lumière des étoiles

Weekend Escape, Mysterious Clinging Stickers
2004-07-09 7:07 p.m.

Oh, and as an addendum to my last entry:

We seem to have MAJOR ISSUES in this country accepting "foreign degrees" as equal to US degrees. Take, for example, a student in a basic Comp course I taught at a county college a few years back. He was from Guinea in West Africa, older than the average student, and, as I discovered after the third or fourth class, was an MD, a practicing surgeon in his own country. What was he doing now, here, besides taking community college courses? Mopping floors at a pharmaceutical plant. He had to start all over again from the beginning because apparently, we believe we are much, much better at educating students here than at the universities in Guinea, France, and Nigeria, where he trained.

My ex-boyfriend's father, also foreign trained and also in the medical community, had no choice but to jump through similar hoops, since apparently his Russian Degrees were void as soon as he entered the US with his family in tow.

Or, take for example a student I tutored in English, which I did before I had my teaching degrees. She had gone all the way through law school in her native country of Chile, but at 30, had to repeat ridiculously basic math, lab science, and humanities courses to just obtain a BA and get hired at some entry level position.

Or, how about my cousin's wife, from Germany, who went through University there and got an accounting degree, but had to "re-obtain" a degree from a US college before any companies would consider hiring her?

The irony of all this is that such behavior seems to imply that we have SUCH superior schools, SUCH quality education here that foreign countries could only DREAM of keeping up with our "standards". The truth is, we have superior money, and that's about where the differences end. In fact, when my family expresses mild concern about "what I will do" if I "get sick or injured" while traveling, I often say "please - I'll be in excellent hands...", since I know how rigorous foreign institutions of higher learning are, and that they only take the best of the best. It seems there, since tuition is subsidized by governments and is not such a money-making industry, they have the option to be selective.

The reverse often isn't true, I'm also finding out - in looking at the possibility of teaching at international schools (or foreign schools, for that matter) abroad, I'll often ask if my degrees and teaching license will be recognized. "Of course!", I'm told usually. Ditto with business people - US degrees are universal, but other countries', especially any that might happen to be full of brown people, don't count.

Tsk, tsk.

Sooooo, Sudan. The new Rwanda? Must be, since the news is actually reporting on it. I will not discuss that today, because I'm flustered enough.

At the supermarket today, I heard a woman say "I see your butt. Did you go the march?" Confused, I just stared and stared and stared at her, with a box of Kashi in my hand, until she started laughing and pointed to the back of my pants. Apparently, this morning somehow, I SAT ON an old Planned Parenthood sticker that had been distributed during the March for Women's Lives in DC back in April, and unbeknownst to me, was WALKING AROUND with it stuck to my hieney ALL DAY.

I dropped my box of Kashi, and we laughed for like, two minutes straight before chatting briefly about Kerry's selection of Edwards and the remarks both made at yesterday's "Women for Kerry-Edwards" dinner in NYC and eventually going our separate ways. Nothing makes strangers converse like activism can. Well I suppose everyone else who saw my little display will just think I'm a cool, funky activist girl who daringly wears her political views on her arse. Yes, let's pretend that's what everyone thought. It would be better to be that than that eccentric, absent-minded, "too engaged in life/thought/etc. to bother looking in the mirror" weirdo from the neighborhood.

I'm also flustered about my husband's recurring fever, which is down today, but mysteriously comes and goes every few hours. If it happens again later on, we'll leave for Nicole's beach house tomorrow morning early instead of tonight. We though we were in the clear today, but it seems to have come back just a few hours ago. I'll still make the pasta salad and dig out my sleeping bag and do everything else to prepare, just in case the fever disappears and he wants to go at 9pm tonight or something. I know, I know, he should rest regardless, but he is who he is, and he doesn't let anything slow him down. So I certainly won't infantilize him by trying; he's a big boy, and big boys can make their own decisions.

Either way, we'll be gone 'til Sunday night. I was so happy when Nicole invited us; I know she has very, very limited space, and since Hippie Darren and Rachel, her other friends, aren't in the area anymore, we got invited this year. I guess we get to inherit their floor space. Thomas said "you are the new Hippie Darren and Rachel" to us on Monday afternoon. "Except," he went on, "Steve's not a hippie and you're a lot nicer to everyone than Rachel is". Oh goody, our own identity.

Tom has names for everyone, kind of like me. They're never really mean names, just names that seem to fit. Hippie Darren is no longer a hippie overtly, for example, so initially I was confused about Thomas' name for him. After hanging out with him a bit, though, I realize he's still a bit hippie-ish inside. Voila! The name still fits. Tom asked me one day if it's "not good" to do the name thing. To this I replied, "Maybe you're asking the wrong person. Perhaps I should go ask Crazy Dancer Guy or Pipeline girl?" referring, of course, to Tony and his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie - both of whom, by that point, were friends of mine. He got my point - that I do the same thing - and I explained it must just be part of our charm. That, or the reason we seem to both “put people off” sometimes.

It's funny when you can't really make friends easily but then you just seem to click well with someone. That happened for me with Steve - the similarity of our little quirks, down to the way we are when traveling, disarmed us both and drew us together quickly. It's been the same for Steve and I and Thomas. He's so like us - even his dry sense of humor - that we all bonded well in this past year and a half.

This is why I'm happy to be spending so much time with them this weekend at the beach. Since we're leaving in mere days at this point, Steve and I want to be with people around whom we can really just relax.

Oh, and before we were close, we had names for the other as well. "Bagpiper guy", "Tall Theresa". Guess which was which?

xo,