Mongolia

It’s been a rough week. Actually, it’s been a rough month, which is partly why there are so few entries for July. My time is divided between a very stressful, tiring job and studying for a French test. I will start with the French test. For any of you out there who don’t already know, the University of Toronto tried to kill me this past year. I won’t go into the whole thing again, but suffice it to say I need to write a French comprehension test for the third time in two weeks in Dublin (which then will be sent back, at my expense, to Toronto). I need to pass this one, otherwise, supposedly I will have to pay another term’s tuition to write it a fourth time in order to get my Masters degree (which I am not doing, so I need to pass this one). After a bit of pressure from my Mom on skype, I decided to get a French tutor to help me prepare and she is fabulous. French-born, she loves living in Dublin and is in no hurry to go back. Where she’d like to go is Mongolia, so she’s adding Mongolian to the languages she knows. When we met up she said that she liked me because she could tell from my facebook profile that I was “a fighter”.

She wants me to translate Emile Zola’s famous article ‘J’accuse’ which charged the French government with conspiracy and anti-Semitism in the conviction of a Jewish military official. So for the past several mornings I have sat in my room, pen in one hand, French-English dictionary in the other, translating Zola. Occasionally it is fun, like when I decipher a figure of speech on my own, but mostly it’s tedious and frustrating and depressing, because after failing twice already it’s hard to believe that the third time will be the charm.

Then there’s the job. Oh boy. I won’t go into it in too much detail, but just when I should be feeling comfortable and confident at the store, I’m feeling exhausted and under pressure. It was so bad the other day that the only way I could make myself feeling better was visualizing quitting, and I have never quit anything. But quitting would put me back out there in the barren desert which is the late-00’s recession, and I can’t keep spending money here if none is coming in, and should I just call it a day and come home, but can I get out of my lease and... thus did I almost have a break down. I couldn’t even skype my parents, them being at the cottage (where I would love to be right now), so the only thing I could do to make myself feel better was eat an entire pizza and watch the brit-com ‘Black Books’.

[Tangent: A brit-com devotee, having been raised on ‘Fawlty Towers’, I’m using this summer as an opportunity to catch up on ones I don’t know. The 1980’s ‘Yes, Minister’, about a twittish MP and his scheming assistant who will do anything to ensure that the status quo never changes, was brilliant. I also really enjoyed ‘Spaced’, the show that launched the whole Simon Peg-Edgar Wright phenomenon. It’s really good if you are in your mid-twenties, working dead end jobs and feeling like a loser. Taking the brit-com into the 21st century is ‘The IT Crowd’, about the nerds who work the computers in the basement of a fancy company, but it has a laugh track, which is unsettling in the post-‘The Office’ era. I’m partial to ‘Black Books’ which is dark and surreal and follows the exploits of a Basil Fawlty-ish bookseller who hates all his customers.]

This morning was shit as well. Tried to sleep in a bit but kept having restless dreams in which E.F. Benson characters were ordering a never-ending selection of Starbucks drinks. Translated a bit of Zola, made myself some TERRIBLE microwavable risotto (Uncle Ben, you led me astray!) and watched my favourite episode of ‘The Golden Girls’, which gave up the idea of having a plot at all and just featured the three main ladies sitting around on a rainy day in the dressing gowns eating cake and telling stories. But even that couldn’t stop me from crying. The tears would come unexpectedly and horribly, bubbling up from my belly and uncontrollable. I think, along with being homesick and hungry, they were about being scared of my next shift and not knowing how it would be.

Of course it was better. It HAD to be (unless, y’know, I had killed a customer). The best part of it came at the very beginning. I came into the back room and my co-worker from Slovakia was there. “I had a terrible day yesterday,” I told her. “Me too!” She cried. “It was an awful, awful day!” She went on to list all the reasons she had a shitty day, some similar to mine, others unique, and that made me feel so much better. Then my co-worker from Mongolia came in. When we started working together I found her a bit cold, but her dry sense of humour had grown on me and I was getting the feeling that she liked me. Although about half of my coworkers are from other countries, nobody else seems to miss their homes (“Do you get homesick ever?” I asked the pretty Polish girl. “No,” she said, smiling.) “How are you?” asked the Mongolian girl. “I’m okay. Was feeling pretty homesick this morning...” “Aww, really?” And then she came over and gave me a hug. It was exactly what I needed. “I miss my Mommy too sometimes,” she said.

So I’m not quitting. But I’m taking things one month, week, day at a time.