disapointment. But this set up I've found recently is allowing me to hone my skills.

Working is good, finally starting to live off what I earn again instead of off my savings is awesome. I'm still tossing around the idea of moving to China to teach english for the rest of the year. Been watching movies- "Hors de Prix" with Audrey Tattou was great! And I finally saw 300, got a kick out of that film (Gerard Buttler be looking fiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnne). Also been learning a lot of fiddle tunes to expand my busking repetoire, though I haven't been busking in a while... Started foot stomping along with my playing... video forthcoming. Oo also been swaping english for spanish with my mexican friend Andrea! Here we are trying to look awkward:


Oh one last thing. That job I wrote about in the last post, the one with the screaming boss, there was one really good thing that came out of it. I left the restaurant with a couple of chefs and told them how I'd really blown the audition, they were all like "noooo your so nice!!!" and one, this guy Frank, offered to take me around to a bunch of restaurants to see if they were hiring. He'd spent seven years living in the states so we talked a lot about America while distributing my resumé. We ended up at a casino which is right next to this giant park with a free zoo in it, he won 40 bucks at the slot machines! We had a riot. He bought me a giant cotton candy!!!!!

just a quick note

friday the thirteenth aaaa!!! Trying to find a waitressing job here in Lyon, already tried two places and didn't get past the test runs but that's cool cause one job had an angry boss who yelled A LOT and the other would have been really hard to get to wilst going to school. I'm starting to rethink this whole going to school thing this year... This first year I'd be doing a degree in linguistics because the administration told me that was the only way to get teaching french as a foreign language certification but then I found out later that you can get a degree in translation and get training to teach french. By the time I'd found that out it was too late to change. So I'm starting to think about going back to Chicago and getting a degree teaching english as a foreign language before heading off to asia for the rest of the year. I would come back to France in the fall of 2011 to start a Chinese-English-French translation degree. This way I'd get experience doing something I really enjoy and want to do long into the future, plus being able to earn some mone to put aside as well as becoming familiar with mandarin. We'll see...

Been busy busy busy, started busking a little and was raking in 10 euros an hour on average... it was a very interesting experience that got me thinking about audience manipulation but was also quite stressful. I started busiking while a wonderful english friend of mine who I met in Berlin was visiting, here's a photo of us:


Juggling viola and waitressing is not so easy, the viola juggling stick kind of fell on the ground and rolled under my couch if I may metaphorically say so. I started marking on a calender every day I play the viola, it's very motivating. Roommates are gone, both working in different cities in France for the rest of the month... Stoped reading for a while and now started "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One" by William K Black which is excellent and I highly recommend it. Dreaming of Berlin and learning german and going over there and busking. I wonder if I'll ever love speaking another foreign language as much as I love French. I constantly enjoy French, new words and gramar forming new pathways in my brain.

Had an interview today with the owner/head chef of a very prestigious restaurant here in Lyon, he had the tricolor red-white-blue collar which means he passed a national exam to achieve culinairy greatness. He spent a decade living in Chicago, we had a lot to talk about.

Ok, going to bed! More later, more soon! Love.