There's a girl in some of my classes who wears a long black coat.
Okay, there are a lot girls in my classes like that, but this one's coat is really big, wide as well as long. She reminds me of this girl from home who wears a hooded sky blue cape. (Is that a cloak? Or a cowl? Who knows these things?) She puts it on after putting on her backpack, thus she looks kinda like a hunchback. Or a mound. She's into anime and fantasy and trading card games, all that modern D&D stuff. She carries around many-sided dice for such purposes. And she tells people to call her the Dice Ferret.
So this other girl here looks like the Dice Ferret; They both have broad, round Asian faces and girl-style bowl-cut black hair. But the real similarity is their gait. They kinda amble around, not in a hurry to anywhere with a sort of befuddled expression, like they're lost, but not especially concerned. It makes me think of the people who wear the animal costumes with big heads at theme parks. Or Teletubbies or Barney or other kids television shows with giant puppet creatures. I guess what I'm saying, is that if my life were a television this girl would be Baby Bop.
2009-02-27
2009-02-21
6 (park)
After the marché, we went to the park today. It was big and spacious and grassy with paved paths. There was a girl wearing roller blades and more protective gear than I've seen in all the rest of Angers. I burst out laughing. Then I saw some goats, in the park.
That's Rei in the background. Here she is in detail. (She usually looks this excited):
And then I found some palm trees:
And a jungle:
That's Rei in the background. Here she is in detail. (She usually looks this excited):
And then I found some palm trees:
And a jungle:
2009-02-16
5 (fire)
Well, today on my way to school I had my second run in with a side-view mirror (get it?) I'll take the blame this time, though. I was walking in the street, against traffic, because my path was obstructed by the massive truck parked on the sidewalk. My bad.
While we're on the subject, I'd like to point out that fire safety doesn't appear to big concern for anyone here. See, my host-family's apartment has what appears to be a pretty standard deadbolt kind of key lock. You get home, pop your key into the slot beneath the handle, spin it twice, push down the handle and the door opens. To lock the door from the inside, one turns to the keyhole that is on the inside of the door and does the same kind of thing. The door can only be locked with a key. So in case you're opening your door when the Hamburglar rushes by and into your flat, he has no way of locking you out. Clever? Yes. But when walking Anna out the other night, I discovered that if the door is locked and you're keyless, there is no way to exit, excepting the third story balcony. I don't know who still installs two-way locks on front doors. How do you market that? Hostage friendly apartment? I've already been scared to sleep naked since it first became a viable possibility (i.e. college) for fear of the impending inferno pensively waiting for me to lose my boxers, that it might expel me in nude shame from my home to the delight of rubberneckers in the street below. So I'll just add this inescapable apartment thing to my list of "Fire Related Paranoia".
There's also only one stairwell in the building, which I don't think is uncommon. There seem to be no back doors in French cities. All stores, apartments and houses are butted against each other. That's why there are no dumpsters in France. Oh yeah, hey, how about that? I have not seen a single dumpster since entering this country, which means no free Hot 'n Ready Pizzas for yours truly (although some other factors may have pre-emptively thwarted that plan anyway.) At closing each day, businesses take all their garbage and put it out front. And garbage men come nightly (and loudly) to pick it up. I think that may be related to how much the French litter. I can't quite piece it together, though.
It other news, this apartment has only one wastebasket.
While we're on the subject, I'd like to point out that fire safety doesn't appear to big concern for anyone here. See, my host-family's apartment has what appears to be a pretty standard deadbolt kind of key lock. You get home, pop your key into the slot beneath the handle, spin it twice, push down the handle and the door opens. To lock the door from the inside, one turns to the keyhole that is on the inside of the door and does the same kind of thing. The door can only be locked with a key. So in case you're opening your door when the Hamburglar rushes by and into your flat, he has no way of locking you out. Clever? Yes. But when walking Anna out the other night, I discovered that if the door is locked and you're keyless, there is no way to exit, excepting the third story balcony. I don't know who still installs two-way locks on front doors. How do you market that? Hostage friendly apartment? I've already been scared to sleep naked since it first became a viable possibility (i.e. college) for fear of the impending inferno pensively waiting for me to lose my boxers, that it might expel me in nude shame from my home to the delight of rubberneckers in the street below. So I'll just add this inescapable apartment thing to my list of "Fire Related Paranoia".
