What happened was that I had being logging onto my blog here in France and everything was going great. Then, on Friday, I tried logging back on but for some reason I kept getting a message saying that I was no longer the administrator of this cite, which was weird. So after a lot of Googling and forum reading and emailing, I finally figured it out today. So I'm back (again). Hopefully this will not be a reoccurring thing or else you will have abandonment issues by the end of this academic school year.
Let us start from where we left off: Friday.
You know
when you wake up in the morning and your first thought is “I need to take a
nap”? That is me this morning. I was so excited to have internet that I stayed
up until 4 am and woke up at 9 am. I know for some of you out there that is
just your daily routine, but I assure you for me, it is not. But on with the
day!
I went to
Hannah’s room at 10 am but she had slept in a bit and was running behind. This
was completely fine by me because yesterday Hannah and I had made the discovery
that my phone was an hour behind. Therefore when we were supposed to meet at
11, I actually showed up at 12 thinking that I was on time. So I owed her one. For
that hour I decided to research the French words that I knew I learned, but
couldn't remember for the life of me. Then when 11 rolled around Hannah and I
went to the Porcelain exposition in town and it was INCREDIBLE. I wish I could
have taken pictures to post on line to show you all but unfortunately pictures
were prohibited. If you guys don’t know, Limoges is known for their fine
porcelain so this was a great experience to see more into the culture of this
city. The porcelain exposition was on display at the Galerie des Hospices and
apparently they are always have interesting expositions coming through. I can’t
wait to see more!
After the exposition Hannah went to get her train pass and I went to the library. Back to the whole "being real with you" thing. Guys. I love the library. In my hometown I had a library card. In Stillwater I was a frequent patron of the library. By frequent I mean 5-7 days a week. In Leavenworth, where I worked over the summer as a raft guide, I had a library card and went at least twice a week. So naturally here in France I needed a library card to survive! Got my card and all was right in the world.
After that Hannah and I went back to our dorms and I checked my email. I noticed that Guy (the man making sure I don't get myself killed while here) emailed me about meeting in the afternoon. Of course I wanted to see him! I hadn't seen him in months! So I set out for the bus. In order to get to Guy's office you have to take two separate buses. The first bus ride went smoothly. I was a local. However, the second bus ride was a different story. I needed to take bus 10 and there are two separate bus stops for the bus number that I needed to take. I had to make an uniformed choice. And I chose wrong. Oh well. So I'm on this bus now realizing that it is going to complete opposite direction of where I want to go. I look at my phone to see the time and realize that even if I got off and tried to catch a bus in the correct direction I still wouldn't make it to Guy's office before 5. I decided to ride the bus out and see where it took me. As fate would have it, the bus that I happen to be on was the bus that everyone and their mother wanted to be on. I remembered looking out the window a the line trying to get through the bus doors and looking back at the space that was left and thinking "Where are you all going to go? You all can't make it on this bus." Well they all did . At every stop. 5 would get off and 20 would get on and we all because very close friends by the end of it. A normal person would have dismounted the bus by now, but not I. I was going to ride it out (pun...just pretend I'm funny for like 3 seconds). I had three not worthy experiences on the bus. 1: I gave my seat up for an old man and I spoke French without thinking about what I was going to say before I said it. It was kind of shocking. After the words left my lips I thought "Wait, was that right? Yeah! Yeah that was! Heck yes!!" 2. A lady complimented my ring than said something else that I didn't understand when I got off the bus I noticed that one of my button on my dress had come undone. But I don't know if that's what she was talking about or the button malfunction happened as I was getting of the bus. Either way, I thought it was kind of funny. And 3. My personal favorite. So we are all packed into this bus like sardines, right? I can't help but notice that the man next to me talking to his friend has a huge spider, that looked like it was out for blood, on his sleeve. What was my natural reaction? To hit it off of course! Upon doing so I realized that I did not know the word for spider or for bug. Essentially I had just hit this man in public and he stood there looking at my like "Who are you." I knew what I wanted to say but couldn't produce it in French so I stood there and smiled and guys, I kid you not, he took a step away from me and turned back to his friend while looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Needless to say he kept his distance for the net 5 minutes until he got off the bus.
Finally the bus came to an end and I was at the further point in Limoges as I could have been (not including suburbs and farms) from my dorm. No biggie, I like walking. As I am walking a nice young man approaches me with bright red, swollen eyes and no teeth. He asks me for money for a bus fare but I didn't acknowledge him and kept on walking and you know what he did? He ran after me! So I'm speed walking and this guy is asking me for money an I say "Non" and he keeps begging then I say "Non!" and he keeps asking and this time I was kind of creeped out so I stopped walking turned to him and said "Non!!" and the look of surprise in his eyes was priceless. I mean, looking back on it I probably did look like a madwomen and I'm sure my voice was anything but feminine. However he immediately stopped running next to me and walked away. Of course not before he called me a view choice words, which I understood most of them by them by the way. The others I picked up on via context. It was an experience! The ironic thing is that earlier in the day I wrote about how I hadn't seen anyone begging in Limoges yet! Even though that happened, I still believe Limoges to be a safe, well kept city if anyone is interested in this area.
Today I found out
that my French placement test was moved up from the 15th to the 11th, an classes now start the 15th instead of the 22nd. I was a little surprised that they could just do that, but I guess since we a an institute within the university the rules are more relaxed. I also found out that they have an International
Management course here taught in English! I need that course credit back home, so
I might just take it here in France. I
bought some notebooks for school. The don’t have regular lined paper here; all
the notebook paper is graphing paper. I thought that was kind of interesting.
Bought some
onions…4 of them are the size of one regular onion in the USA. Gotta love
GMO’s! ;)
I can’t
believe that I hadn't mentioned this before, but I have been eating an abnormal
amount of tabouli. I'm talking my body weight worth of tabooli. No, just kidding, not that much, but a fair amount! It's delicious.
Tried
working the stove to cook couscous…ended up microwaving it…even the stove tops are different. Fun Fact about Limoges: The weather
is always nice so the rooms don’t even have ac, just heaters. Kind of cool. Another Fun Fact: Netflix has
not yet come to France. BUT they should be here by October!! I'm not a big tv/movie watcher but it's nice to have the option.
Well folks, that was my Thursday!
Things to Do:
Learn the word for spider
Stop eating as much tabouli
Buy cleaning products for the dorm
Buy oranges
Au revoir!
Candice
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