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Welcome to TheGlossophile Blog, the personal weblog for Derron Borders. Here you can read about Derron's personal life experiences as he continues his journey teaching English abroad and as he goes on to pursue a higher degree in the field of linguistics. You may also read random blog entries where Derron discusses his personal thought's on a certain topic or rambles on about n'importe quoi! If you are interested in linguistics and languages please read Derron Borders' blog, "Glossophilia: Language and Linguistics"!
I’ve been so busy thinking about going home and trying to get the most out of being here in France these last days that I’ve forgotten to give updates on my plans for next year. As many of you know (if you have been following my blog), I applied to teach English in Spain next year and was placed in my third choice location, the Balearic Islands. Last week I called my parents to see if they had received the letter I need to apply for my visa, which would also tell me where I would be teaching (i.e. tell me which island I would be on). My dad said an attempted delivery had been made as it was registered but he wasn’t sure it was my letter and thought it might be something my mom was expecting to be delivered. When I called the next day, my dad informed me that it was in fact my letter from Spain. The annoying part is that I’m in France and my parents don’t speak Spanish. Dad was too busy to scan the letter to let me read it and told me I could read it when I got home. I was too anxious to know where I was so I coached my dad into telling me what the letter(s) said. We were finally able to find the part where it told me where I’d be teaching. I was placed on the largest island, Mallorca or as we spell it in English, Majorca. I’ve been given two schools located in two different cities about 20 km apart!
The first school is located in/near Campos, Mallorca:
Centro Educativo 1: IES Damià Huguet
Direccion: Cami del Ravellar, Finca na Llarga 07630 Mallorca
Telefono +34971160085 Mail: iesdamiahuguet@educacio.caib.es
Pagina WEB: www.iesdamiahuguet.net
The second school is located in S’Alqueria Blanca, Mallorca:
Centro Educativo 2 CP Ntra. Sra. Consolacio
Direccion C. del Convent, 13 / 07691 S’Alqueria Balanca/ Mallorca
Telefono +34971654143 Mail cpmarededeudelaconsolacio@educacio.caib.es
Click on the blue balloons on the map to get more information!
View Where Derron will be living in Spain! in a larger map
After doing some research, I fount out that the city of Campos is in the municipality or region of Campos. The region itself has about 8,000 people and the city has about 3,000-4,000 people. The city of S’Alqueria Blanca as around 900 people and is located in the municipality of Santanyí.
When I first saw where I was going I really struggled with the idea. I didn’t know that I had the second school and thought I only had the school in Campos. I considered living in Palma and commuting to Campos (38km) by bus on the days I would have to teach. By having the other school in S’Alqueria Blanca, which is 51km from Palma, it would make it almost impossible to live in Palma. I’ve decided that since the bus schedule to Palma from Campos is pretty good on the weekends, I’ll just try to live in Campos and hopefully I’ll be able to get a scooter and use that to get around in my region and area.
My Ohio license will work in Spain for the first three months and then I’d have to get a Spanish license, which costs about €1,500! I figure that if I ever did get pulled over or asked, the police are not going to know that my license isn’t valid longer than 3 months. The only problem is how much the insurance will be. I’m going to have to look into that once I get there!
You can see the Wikipedia entries for the cities (or their regions actually) by clicking on the city names: Campos & S’Alqueria Blanca
June 29, 2009
Protected: Last Day of Les Pins
June 28, 2009
Last Weekend in Dax…
So Friday night Alissa and I decided that we should end the year in the restaurant where we began the year, my favorite restaurant, L’Orange Ball. Georgia couldn’t join as as she was busy at one of her school’s Kermesse. Fernando and Isabel were having company over for dinner and so it was just Alissa and I. We headed down to the Centre Ville around 6:30 and went straight to the restaurant. They no long had my favorite salade, Compagnarde, but they had this amazing salad called Salae Gavroche, which consisted of lettuce, white ham, emmentel cheese, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and this amazing white creamy dressing. We ordered a big litre of sangria and had pizza and then ice cream for dessert! It was a great meal!