There's also only one stairwell in the building, which I don't think is uncommon. There seem to be no back doors in French cities. All stores, apartments and houses are butted against each other. That's why there are no dumpsters in France. Oh yeah, hey, how about that? I have not seen a single dumpster since entering this country, which means no free Hot 'n Ready Pizzas for yours truly (although some other factors may have pre-emptively thwarted that plan anyway.) At closing each day, businesses take all their garbage and put it out front. And garbage men come nightly (and loudly) to pick it up. I think that may be related to how much the French litter. I can't quite piece it together, though.
It other news, this apartment has only one wastebasket.
2009-02-13
4 (maniac)
I came home the other day to a made bed, which I don't do. (Make my bed, I mean. I don't mind finding my bed has been made.) Anna told me her host parents liked her to make her bed. Worried I had been accidentally disobeying, I went to talk to Pascal. He immediately mentioned the made bed. I thanked him and asked if he wanted me to do that from now on. He said, "No, we're not, how do you say, rigid?" I asked if he was sure, since there must be some reason that they made the bed. He said that his mother cleans compulsively. She said that she was a maniac. I laughed and said "No, no, you're not a maniac." She looked me straight in the eye, unsmiling and said, "Yes, I am a cleaning maniac."
I went into my room and laid on my bed. Something jabbed me in the back. I pulled back the tucked in covers to find my laptop. And my hoodie. Michelle had made my bed over everything that was on it.
I went into my room and laid on my bed. Something jabbed me in the back. I pulled back the tucked in covers to find my laptop. And my hoodie. Michelle had made my bed over everything that was on it.
3.5 (yesterday's lesson)
Don't skip steps while descending spiral staircases because you're likely to twist your ankle and stumble down the remaining steps.
2009-02-11
3 (driving in france)
So French people drive a little crazy. So crazy, that their trees need guard rails to keep them from being destroyed:
The trees lining the streets all have these. Which makes sense considering the French park wherever the WTF they like:
Which is okay, unless you happen to jog, at which point it can get a little dangerous, because maybe things happen like, 'oh hey, a car on the sidewalk, i'll squeeze between it and the building until someone opens the car door in my face. i guess next time i'll use the street. perhaps people won't be driving maniacally there because all the cars are already on the sidewalk.'
There are all of three joggers in Angers. I'm half of them, and the others all move like they just set a wine glass down, which their doctor told them to drink for their heart, and are now onto fulfill the second part of the advice with the same gusto. I didn't realize it was possible to drag your feet and run at the same time, nor for people to look like they are expending less energy exercising than they do merely walking around town. Honest, I saw a guy walk past a jogger yesterday.
Anyway, so there are not only guard rails around the trees on the sidewalk, but also in the parks. This is strange, because the parks are the only places cars don't go. I think this is 'cause the parks aren't people parks but dog parks. There are these large vacant lot looking places every couple blocks or so with signs to signify, each with a couple (protected) trees and not too much grass, but a lot of dusty gravel.
Q: So since these dogs have their own large private waste receptacles that are free of traffic and pretty much useless for anything else, one can assume that the sidewalks would be clear of fecal matter (if not cars), oui?
A: There is dog shit everywhere.
You know how you're walking and you see the mess a dog's intestines made on the sidewalk, and you think, 'uh oh, watch out!' and then maybe you see another one and there's a footprint in it, so you think 'Drag city! Poor guy!' and really feel for the poor gent with the dirty shoe? Not the case here. If people were not consistently walking all over the presents left by the overactive digestive systems of legions of french pooches and distributing them evenly across the pedestrian paths thus allowing the daily rain to further spread escherichia coli throughout the community, none of it would ever go anywhere. It would be impossible to leave the house without wading boots.
NOTE: I have yet to find a suitable translation for the phrase "drag city."
The trees lining the streets all have these. Which makes sense considering the French park wherever the WTF they like:
Which is okay, unless you happen to jog, at which point it can get a little dangerous, because maybe things happen like, 'oh hey, a car on the sidewalk, i'll squeeze between it and the building until someone opens the car door in my face. i guess next time i'll use the street. perhaps people won't be driving maniacally there because all the cars are already on the sidewalk.'
