Food, Friends, French, Phone, Sick, FOOD

Wow. Today. Wow. So. Much. Stuff. Happened.


I love it. I feel like when I look back, I love every day. But that is a good thing. So today was orientation day. Aka, I actually found out more of what I will be doing here besides just wandering freely around a foreign French town. So we had to get up and meet at 8:45 this morning in the Vissol, the building next to our dorm, and we get there and there is a large group f students there already waiting as well. HELLO ASIA. The vast majority of the students were of the Asian race, which I did not expect! We ran into another girl from Baylor, Chelsea, and she is a very nice girl. She has been here since Saturday just roaming on her own meeting randoms and stuff, very free thinking and go with the flow, do whatever, type person. It encourages me to be more like that haha. We had met up with Ed, but he had to go off and do paperwork with some lady, and we all had meeting times to meet with someone to do paperwork for registration, mine was at 3:15 in the afternoon, so we all had some time. We also met a girl from London, she had already been here for a semester, he fiance is French, so she is living in Caen where he is, and learning some French! She had to go off and shop though. We walked to town and got some lunch, I got A Kebab, YUM. And we people watched.

Oh. FIrst we went to this random store with pizza, and there was a turning door to get in, and As I was going through, Noelle behind got her foot caught in the door, and it stopped/jolted the door temporarily, and my body of course kept going and my nose attacked the glass. It hurt, It like just bonked and left a little nose mark haha. Yes. It hurt. Hahaa but was insanely funny too.

So we got lunch, then headed back to the Vissol to pick up these tickets to go on a boat ride to the beach tomorrow! The program is offering it for free but there are only 150ish tickets, which is a lot, so people were waiting to get one when the doors of the office opened. HOLY COW. I felt like I stepped back 10 years, the immaturity it felt of the masses cutting and pushing to get a free ticket was insane! I guess in other cultures it isn't as big of a deal? Like kill or be killed mentality. Even the guy handing them out a couple times was like "Arrete!" Like "Stop stop". He knew us and saw us patiently standing and trying to inch forward and handed us a stack so we could take them and leave :) nice man.

So we found ourselves with nothing to do. We went to our meeting at 3:15 and they just had to ask us a few questions and give us our appt to get our student card tomorrow morning, then we realized we had nothing to do for the rest of the day. So we decided to walk to the bank to get some money out for the 200 euro social security fee we have to pay tomorrow, then take the tram to carrefour to get a few more veggies to make another dinner! I also wanted to look at some prices for prepaid phones.

Side note. I'm sick. I dont know when it crept up on me, but I am. Like one morning I woke up and my throat was a bit scratchy, then that went away, but the next morning, probably this morning? My nose started bothering me, by the afternoon today I could tell it wasn't allergies or anything, just a cold, or something. Head cold? My brain is foggy, my nose is stuffy and runny at the same time, i'm sneezing, and just plain don't feel well. But that is just a side note because i refuse to let it affect me haha, I just haven't been as peppy or talkative.

Ok, so we run into a friend on the Tram, very cool, there were also some middle aged guys that sat down in the back by me and they were very loud and, well enthousiastic? Not sure how to describe it. But They were laughing with eachother playing music for eachother on their iPods, and then commenting on why I was carrying an umbrella (I had thought it would rain, but it definitely was sunny outside), and then like suddenly ran out. So we get to Carrefour and Genesis (it is Genesis, Noelle and I at this time) recharges her phone with more minutes, and I start looking at prices. The provider, Bouyges, seems to be pretty cheap, but I end up going to a big "The Phone House" which has a lot of phone and a lot of providers, and tell them that "J'ai besoin de mobile avec un carte prepayee et SMS illimitee pour 3 mois", or "I need a cell with a pre-paid card and unlimited texting for 3 months". He immediately started speaking English to me, I guess it was that obvious...

So he shows me the best plan, and I decided on the cheapest phone there which was 20 ish euro, and a 2 month prepaid card that has 1h45m talk time and unlimited texting that lasts 2 months. It was 35 euro? Kind of a lot, but now I don't have to worry about it for a while and can text a lot without using up my minutes, because I think that if my minutes run out my texting stops working too? Not sure.

HAHA, but then this occured. I was curious to ask him if there was a French number I could use to post on Twitter, like a 40404 type number that I can send a text to that will post on my twitter account or w/e, and he doesnt understand what I mean by 'Twitter' (we are speaking English by this time), and I try to say it a few times, attempt to point at a twitter symbol in the store but he doesnt see it, and then I just say 'twitter' with a french accent sounding like 'tweet-air' and he is like "Ohhhhh, tweet-air!" HAHAHHHAHAHHHAHA. HAHAHAAHAH. Although I was feeling lousy that made me smile big time. That happens alot, like people know places in Texas and such but to say Austin, you have to say "Austeen" and such and then it immediately clicks for them haha, how funny though, to me.

And btw, there is not a number to text to tweetair.

Also, we made food again tonight, cost us less than 3 euro total, win. Also, I bought at the Carrefour mall the most DELICIOUS PASTRY EVER. It is a 'nous pepita'. Aka, a croissant with cream (kind of like custard) and mini melted chocolate chips all layered in the middle. Pics below. It is my new favorite food here. And i'm SURE soooo bad for you. Therefore I share with people, and hopefully not every boulangerie/patisserie will have them or I am going to be tempted too much. Holy cow. I also got to skype my mom unexpectedly for a few minutes! There is a tad bit of internet in Noelle's room and I was like, OH she is online, prob not though. So I just called for kicks and giggles, and it worked! My 1 bar of service was not enough to do video though so we just had like a phone call, for free. Win.

Us being fatty fats and eating the pastry :D

My cheapy cheap phone! I feel so dated using it haha. But a phone is a phone. It is in French too..heh.

The delicious pastry. Oh my gosh. It looks like meat and cheese, but it is chocolate and cream..