J’étais nerveuse!

Tonight was week 3 of my French class at the USDA Graduate School. I’ve been a little bit intimidated, as I feel like most of the class is more advanced than I am (and definitely has more vocabulary than I do), but the teacher is very animated and friendly, and I don’t mind spending my Thursdays from 6-9pm there.

I had a bit of extra anxiety tonight, though, because last week I was asked to make a presentation this week. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. Two weeks ago, I was asked to make a presentation last week, but she had forgotten, and I conveniently forgot to remind her. Anyway, I was only delaying the inevitable, and tonight I had to present. Not knowing what else to do, I brought in pictures and talked about my trip to Haiti: my work, the poverty, and the animals, too (Really, I think it was an excuse to show the giant spiders). All in all, it was okay. I wasn’t as nervous once I stood up; the anticipation of it had been worse. The teacher would help me when I was stuck for a word, and the class was interested enough to ask questions. AND, that was the only time I’ll have to do it all semester, so I’m the first one to have gotten it out of the way!

School Closings

My mom wrote me yesterday: nearly all Georgia schools were cancelled yesterday and today, by the governor's request. The goal is to save the gas that would be used by buses and school employees. Whoa! The time will come out of the scheduled snow days. Still, with such short notice, it leaves working parents scrambling to figure out what to do with the kids. I suppose it's a creative (?) solution, but hopefully he won't start asking schools to keep the lights off next...

Wha...?

The worst sentence I've read this week (granted, it's only Monday):

"The neopatrimonial nature of political authority has coincided with the ideological predispositions of policy elites and the state's low capacity to result in a state with a proclivity for ineffectual intervention in the economy and repeated fiscal crises."

-p. 22 of African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 by Nicholas van de Walle.

Plerisity

Like every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I watched B and L after school. B brought a friend home. L and I chatted, preparing all her various baby dolls for a plane ride. Here is what I learned:

Destination:
City: New York City
Country: Japan
Planet: Plerisity

Bad news. Laranius (the first planet I learned of seven months ago) exploded, causing L to flee the planet with the entire population, which consists of her babies, and one grandbaby. They moved to Venus, but alas, there were too many bad guys, so they fled once again, this time to the planet Plerisity. Plerisity, not coincidentally, was L's birth planet.

L is six years old.

Tropical Gangsters

Yesterday I read Tropical Gangsters by Robert Klitgaard for my Managing Economic Policy Reform class. I finished at 2:30am, super-sleepy, but it was so good! It's Klitgaard's story of his two-and-a-half years in Equatorial Guinea in the mid 1980. He has been sent by the World Bank to try to develop a "medium-term economic strategy" with the leadership there.

Some of his managing techniques were things I tried in Haiti. By about page 200, I really had my hopes up: "Maybe he's doing it! Maybe it'll take, and they'll move forward!" I was hoping for my own sake, for my own work, as much as for his. Alas, it's never so simple, and in the end, simple politics are enough to wipe out all his efforts and those of the group he has worked with.

I checked out the country's history since then. At first glance, I was thrilled to see that their GDP has shot up and is growing rapidly. But the next thing I read was that they've discovered oil. So a few well-positioned individuals benefit, while the rest of the country is left behind. More, they can forget all the reforms they were attempting before, as they're no longer desperate to find lenders (World Bank and IMF, usually) to resolve their debt crisis.

Makes You Wonder...

Walking to campus today, I passed a car with a bumper sticker that said "MY GOD CAN BEAT UP YOUR GOD." There weren't any others to offer some context. Makes you wonder....

Hmmm...From what I hear, it's not so inconsistent with US military philosophy.

Settling into a Schedule

This is the third week of classes. I'm finally settling into a schedule:

I'm taking three classes at AU, Tuesday and Wednesday nights: Development Microeconomics, Micropolitics, and Managing Economic Policy Reform. Tuesdays are really late; I get out of the second class at 10:40!

Monday and Thursday mornings I put in my hours as a research assistant for R, one of the professors in my program. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I pick up B and L- the children of two visiting professors- from school and keep them for a few hours.

I just signed up for a French class through the USDA. It meets for three hours Thursdays in the evening.

Fridays we have the Friday Forum for IDPSA (International Development Program Student Association, as well as planning meetings.

It's taking me a while to adjust to the faster pace of life here, after such a different rhythm in Haiti.

New Address

I have established a new blog site: www.angelikirk.blogspot.com.

New Blog

I've decided to move my blog, as I'm no longer in Haiti. I will still keep www.angeliinhaiti.blogspot.com for when I have more Haiti-related information, but I'm putting it on mini-vacation for now. This will be the new site.

Photos

I'm planning on putting this blog on hold for a while, partially to give myself a little while to settle back into school. I'm considering starting a DC blog, and then continuing here when I have more news and info.

In the meantime, if you're interesting in seeing photos from the summer, send me an email at angeli@american.edu, and I'll send you a link to the albums on Ofoto.

More information soon...