There are all of three joggers in Angers. I'm half of them, and the others all move like they just set a wine glass down, which their doctor told them to drink for their heart, and are now onto fulfill the second part of the advice with the same gusto. I didn't realize it was possible to drag your feet and run at the same time, nor for people to look like they are expending less energy exercising than they do merely walking around town. Honest, I saw a guy walk past a jogger yesterday.
Anyway, so there are not only guard rails around the trees on the sidewalk, but also in the parks. This is strange, because the parks are the only places cars don't go. I think this is 'cause the parks aren't people parks but dog parks. There are these large vacant lot looking places every couple blocks or so with signs to signify, each with a couple (protected) trees and not too much grass, but a lot of dusty gravel.
Q: So since these dogs have their own large private waste receptacles that are free of traffic and pretty much useless for anything else, one can assume that the sidewalks would be clear of fecal matter (if not cars), oui?
A: There is dog shit everywhere.
You know how you're walking and you see the mess a dog's intestines made on the sidewalk, and you think, 'uh oh, watch out!' and then maybe you see another one and there's a footprint in it, so you think 'Drag city! Poor guy!' and really feel for the poor gent with the dirty shoe? Not the case here. If people were not consistently walking all over the presents left by the overactive digestive systems of legions of french pooches and distributing them evenly across the pedestrian paths thus allowing the daily rain to further spread escherichia coli throughout the community, none of it would ever go anywhere. It would be impossible to leave the house without wading boots.
NOTE: I have yet to find a suitable translation for the phrase "drag city."
2009-02-08
2 (stories from the force)
The streets are really narrow here, so much so that I was hit on the sidewalk by a car's sideview mirror as it drove by. The woman stopped a couple meters ahead and when I reached her, I adjusted the mirror so it was again usable. She waggled a knobby finger at me, which seemed to mean "don't hit my car with your body."
At the market yesterday, I bought des pommes, des pommes de terre, des avocats, et du fromage de chèvre. I still needed mushrooms, so I found a stand with some massive ones, each is maybe the size of a small apple. I want one of them, so I say, "un des champignons, s'il vous plait." He nods and goes about putting some in a bag. I realize he must think I want a kilo of them, which is fine with me. They go for 2.85 euro per kilo, so that won't be too many and won't be very expensive. Well, apparently I know nothing about the metric system, because a kilo of mushrooms turned out to be 8 or so and I get to carry a Santa's sack full of Super Mario-sized shrooms.
I woke up this morning and went to make breakfast, which was going to be the second half of a baguette from yesterday turned sandwich with mushrooms, avocado, eggs and Camembert cheese. So I pop the baguette into the oven to make it less stale, then scramble the eggs and fry the mushrooms, smash up the avocado and mix it with a little mayonnaise. Then I check the baguette and discover it is burned to a crisp and smoke is filling the kitchen, so I use a towel to pull it out of the oven and chuck it out the window. It's a good thing people don't have screens in the windows here. Also that they keep every door closed, so I had time to clear the room of most of the smoke.
This same oven-destroying a loaf of bread happened to me my last week in the states, except it was Jimmy John's day old and I didn't realize I had left it in the oven until after I had already left the house for half an hour.
p.s. Nobody told me the keyboards here were different.
At the market yesterday, I bought des pommes, des pommes de terre, des avocats, et du fromage de chèvre. I still needed mushrooms, so I found a stand with some massive ones, each is maybe the size of a small apple. I want one of them, so I say, "un des champignons, s'il vous plait." He nods and goes about putting some in a bag. I realize he must think I want a kilo of them, which is fine with me. They go for 2.85 euro per kilo, so that won't be too many and won't be very expensive. Well, apparently I know nothing about the metric system, because a kilo of mushrooms turned out to be 8 or so and I get to carry a Santa's sack full of Super Mario-sized shrooms.
I woke up this morning and went to make breakfast, which was going to be the second half of a baguette from yesterday turned sandwich with mushrooms, avocado, eggs and Camembert cheese. So I pop the baguette into the oven to make it less stale, then scramble the eggs and fry the mushrooms, smash up the avocado and mix it with a little mayonnaise. Then I check the baguette and discover it is burned to a crisp and smoke is filling the kitchen, so I use a towel to pull it out of the oven and chuck it out the window. It's a good thing people don't have screens in the windows here. Also that they keep every door closed, so I had time to clear the room of most of the smoke.