This weekend was La Fête du Quartier St. Pierre downtown so we decided to check out what activities were going on. We luckily finished dinner right on time as a free Cabaret was about to begin starting with a magic show. The magician was very funny and entertaining and his show went along with very upbeat classical music remixes. He used live animals and rabbits and birds were appearing and disappearing left an right. He was really good and had me fooled the whole time as I was trying to be as observant as possible but couldn’t see through his allusions at all. This may be because of the .5L of sangria I had drank at dinner. After the magician there was a group of Moroccan Belly Dancers that got on the stage. They were absolutely horrible. I’ve seen MULTIPLE belly dancers in my life time having gone to the International Festival in Columbus many years and even having seen on live at North Commons at OSU during a themed buffet night! We actually saw them practicing for something au Centre Ville the following morning (yesterday) and I took some video! Alissa and I ended up getting up and leaving and making our way through town where we hear accordion music. After some further investigation we found that there was an accordion concert going on in the park so we sat at the fountain and watched. After we grabbed a beer one last time at Byron Bay and may our way home as we had to get up early yesterday.
YouTube - Click here to see video of horrible belly dancers!
Yesterday we got up and took the bus at 9:00am into town where we bought some food for a picnic and bought Dax Féria (Dax Festival) handkerchiefs (they wear these at the festival). We also purchased a CD with typical Féria music on it. La fête de Dax (The Festival of Dax) takes placed in early to mid August, which is sad since we will not be here. Below you can watch a video of the opening ceremony where everyone holds their handkerchief (like the ones Alissa and I bought) up and sway them back and fourth and sing “la la” to the song, “Vino Griego et Foulards”, which is a very famous Féria song here in the southwest of France!
After doing some shopping and buying some souvenirs at the Saturday market we caught a bus to the train station and then took a train to St. Jean de Luz to go on Le Petit train de la Rhune (Mt. Rhune’s Little Train). Our plan had been to go with Georgia, Fernando, and Isabel but because they all three were very busy preparing to leave France Alissa and I decided to go and had to figure a way to get out to Col de Saint Ignace where the train station for the Train de la Rhune is located.
La Rhune (or Larrun) in Basque, which means “good pasture” is mountain found in the Basque Country on the border of France and Spain. To get to the top of the train one must go to Col de Saint Ignace in France and take “Le Petit Train de la Rhune” to reach the 905m (2,969ft) summit.
Since Isabel and Fernando invited us to dinner at 8pm Alissa and I had to give ourselves enough time to get to the train station for La Rhune and get up to the mountain and back down. To go up and come back down takes a minimum time of 1 hour and a half. A one way trip up the mountain takes 35 minutes and if you decide to hike back down the mountain it takes around two and a half hours. There is a bus that does go from St. Jean de Luz to a town called Sare, which passes by the Col de Saint Ignace. The bus is called Le Basque Bondissant and on Saturdays during a school period there are two buses from St. Jean de Luz to Sare and two buses form Sare to St. Jean de Luz. The first time 9:15am was too early for as we would have had to catch a 6am train to make it. The 2:00pm bus was too late as we weren’t sure we’d have enough time once we got to Col de St. Ignace to catch the train and get back before dinner. We decided to take a later train in the morning from Dax to St. Jean de Luz and once we arrived in St. Jean de Luz we took a taxi for €23 to Col de Saint Ignace. When we go there there was a long line as the station was closed for lunch and didn’t open unitl 1:20pm. we waited a good half hour in the hot sun and finally bought our tickets and about 10 minutes later boarded the train to take up to the summit.
