Class Day 3, Day 4, Friday. LOOOONG..heh. oops.

WEDNESDAY

Well today had some very interesting parts haha.

1. In class today, we signed a sheet saying that we would be in the level indicated on the paper. I am staying in A2. I feel a good peace about it. I will get good grades, learn some, review some, and I will challenge myself to learn some on my own if I feel like it gets slow. C'est bien!

2. We have been going to the cafeterias for the past few days and they are cheap and good! I can get more than enough food for less than 4 euro and the selection is pretty decent. It is funny because just like the cafeterias in the US, I see people getting just a massive plate of fries with bread and dessert haha, not healthy.

3. I did some more laundry and when I was at the front desk signing and getting the key for the room, there was a college age guy running the front desk. It became obvious very quickly that I was foreign exchange student, and he asked me where I was from. Then he asked me if I was interested in doing the tandem while I was here for the semester. That is where you get matched up with a student at the university and meet once a week to practice your french for half the time and they practice their english for the other half. Of course I want to! So I was like, Yessssss. I then tried to say how we are supposed to sign up online for it and blah blah, it was a fail attempt at french, then I THINK he said he wanted to do it too, hence we could just partner up, but I didnt understand, then someone else came in, and confusion commenced. So I left. Hahaha, he knows who I am if he wants to find me, but I was like, awk awk, don't know what's going on.

4. Ok. This happened before the laundry actually, but Genesis, Noelle, and I needed to go make some copies of our passport and stuff to turn in this last thing to finalize our visa's here. So we went to one of the multiple copy places to do it! There are like 4 or 5 copy machines and you just go up, put a card in (credit card I assumed) and then make your copies. Well I tried, to no avail, it did not recognise my newly gotten bank card! I was confused, so I went to ask the lady at the front, and she was like, show me your card? I did, and she laughed, and then pointed to the sheet showing all the COPY cards you could buy and fill with a certain number of copies that you then put in the machine. Oops. Fail. SO I bought, for 1 euro, a card that has 15 copies on it. And it was all smooth sailing after that!.

That night, Chelsea, one of our other baylor friends, invited us to this youth catholic mass thing that night. Catholic mass is better than no mass at all? So we thought it would be super interesting and went. She had been invited by a guy she met by chance, so we met up with him and he walked us over to the house it was at. There were around 30-40 people there, and the priest that led it was SO funny. HAHA. He came up to us right away and introduced himself in french. And even though he spoke french the whole time, he was very articulate and I could understand what he said. He laughed so much and was making jokes that made you laugh even if you didn't really understand haha. He told us how he has to do a wedding in English in october and isn't sure how to pronounce all the words. SO he was joking that if he spent an hour with each of us one on one we could help him learn how to pronounce them. I think he was joking, but we later were telling a girl that we would if he wanted to haha. Because then we could practice french with him after!

The mass itself, was outside, and it was cold. Also it was all in french...But the songs they sang were very pretty, and when he gave the message, I could understand the jist of it. It was really cool to hear scripture read in French, and just, stuff about God in French, those are words you dont normally hear around town. So we stood up when they stood up, sat down when they sat down, turned and greeted when they turned and greeted haha. They went and took communion or whatever they call it and we sat down. After we went in the house and they gave us food! We got to eat some yellow tomatoes that one of the young guys grew, and they were very nice. After we headed back even though they were going to see a movie because I had homework and the other girls had things they needed to get done too. So cool to be a part of that for a night though, they kept asking if we would come back next week. Maybe? It depends on if we find one that is at a Protestant church or not I guess, which I am going to find and visit this Sunday.
　
THURSDAY

Thursday was interesting to say the least. I don't know how after being here over 2 weeks I still am amazed by what happens when I look back at the end of the day haha.
So thursday was our last day of class for the week. Woohooo! Class was fun because we got to look at pictures and make up stories..but seriously, Chelsea and I got very creative with ours haha. After class we went to lunch at the cafeteria and we happened to get there a little later than usual, but it was so nice because we missed the big rush of people that get there and leave in time for their next class. So we got to just sit and talk and relax as the place cleared out.