This same oven-destroying a loaf of bread happened to me my last week in the states, except it was Jimmy John's day old and I didn't realize I had left it in the oven until after I had already left the house for half an hour.
p.s. Nobody told me the keyboards here were different.
1
One time, I went to France. At the airport in Detroit, my mom was teary-eyed, my dad was proud, my sister was jovial, my sister was aloof and my youngest brother didn't show.
In the airport, I realized that the backpack I had just sewn for the occasion was quickly dissolving. I tried not to read the note that Olivia had told me not to read until I arrived in Paris.
Before boarding, I asked the pilot dude if I could change to an aisle seat. He told me I already had one.
My seat was next to a nun. I switched to one with more foot room.
I didn't sleep at all. I dozed for a bit, but not really. The in-flight movies were included a bunch I wanted to see like Tropic Thunder and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (it looked cute, okay?) Already nervous enough, I decided watching a French movie in French would be more to my advantage. I watched one whose title roughly translates to "Dinner with the Assholes" and didn't understand more than fifteen words the whole thing.
Freaked and the only person still awake in the middle of the night (my flight left at 6:00 pm and arrived at 9h00), the entire cabin dark except for my light, I read Spider-Man comics and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters. (So sometimes you're at a New Year's Party in 2008 and Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" comes on and then your girlfriend is all "Yes! This is my jam!"? Well, Raise High is my equivalent in book form. And Spider-Man's kinda like cookies and milk.)
I arrive in Paris. It's sleeting and snowing and I don't even own boots, let alone brought them to France where my soon to be home has averaged a sunny 50 degrees Fahrenheit compared to Michigan's 5.
I didn't have a plan as to how to get to my hostel in Paris, but it would be an expensive cab ride, so I hung out at a bus stop only to find ou that it connected to Disneyland Paris. Which explained why the majority of patrons were 10 or under.
I found a bus and was dropped off at l'Arc de triomphe. I spent a good 20 minutes attempting to read a subway map, then asked someone for help who turned out to be an Italian with an accent way too thick for my expatriate ears. So I gave up and hailed a cab.
12h00. At the hostel I had to wait until 4h00 to go to my room, so I read more Spider-Man in the lobby and kinda fell asleep on a table. At long last, I made it to my room.
After a short nap, I awoke to my new British roommates. They were super sweet and decided to go to a jazz club that night. They went out for la nourriture chinoise et j'ai fixé mon sac à dos. when they got back, we wandered Paris till we found this latin jazz place. It had no cover, so alright. Then inside, we took a look at the menu and the cheapest drinks were 4.5 euro. We asked the waiter if we had to buy something and he said we did, each of us, so we decided to spring for three Cocas. He brought them to us along with the bill. We discovered that there was a 7 euro charge per first drink per person on top of the already exorbitant price. So we each paid 11.5 euro. For Coca-cola. We were so mad we almost left right then, but that would have been even dumber since we already had paid.
When we got back, we discovered we had gained a roommate. He was asleep so we attempted to be really quiet, which didn't work and he woke up. His name was Sebastian Carbonell and he was from Ecuador but goes to school in Paris. He was staying at the hostel because his brother and his wife were staying in his apartment for a few days. This guy was so funny. He would misunderstand Engish at all the right points. I started a conversation about Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole and then went on to something else and after a half hour of talking, said that I was probably keeping Sebastian awake and he said "No, no, it's not a problem. Actually, i have seen this Secret Squirrel." Classic.
We stayed up talking and giggling and sleepover times until four. At six, the Britons left and woke me up. I got up at seven to discover they had left me a poem.
I was really early to the TGV in Paris, but that was good because je ne comprenais pas that it is unknown via which track/platform in the station the trains will arrive and ran around asking everybody which one i was supposed to go to and they all said, <<>>, at which point les écrans would display the correct voie at which mon train would arrive. So eventually I went to a help desk where someone told me in English what to do. My train was quinze minutes tard et it left the station peut-être quarante-cinq minutes tard.
I arrived way late in Le Mans, where I had missed my connection to Angers. I bought another ticket and then on arrival in Angers tried to figure out how to get to my new home. I tried calling my host family, but my card didn't work in the pay phone.