YouTube - Click here to watch my video of us ascending Mt. Rhune
The view was amazing and as we went up we saw a great assortment of fauna, trees, and plants. We saw wild horses, sheep, goats and different types of very larger birds. It was a beautiful day to be going up the mountain. At the top there was a hotel, I believe, and restaurants and a souvenir shop as well as a tiny little monument and a big tower, which I’m sure was used for all kinds of things. Alissa and I climed to the very summit, took some pictures and then found a spot to eat our picnic lunch we had bought. We had sandwiches, pringles, cheese, and La Mie Câline Super Cookies! We ate over looking the Spanish side of the Pyranees on two of the many rocks that jutted out form the ground all over the place.We both got stung by some sort of plant or bug and had a stinging feeling for a little while. We went and saw the wild horses that had made their way to the top of the mountain. There were many new mothers and happy new foals and colts. It wasn’t that chilly but we did wish we had not worn thongs and had worn proper shoes. After about an hour or so we decided to catch the train back down. We talked to a lovely German couple the whole way down the hill and once at the bottom we looked quickly around at the souvenir shop, bought nothing (except I bought a 1.5l bottle of cold water) and then went looking for bathrooms and the bus stop. We were worried that we would have enough money for the bus and the Post Offic ATM machine was out of service. We entertained the thought of hitchhiking or bumming a ride back to St. Jean de Luz but after we found out it was only €2 for the bus we waited for 30 minutes and caught the bus back to St. Jean de Luz just in time to catch our 5:41 TGV back to dax.
Once we got to Dax we went and sat at a café and got something to drink and talked for about a half hour and then headed over to Isabel and Fernando’s for our last final meal together. Fernando had cooked up a concoction of angel hair noodels, peas, chicken, peppers, carrots, and soy sauce. It was actually really really good. They drove us home late and we said out teary eyes goodbyes as they are leaving us on Tuesday and Alissa and I will not see them before they leave. Georgia will see Isabel at school tomorrow.
If you want to see pictures from yesterday click the photo below!
June 25, 2009
Nine days to go…
So tomorrow is my last day of class and I can really say that I’m not sad at all. The children over all were very cute and I’m glad I got to know them, but really I’m just one person who has come into their life for a short period of time and will move on and they will soon forget me! I’ve actually not been very good at going to classes these past few weeks and have skipped more than I think should be right. I’ve probably burned a few bridges in the process but at this point I’ve accepted that I wasn’t the greatest English Assistant here in France and I’m sure they noticed it too. It is not a sad ending to be leaving the assistantship program here behind and I’m not even all the sad to be leaving France. France, as a country, didn’t leave all the great of an impression on me like Belgium did. I don’t know what it is about Belgium but I much prefer France’s neighbors to the North. I will, however, miss my experiences that I had with the other assistants and miss the assistants themselves. I’ll miss speaking French in a real French setting on a daily basis and I’ll miss the life that I’ve grown accustom to while living here.
Tuesday, Georgia, Alissa, and I walked to centre ville in the blazing heat of the sun to meet up with Isabel and Fernando to have one final meal together in Dax. We went to this Tapas Bar/Restaurant, which was really really good and had a good time together.
Click on image to go see the photo album! Photos are at the end!
We were planning on going to take a trip down near St Jean de Luz to take “Le Petit Train de la Rhune” up to the summit of the mountain and have a pic-nic but since Isabel and Fernando are leaving on Monday they need to use all day Saturday to prepare their departure! We may end up having dinner with them on Saturday night, which will be the OFFICIAL last dinner of the year! So sad! Alissa and I are still planning on going to the mountain on Saturday and tomorrow night we plan on eating at my favorite restaurant in Dax, L’Orange Ball, and then going to this little festival they are having in town!
Yesterday I was supposed to meet Diana in Bordeaux but actually forgot to set my alarm and never woke up in time to catch a train to go meet her so I’m heading up to Bergerac on Sunday evening and going to spend Sunday evening/Monday Morning with her before heading back to Dax to start cleaning up my room and packing the rest of my things to leave. I have a meeting with my bank on Wednesday to finalize everything and then I’m going to take a train on Friday morning (like 12am Friday morning, so Thursday night) to Paris and then I will spend the day in Paris with Alissa and her parents and then I will make my way to the airport on Saturday morning to finally fly home to Columbus!
