Back to the job hunt

Monday, classes started up again. I taught during the day, and then, Monday night, I was back over by Sacre Coeur with my favorite unmotivated, Sri Lankan pupil.
I panted up to her sixth floor apartment (summer had done nothing to keep me in shape), and as soon as I entered her apartment, I had a premonition that something wasn't quite right.
First of all, she answered the door wearing an oddly decorated shirt. Oddly decorated, I'm telling you—embroidery all over the collar and sleeves and cuffs and botton holes. They were a multitude of uneven stitches in various patterns.
“I got a new sewing machine!” she told me. She pulled it out and showed me all the features. Finally, she pointed to the top of the machine and showed me that it stitches almost any pattern you could possibly want on your clothes.
“You see?” she asked, pointing at the cuffs of her shirt.
She'd used every different stitching pattern possible on her shirt. I then looked around her room and saw that suddenly, everything bore a new border—the curtains, the pile of clothes sitting on her bed, her bedcovers. Everything had been decorated.
“You've been busy,” I said.
“Yes,” she smiled. “I stitch all my clothes.” Suddenly inspired, she said, “You want stitch on you?” She pointed at my shirt. She seemed to expect me to yank my clothes off right then and there so she could cover it in stitches.
“Um...well...no.” I said, hoping not to hurt her feelings.
She took it well. She nodded, and then began pointing at all of her new handy work. Second sign that not all was right: her walls were newly covered in homemade crafts. There were beaded potholders hanging from the window and woven doilies hanging from the wall. She'd printed black and white pictures of herself off the computer and colored them in by hand.
“You like?”
I said yes. I told her that it gave the apartment some personality. I thought it looked original.
“And you notice that my house is clean?” she asked.
I had noticed. Usually, all of her possession are poured out over the floor. Monday, everything was in its place. The floor was mopped. The bed was made. The pots and pans were put away.
I didn't want to discourage her sudden domesticity, but I felt like I needed to ask, “Is everything okay with you?”
“Yes,” she said with a huge smile. “Ca va.”
“Work is okay?”
Immediately, her face fell.
“Well...”
“What happened?” I asked.
“No money for two weeks,” she said.
“You haven't been going to work?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I go to work everyday, but boss says he cannot pay me.”
As it turns out, her boss ran out of money, continued having his employees work, but then didn't pay them in return. After two weeks without pay, she stopped going to work.
“Now, I sit home all day and work from home,” she said, pointing around her room at the potholders and doilies and decorated curtains. “No problem.”
“Well, how are you going to pay for your apartment?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I find new job one day,” she said. “I cook Indian food for someone else.”
I agreed that this was a good idea, and we had French class together. After, she insisted on cooking a cadeau—a gift.
She boiled couscous, added orange food color, raisins, powdered sugar, and butter, and gave me a heaping plate of this. We both ate until we felt sick, and she kept bringing the pot round, trying to refill my plate again and again.
“But you must eat!” she said.
I told her I was more full than I'd ever been in my life, and that, as much as I wanted to, I just couldn't eat anymore.
She seemed saddened by this, and scraped the rest of her creation into my lunchbox so I could finish at home.
I've decided she has to find a new job...and soon. This isn't just for financial reasons. This is also for completely selfish reasons. I can't eat enough food to please her, and I don't want all my clothes embroidered.
She's assured me, however, that Operation Job Hunt started Tuesday.
Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.