After, Genesis and I went over to the Vissol to use the computer lab for a few hours. It is just for foreign exchange students, but we did find out that we were only supposed to be using it for homework..oops? Heh. After we came back and took a long nap because we had been invited to go dancing with Agath(Genesis' family's cousin) and they don't leave until 11pm. So we napped, then made dinner, then found Chelsea who was coming, and headed over to Agath's house! Apparantly, unknown to us, it was one of Agath's best friend's birthday party that night, and they were all expecting us, all like 15 people that were crammed in her little apartment. A few of them spoke English, but it was so fun to be able to just be at a normal french party and practice french, hear french, etc. We were supposed to leave at 11 to go out, I think, but before I knew it, it was 1:30am, and we were still just all talking with eachother.

In my head I was like "We are NOT going out this late.." haha, I was getting tired obviously, and to treck around Caen that late, when the train already stopped for the few hours in the middle of the night, it did not sound appealing. It didn't to Noelle or Chelsea either. Genesis even went and changed into comfy clothes so that sealed the fact that we were staying to chill instead of go out.

A super interesting guy was the birthday guy, Pierre I think his name is? He knows more about american music and actors than we do, and he is fluent in english after only studying for a few years. He is also studying to be a doctor. Aka, smart. But he was also IN LOVE with Justin Timberlake. Like, LOVE. It was SO funny hahahaha. I mean Justin Timberlake is a good artist, it makes sense people would like his music, but this guy was a very dedicated fan haha. It made for a funny night as he was also the DJ.
Obviously things get funnier as the night goes on, and I just started to get super tickled by the french people's accents when they spoke english. My french is obviously worse than their english, but it was just SO funny when they would say things in super short, blunt sentences. So i was giggling, a lot.
Some of them, including the birthday boy, walked us home around 3:30, and we all agreed to just sleep in until our bodies woke us. What a fun night!

FRIDAY

No school today! Woot. Friday for some reason, they gave us a break so we got to sleep in as late as we needed to recover from being out so late the night before. I got up at around 12:30pm, and got going. Noelle and I headed to Carrefour to get stuff to make "holy cookies", these no bake, chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal type cookies.

Ok. I pretty much also just listed all the things you should never try to get at the grocery store here. Peanut butter? Does not exist. Oatmeal, took me 20 minutes to find. Cocoa powder? I randomly stumbled upon it after I decided to substitute the chocolate and peanut butter with Nutella, their delicious chocolate spread. Also, the sandwich I got...campagne de sausisson. Aka, baguette with THICK layer of butter, THIN THIN layer of salami, and a few pickles thrown in. The most random combination I've ever eaten, and yes I did eat it. I waited to get back to my dorm so I could scrape off the butter, but the pickles and salami tasted pretty good! Just weird...

I made the cookies and they worked! However, Nutella is super sweet, and there is a lot of sugar in it, aka they are loaded with sugar, a little too much. So next time, if I can not find a saltier substitute for peanut butter, I will just decrease the amount of sugar in the recipe to compensate the Nutella. But yeah, everyone liked it! Ed came over for dinner with Noelle and I, and Genesis stopped by to grab a few cookies, but she had to leave to go have dinner with Agath and Agath's brother. So Ed, Chelsea, Noelle and I headed to Eglise St. Pierre (Church) ,for a debate on this movie that came out called "Deux Hommes et Dieu" or "Two men and God". The movie was about the Algerian monks that got kidnapped and killed in the mid 1990's, and some of the actors were from Caen and came to speak? We figured it would be interesting.

Turns out we definitely should have seen the movie first. I could barely follow what they were saying, and by debate they just meant conversation with questions from the audience. So we left half way through with the intention to watch the movie next week sometime. We decided it was friday night and we couldn't go back to the dorms yet, so we started wandering around town and ran into another guy from A&M. Talked for a bit, kept walking, then ran into 2 other people from Baylor! Haha, a places starts to feel like home when you can walk around and run into friends in the middle of the town. So we hung out with them at a bar, in a little nook in the corner that we found. Fun chill night! Sidenote, it was FREEZING when we had to walk back at the end of the night...the cold is coming!