{"id":4305,"date":"2025-08-25T16:48:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=4305"},"modified":"2025-08-25T16:48:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:48:06","slug":"metro-boulot-dodo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/metro-boulot-dodo\/","title":{"rendered":"M\u00e9tro Boulot Dodo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of my favorite phrases that M. Richardson taught us in High School French was &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/M%C3%A9tro,_boulot,_dodo\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/M%C3%A9tro,_boulot,_dodo\">m\u00e9tro, boulot, dodo.<\/a>&#8221; It basically means, &#8220;I take the metro, I go to work, I go to bed.&#8221; It&#8217;s a way of answering &#8220;how&#8217;s it going&#8221; in the style of &#8220;same old, same old.&#8221; But with a bit of a nod to the tendency towards banality in our every day living if we aren&#8217;t careful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyways, today was our first day back at work since we got here. AKA, the start of our new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Work was pretty much the same, with the added challenge of working from the least ergonomic setup possible and being 6-9 hours offset from a lot of the folks that I work with. I&#8217;ve already had my first 9pm meeting, but it honestly wasn&#8217;t too bad. I slept in a bit, then I had a nice, long stretch of uninterrupted focus time. I had a few hours of overlap with my coworkers, and then I took off for a lyra class (more on that in a bit), had dinner with my family, and then I took my meeting. I&#8217;ll need to be cognizant of not burning my candle at both ends, but I&#8217;m not mad at having a day where I was super productive but still time to do the things that I enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The one big thing I did today was to take a lyra (aerial hoop) class at a studio here. I&#8217;ve been doing lyra for about 3 years now, but I have definitely never done it in french! The teacher told me that she speaks english like a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawlessfrench.com\/expressions\/parler-le-francais-comme-une-vache-espagnole\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.lawlessfrench.com\/expressions\/parler-le-francais-comme-une-vache-espagnole\/\">vache espagnole<\/a>&#8221; (spanish cow), but she did an excellent job of demonstrating, so I never felt lost. It definitely helped that I started with an introductory course, so we were working on moves that I already know. We still said hello to the top bar, though!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5300.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5300.png?resize=768%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Hope hanging upside down from an aerial hoop.\" class=\"wp-image-4306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5300.png?resize=768%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5300.png?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5300.png?w=960&amp;ssl=1 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not going to lie, I was terrified to go! What if they were resentful of having an english speaker in their class? (I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve heard, but we don&#8217;t always have the best reputation around the world these days). What if the French turned out to be aerial super humans and I felt like an American weakling in class? What if they had shitty crash mats?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At one point, while I was standing on the tram platform trying to figure out if I was waiting in the right place, I had fleeting thoughts of saying &#8220;eff it, I&#8217;m running late&#8230; I&#8217;ll just pay the no-show fee and go home.&#8221; Thankfully, that&#8217;s when the tram showed up and I was able to tell myself I was being silly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, me being me, after I passed the 5th funeral home on the walk from the tram to the studio, I texted Kristian &#8220;I hope it&#8217;s not a bad sign that I&#8217;m apparently walking through the funeral district.&#8221; His reply? &#8220;People are just dying to get into that class.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I made it to class just as they were finishing up introductions, so I didn&#8217;t have to worry about walking in mid-warmup. Everyone was really kind. The hoops were all hung low, to make it easy for everyone to get up into them (a surefire sign that an entry-level class is aimed at people who are actually entry level). I even learned a few new vocab words! (of course, now I can&#8217;t remember any of them). I left class feeling that amazing combination of strong, tired, and bursting with endorphins. I&#8217;m <em>so<\/em> glad that I decided to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh, and the crash mats were about 4 inches thick and covered the entire surface where the lyras were hung. I&#8217;ve had better, but I&#8217;ve definitely had worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m signed up for another class at a different studio on Friday. Wish me luck that it goes just as well! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite phrases that M. Richardson taught us in High School French was &#8220;m\u00e9tro, boulot, dodo.&#8221; It basically means, &#8220;I take the metro, I go to work, I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[66,65,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aerial","category-france","category-work"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-17r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5300.png?fit=960%2C1280&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4307,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305\/revisions\/4307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}