June 22, 2009
Translation…
I was wondering how someone gets into freelance translation? I have so many questions about how one becomes a translator! I know that there are VERY few schools which offer programs in translation and that the majority of translators and interpreters are normal people whom speak multiple languages at a very high level. I feel that I am qualified to translate from French into English but not vice-versa. What makes someone qualified to translate and how do you build a translation resumé. I know there are TONS of translators out there fore French-English, English-French so that market is quite competitive. I’m not looking into doing translation as a career or looking to go to get a degree in becoming a translator or interpreter, I would just like to know how I should go about starting my own freelance translating services. I hope that after next year I will be able to widen my language knowledge and start translating from Catalan and Spanish as well. Where does a freelance translator find work? How does one advertise? How does one get paid etc. I’d love to know as much information as you can give me! I’d love to hear your comments and opinions! Thanks!
Nothing, and I mean nothing scares me more than the prospect of having to apply to graduate programs. I’m absolutely scared to death to apply to grad school! I don’t know why I have this fear of doing it but I think I’m having a lot of self doubt, that I am not capable of getting into grad school first of all and then if I’m even capable of being successful in grad school! Every time I think about grad school I get nauseated and all of the feelings of doubt and failure begin to zoom through my head. I think back at my high school years and wish I had been a better student, I then look at my undergraduate years and even though I was a 10 time better student in college I wasn’t as good I should have been. I should have graduated Summa Cum Laude but barely escaped with just a Cum Laude and I blame that partially on my undergraduate career in student affairs as I spent the majority of my time as a resident advisor and resident manager in the residence halls.
The one thing I do feel good about when thinking about applying to grad school is that I am way ahead of the game as none of the applications for 2010-2011 are out yet. This also makes me weary as I wish I could start now with all the free time I have and get it over with. I am currently studying and preparing for the GRE (not as much as I should be but it will increase soon) and after I type this I’m going to start researching on writing the best statement of purpose!
I’ve narrowed down whom I’m going to ask for recommendations based on which programs I ultimately decide to apply for.
For Romance Linguistics Programs- Dr. Brian Joseph (Dept. of Linguistics, OSU), Dr. Janice Aski (Dept. of French and Italian, OSU) and Dr. Christiane Laeufer (Dept. of French and Italian, OSU)
For Langauge Documentation, Description, Endangered Language Programs- Dr. Brian Joseph (Dept. of Linguistics, OSU), Dr. Judith Tonhauser (Dept. of Linguistics, OSU), Dr. David Odden (Dept. of Linguistics, OSU)
I’ve decided that I definitely want a higher degree in linguistics and I’m going to start out with an M.A. degree so that I may get my feet wet before diving into a Ph.D program.
Some of the programs I’m looking at are:
The University of Arizona- Native American Languages and Linguistics M.A.
The University of Hawai’i at Manoa- Linguistics M.A.
The University of Michigan- Linguistic Anthropology M.A. (I may not go for this one b/c I got a C- in my Anthro 200 class that I hated)
The University of London School of Oriental and African Studies-Language Documentation and Description M.A.
The University at Buffalo- Romance Linguistics M.A.
The University of Washington- Romance Linguistics M.A.
Eventually no matter what M.A. program I do, I’d love to do the University of Hawai’i’s Linguistic Ph.D or the University of California at Berkeley’s Romance Language and Literature Ph.D. This of course can very well change depending on my future!
Please give me feedback on funding options for grad school, any other programs you know that specialize in either Romance Linguistics or Endangered Languages, Documentation and Revitalization! I’d love to hear your thoughts!!
