Wednesday, December 9, 2009

9 days left and a bundle of nerves

I am officially nervous about my presentation on the 18th. I opened the email with the schedule a half hour ago and my stomach has been doing cartwheels ever since. Thankfully I'm scheduled in the afternoon and after Lukas' presentation; I hate going first. But still...! What am I going to say for fifteen minutes?! and there are a bunch of smarty pants people who are going to be there too, and I know they'll ask me long-winded, confusing questions that I hadn't thought of.

Not knowing what to say reminds me that Schalk and I were talking the other night about a TV program in South Africa that finds wives for farmers. His family says they're going to enter him as a contestant, and he can't think of anything worse. In the first round the farmer has five minutes to talk to each lady candidate. I thought that was pretty short, but he said, "jo, that's sooo long! What would I say?" Schalk was in residence at a boys school from the first grade. I think that might have something to do with it.

Joshua left yesterday for Phalaborwa and Schalk headed back to Bloemfontein today, so our fun little apartment is down to just two. I won't know what to do with myself when I go home and have nobody to throw gravel at me, put rocks in my hood when I'm on a walk, hide my drink, pull my chair out from under me as I'm sitting down, mess up my hair, point out "no pets allowed" signs and suggest I wait outside, or make jokes about my intelligence all day long.

Good thing Brian's coming soon!

5 comments:

  1. My 12-year-old nephew recently attended a special program at MIT. His favorite class was entitled, "Teach Anything! - How to Fake a Presentation." He took copious notes and remembered a number of ways to fill time and distract your audience. Maybe he could help you out. :)

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  2. :-)

    CH is waiting for you to come back. And we do have gravel, rocks, pet signs and whatever else you think you are going to miss!

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  3. Hmmm. Those pet signs sound interesting...do you buy them already domesticated, or do you tame them yourself? And what about care and feeding? I guess I don't know what a sign would eat.

    We had pet rocks here, for a while, but they went out of fashion, after folks could't get rid of all the litters of unwanted pebbles.

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  4. Maybe your nephew would be willing to just do the presentation for me?

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