So then i just grabbed a cab and had him drop me off at the apartment building. Then i scrolled through the family names on the display outside the building until i found Poupard. I buzzed, and was let in. (okay, so i dunno if you've ever played any text-based computer games from pre-1994, i.e. hugo's house of horrors, but that's how i feel this whole france adventure has been, because things have to be worded a really specific way or nothing occurs. it's the greatest exercise for problem solving i have ever encountered.)
I received a warm reception from Michelle. She's a fairly nice but cranky old lady. Her son a treinte ans or so and is legally blind, but wears crazy thick glasses and can kinda see. They have a stupid yippy dog named Ratatouille. Elle est si timide that I can't get near the thing to make friends so maybe it won't bark chaque fois j'utilise la toilette à soir.
Another international lives here, Sam. He goes to Central Michigan and he's pretty nice. His girlfriend is studying at le Catho aussi and she lives vint minutes away. She's nice too. But they're both pretty uninteresting. He wears Beatles and Jimi Hendrix shirts and has a peace sign tattooed on his wrist.
So on Tuesday we had to be at le Catho to take the placement test. I introduced myself to the girl next to me, Anna, who is from Missouri and looked about ready to crawl under the carpet. All the Americans were speaking English and I made a resolution to keep them at bay and take as many of them over to the casually speaking French side as possible. (not that I can casually speak french, but i sure as hell try.)
The test was pretty difficult, but that's good, 'cause I don't want to end up in a class harder than I can handle, right? I'm pretty sure I did better than Anna, Abby and Sam because I've had a lot more French than them. Although one of my stronger points is pronunciation and we didn't get tested on our speaking ability.
After, the four of us hung out and I met Joe, another guy from Central who was really! nice. Probably the coolest guy yet. We wandered downtown and then decided to take a break and meet up later at the bowling alley. I walked back to le Catho with Joe and Anna so I would have to figure my way back to my apartment on my own. I didn't get lost!
I passed out back home and could barely drag myself out of bed at 8:30. I got super lost trying to find downtown and arrived 15 minutes late, but no one was there yet anyway. It was raining and my shoes were squeaking. I was worried no one was going to show. Anna arrived with her roommate who doesn't seem that cool and shortly thereafter Abby and Sam showed. We realized Joe had probably been there earlier to use the internet at McDo and had left when we didn't show.
I'm a decent bowler but, here in France, the lane just has a community set of balls that are used by whomever is present as opposed to finding the right fit and weight for the individual bowler. So I could've done better. Which is important because everyone knows that if you are a great bowler in France everyone loves you and gives you five euro.
Anna didn't want to walk back to her place all alone, so I escorted her part way and then bought a panini fromage. It was excellent, but not too much food. I'm definitely adjusting to less food here.
Sleep is generally touch and go. I wake up a couple times a night.
Yesterday was un tour aux Catho. Anna didn't see Sam and Abby when she arrived for her group's at 9, so she went upstairs and used the computer lab until I arrived at 10h45 for mine. The library is pretty gorgeous here.
Then I followed Anna on a search for Euro boots. It took a long time. I was pretty beat by the time we got back to my house. But I did buy some jus de pomme from a street vendor.
Abby came over and she, Anna, Sam and I killed time trying not to nap. We're all on jetlag nap schedules that we need to break. Then we went out for dinner and ended up at an awesome pizzeria. The cheeses that they use on pizza here blow my mind.
On the way home, Abby, Sam and I saw Joe at McDo. Which is good, because he doesn't have a phone (like me) and we thought we'd never see him again. His homestay is a mansion and his host family is leaving for a week, so we're thinking maybe we can have a dinner party at his place sometime. I'm pretty stoked.
I got back to my place at about 8, took a shower and fell asleep by 9. I woke up at three and then again at six. I've been up since, working on this.
I want tacos. I want Taco Bell.
So here's a cool thing about France. I love Jimmy John's day-old, right? Well that's 50 cents. Baguettes here are 50 centimes (more like 75 cents, but that's due to the weak dollar, not the actual relative value.) So check that out! My mission today is to get some inexpensive cheese and a baguette so I can stop eating out all the time.