June 21, 2009
Kermesse & Gender Roles
So, in this region, as far as I know, every elementary school plans an end of the year event to raise money for the following year. They call it a “Kermesse“. This word comes from the Dutch word ”kerk” (church) and “mis” (mass) and has developed a meaning of “festival”. At these Kermesses, the children perform dances and sing and there are games that the children can play to win prizes and there is usually a bar that serves anything from “cidre” (low alcohol) to wine to pop. There is sometimes a large dinner or a nice snack provided, for a price. Everything has a price as the schools are trying to raise some money for the following year.
On Friday, my least favorite school, Les Pins, was putting on their Kermesse and since all of the elementary assistants in Dax have a class there we decided that we would go, except Alissa, who went to the Kermesse at her school Sully, which I’m sure was much more exciting and better organized. Georgia and I walked down to Les Pins as it is right down the road and we met up with Fernando and Isabel. We arrived just in time for the class performances and had missed the “fun and games”. The atmosphere was nothing different from a normal day aux Pins and it was total chaos. The children were running around like crazy animals and the parents were just as feisty and loud as the children. M. Lesfauries, the principal, had to ask for everyone to be quiet so they could start the show.
Some of the classes did dances such as country dancing, flamenco, Russsian dancing, or just plain old crazy fun dancing. Other classes sang. One class in particular sang but it was impossible to hear them as everyone was talking and children were running around, like I said, like crazy animals! During the show, we were lucky enough to witness domestic violence episode between a couple, who obviously had been estranged. The man kept trying to approach the baby carriage to kiss whom I assume was his daughter but the lady whom I assume is the girl’s mother kept pushing, kicking, and cussing the guy to get him away. They were causing a big scene and it was then that I realized that the children act the way they do because their parents don’t act any better!
One particular group of dancers really caught my attention. I think it was either the CP (1st grade) class or on grade lower (kindergarten). The girls were dressed in white tops and had on red type dresses and the boys wore dark tops and shorts with a light colored vest. There was one boy who was not wearing the same outfit as the other boys and instead was wearing a white top with a red dress. He was performing all the female parts and when they had to pari up with a male partner he joined hands with another little boy and dance his part. It was really really amazing to see this outward destruction of a gender role in front of a crowd of about 200 people.
I’m not sure what the circumstances were that this boy performed the female role whether it was by choice or they were short girl and asked if one of the boys would perform the girl’s part. After looking at my pictures again I counted 11 boys and 8 girls. The little boy made it 9 little “girls”. Whether the boy was asked to do the part or he chose to I think it shows a lot about the advancement of the French culture and especially in a school like Les Pins where there is a lot of ignorant closed minded people. I do think some of the people in the crowd were shocked but no one really said anything negatively and the boy did a great job!
I think it is ridiculous that as a society we force these gender specific roles on our children. “Boys don’t play with dolls!” Blue is for boys, pink is for girls! We should not force these ideas into children’s heads and let them grow up and decide which role they prefer or which things they are good at doing. Fathers should show their daughters how to build things and show them how to change the oil while mothers should teach their sons to bake! I don’t think it should be a forced thing, I think it should be natural and parents and teachers and society should show the role they live everyday to ALL boys and girls!
Yesterday, Georgia, Alissa, and I went downtown to meet Fernando and Isabel at the statue of the matador and the bull in front of the Arena so we could go to the Music Festival that is going on in Dax this weekend. Since we were a little late Isabel and Fernando went inside the Arena. We joined them and watched children from all the schools in Dax sing songs traditional to this area. They sang for a half hour with the local Dax orchestra. After, the official band of the “Corrida” came and played. Isabel and Fernando had to leave to prepare for guests that they were having and then we ended up leaving a small time after that walking through town taking pictures and making our way home finally.
If you want to see pictures of the Kermesse and from yesterday click here: La Kermesse & La Fête de Musique
Subscribe to Twitter FeedPlaces Derron Has Lived
Circleville, Ohio Columbus, Ohio Put-in-Bay, Ohio
Forge-Philippe, Belgium Géronsart, Belgium Nismes, Belgium
Dax, France
Palma, Mallorca, Illes Balears, Spain
Places Derron Has Been
