Family, with a side of film festival

Holy family, Batman! That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I've been doing. Eugene was graced with the presence first of my little brother Mike, then my Dad (who's leaving very early tomorrow morning). It's great to have family around, if not a little hard to get work done. But my often-unused planning-ahead-skills came in handy, as I did lots of work the past few weekends to have this time. Mike had never been to Oregon, so we got to do the "best of Eugene" tour, including exciting time with Gina in her French 202 class! He actually did an entire activity in Spanish, which was amusing. I told him to cheat off my students, but he obviously didn't listen. We also had a chance to go to the campus art museum, which has just re-opened after many years of being closed and renovated. It's beautiful and definitely worth the wait (not that I've been here for the entire wait, so yeah). There's a great Warhol exhibit there now (including some of his shoe prints!), so if you're in the area I highly reccomend it. Mike left Saturday morning and ran into Dad in the Salt Lake airport (on a moving sidewalk, going opposite ways- true story). Dad showed up Saturday afternoon and we took off for Portland, with intentions of catching one of the last films in the Portland International Film Festival (it ended Saturday). We didn't end up seeing one (they were sold out) but we did see Sideways (2nd time for him, FINALLY for me- and seriously people, it's worth the hype- all I can say is that there's no way someone can explain it to you, you just need to go), go to Powell's city of Books (love it, and as always, as soon as I entered the French aisle, I promptly forgot everything I was looking for), ate at Southpark, my favorite Portland restaurant, have croissants at Ken's Artisan Bakery and walk around a lot. Phew. We missed an encore showing of Te doy mis ojos, by Iciar Bollain, an incredible Spanish director and friend of my dad's (one of only 3 movies encored), because we had to get back here so Dad could show Hola, estas sola? another Iciar movie. Today I made Dad go to class with me (my class was amused at the high level of family attendance in the past week) and we had some campus down-time, then he gave an awesome lecture on urban and cultural change in Madrid (which my friends who don't take Spanish managed to skip out on- why do I go to their things if they all ditch out on mine?) followed by dinner with a few Spanish grad students and Gina Hermann, the Spanish prof who organized it all and who is wonderful. I of course got the "Why don't you speak Spanish?" song, complete with the "why aren't you getting a PhD chorus." Leave. Me. Alone. People. So yeah, it's been busy.

I am now in full-out stress mode about the end of the quarter, complete with reading list, committee and essay stress. Oh yeah, and that whole not having a job after I'm done problem. Well damn, what should I do? Not sleep and get everything done? On the other hand, my French 203 class was the very first one to fill up, which is a nice feeling. I know it's partly because I'm the only noon section, but still. Wow, last quarter teaching. At least here. Sometimes it feels like I just started.

And April, I guess we do it because we love it. Because for all my complaining and whining, I really do love French literature (especially when it doesn't come from the 19th century) and teaching. And I like the random occasions when I actually feel smart, even if it is about obscure points. Ha.