Also, I need to take out another loan, 'cause I have about 3000 us and I have to pay 280 euro rent a month and that only leaves about a grand for food and travel and frankly, that's just not happening. It's hard to use a credit card here, the boulangeries and patisseries don't really roll like that.
Oh yeah, there's a castle in the middle of the city. That's pretty cool.
In the airport, I realized that the backpack I had just sewn for the occasion was quickly dissolving. I tried not to read the note that Olivia had told me not to read until I arrived in Paris.
Before boarding, I asked the pilot dude if I could change to an aisle seat. He told me I already had one.
My seat was next to a nun. I switched to one with more foot room.
I didn't sleep at all. I dozed for a bit, but not really. The in-flight movies were included a bunch I wanted to see like Tropic Thunder and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (it looked cute, okay?) Already nervous enough, I decided watching a French movie in French would be more to my advantage. I watched one whose title roughly translates to "Dinner with the Assholes" and didn't understand more than fifteen words the whole thing.
Freaked and the only person still awake in the middle of the night (my flight left at 6:00 pm and arrived at 9h00), the entire cabin dark except for my light, I read Spider-Man comics and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters. (So sometimes you're at a New Year's Party in 2008 and Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" comes on and then your girlfriend is all "Yes! This is my jam!"? Well, Raise High is my equivalent in book form. And Spider-Man's kinda like cookies and milk.)
I arrive in Paris. It's sleeting and snowing and I don't even own boots, let alone brought them to France where my soon to be home has averaged a sunny 50 degrees Fahrenheit compared to Michigan's 5.
I didn't have a plan as to how to get to my hostel in Paris, but it would be an expensive cab ride, so I hung out at a bus stop only to find ou that it connected to Disneyland Paris. Which explained why the majority of patrons were 10 or under.
I found a bus and was dropped off at l'Arc de triomphe. I spent a good 20 minutes attempting to read a subway map, then asked someone for help who turned out to be an Italian with an accent way too thick for my expatriate ears. So I gave up and hailed a cab.
12h00. At the hostel I had to wait until 4h00 to go to my room, so I read more Spider-Man in the lobby and kinda fell asleep on a table. At long last, I made it to my room.
After a short nap, I awoke to my new British roommates. They were super sweet and decided to go to a jazz club that night. They went out for la nourriture chinoise et j'ai fixé mon sac à dos. when they got back, we wandered Paris till we found this latin jazz place. It had no cover, so alright. Then inside, we took a look at the menu and the cheapest drinks were 4.5 euro. We asked the waiter if we had to buy something and he said we did, each of us, so we decided to spring for three Cocas. He brought them to us along with the bill. We discovered that there was a 7 euro charge per first drink per person on top of the already exorbitant price. So we each paid 11.5 euro. For Coca-cola. We were so mad we almost left right then, but that would have been even dumber since we already had paid.
When we got back, we discovered we had gained a roommate. He was asleep so we attempted to be really quiet, which didn't work and he woke up. His name was Sebastian Carbonell and he was from Ecuador but goes to school in Paris. He was staying at the hostel because his brother and his wife were staying in his apartment for a few days. This guy was so funny. He would misunderstand Engish at all the right points. I started a conversation about Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole and then went on to something else and after a half hour of talking, said that I was probably keeping Sebastian awake and he said "No, no, it's not a problem. Actually, i have seen this Secret Squirrel." Classic.
We stayed up talking and giggling and sleepover times until four. At six, the Britons left and woke me up. I got up at seven to discover they had left me a poem.
I was really early to the TGV in Paris, but that was good because je ne comprenais pas that it is unknown via which track/platform in the station the trains will arrive and ran around asking everybody which one i was supposed to go to and they all said, <<>>, at which point les écrans would display the correct voie at which mon train would arrive. So eventually I went to a help desk where someone told me in English what to do. My train was quinze minutes tard et it left the station peut-être quarante-cinq minutes tard.
I arrived way late in Le Mans, where I had missed my connection to Angers. I bought another ticket and then on arrival in Angers tried to figure out how to get to my new home. I tried calling my host family, but my card didn't work in the pay phone.
So then i just grabbed a cab and had him drop me off at the apartment building. Then i scrolled through the family names on the display outside the building until i found Poupard. I buzzed, and was let in. (okay, so i dunno if you've ever played any text-based computer games from pre-1994, i.e. hugo's house of horrors, but that's how i feel this whole france adventure has been, because things have to be worded a really specific way or nothing occurs. it's the greatest exercise for problem solving i have ever encountered.)
I received a warm reception from Michelle. She's a fairly nice but cranky old lady. Her son a treinte ans or so and is legally blind, but wears crazy thick glasses and can kinda see. They have a stupid yippy dog named Ratatouille. Elle est si timide that I can't get near the thing to make friends so maybe it won't bark chaque fois j'utilise la toilette à soir.
Another international lives here, Sam. He goes to Central Michigan and he's pretty nice. His girlfriend is studying at le Catho aussi and she lives vint minutes away. She's nice too. But they're both pretty uninteresting. He wears Beatles and Jimi Hendrix shirts and has a peace sign tattooed on his wrist.
So on Tuesday we had to be at le Catho to take the placement test. I introduced myself to the girl next to me, Anna, who is from Missouri and looked about ready to crawl under the carpet. All the Americans were speaking English and I made a resolution to keep them at bay and take as many of them over to the casually speaking French side as possible. (not that I can casually speak french, but i sure as hell try.)
The test was pretty difficult, but that's good, 'cause I don't want to end up in a class harder than I can handle, right? I'm pretty sure I did better than Anna, Abby and Sam because I've had a lot more French than them. Although one of my stronger points is pronunciation and we didn't get tested on our speaking ability.
After, the four of us hung out and I met Joe, another guy from Central who was really! nice. Probably the coolest guy yet. We wandered downtown and then decided to take a break and meet up later at the bowling alley. I walked back to le Catho with Joe and Anna so I would have to figure my way back to my apartment on my own. I didn't get lost!
I passed out back home and could barely drag myself out of bed at 8:30. I got super lost trying to find downtown and arrived 15 minutes late, but no one was there yet anyway. It was raining and my shoes were squeaking. I was worried no one was going to show. Anna arrived with her roommate who doesn't seem that cool and shortly thereafter Abby and Sam showed. We realized Joe had probably been there earlier to use the internet at McDo and had left when we didn't show.
I'm a decent bowler but, here in France, the lane just has a community set of balls that are used by whomever is present as opposed to finding the right fit and weight for the individual bowler. So I could've done better. Which is important because everyone knows that if you are a great bowler in France everyone loves you and gives you five euro.
Anna didn't want to walk back to her place all alone, so I escorted her part way and then bought a panini fromage. It was excellent, but not too much food. I'm definitely adjusting to less food here.
Sleep is generally touch and go. I wake up a couple times a night.
Yesterday was un tour aux Catho. Anna didn't see Sam and Abby when she arrived for her group's at 9, so she went upstairs and used the computer lab until I arrived at 10h45 for mine. The library is pretty gorgeous here.
Then I followed Anna on a search for Euro boots. It took a long time. I was pretty beat by the time we got back to my house. But I did buy some jus de pomme from a street vendor.
Abby came over and she, Anna, Sam and I killed time trying not to nap. We're all on jetlag nap schedules that we need to break. Then we went out for dinner and ended up at an awesome pizzeria. The cheeses that they use on pizza here blow my mind.
On the way home, Abby, Sam and I saw Joe at McDo. Which is good, because he doesn't have a phone (like me) and we thought we'd never see him again. His homestay is a mansion and his host family is leaving for a week, so we're thinking maybe we can have a dinner party at his place sometime. I'm pretty stoked.
I got back to my place at about 8, took a shower and fell asleep by 9. I woke up at three and then again at six. I've been up since, working on this.
I want tacos. I want Taco Bell.
So here's a cool thing about France. I love Jimmy John's day-old, right? Well that's 50 cents. Baguettes here are 50 centimes (more like 75 cents, but that's due to the weak dollar, not the actual relative value.) So check that out! My mission today is to get some inexpensive cheese and a baguette so I can stop eating out all the time.
Also, I need to take out another loan, 'cause I have about 3000 us and I have to pay 280 euro rent a month and that only leaves about a grand for food and travel and frankly, that's just not happening. It's hard to use a credit card here, the boulangeries and patisseries don't really roll like that.
Oh yeah, there's a castle in the middle of the city. That's pretty cool.
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