"Home-cooked" Dinner + Getting Lost On Campus

I'm sitting on my bed, sipping some pink wine and listening to "Chelsea" by Mest....and a bunch of tweens playing basketball and being noisy....at 10:12 at night. Gotta love the Cite Triolet!

It's been a pretty good day: I had classes from 9-12:30 as usual, and then I went back to my room to have lunch. Then around 2, Emily and I walked back to campus because we had to sign something in the International Relations office for registration. The thing was, we couldn't quite remember which building the lady's office was in. So after roaming around for half an hour, most of it in the wrong building, we managed to find the right one. That taken care of, we walked to the St. Eloi tram stop and went into town. We decided to get postcards, and ran into two girls from orientation, Maria and Arielle. So we went together to a bookstore near Place de la Comedie that Emily remembered had cheap postcards. I got a couple, so be excited! They should be in the mail by next week (fingers crossed!!). This bookstore is amazing, by the way. There are like 4 floors of books and the top floor is all music and movies. And records, too, so Jake would probably love it (although it's mostly French musicians). I couldn't resist buying 3 books, however two of them were kind of necessities: a student cookbook! and a French comic book making fun of George Bush!! I'll try and upload a pic of it to facebook next week ;) I can totally see them doing a random suitcase check for me on my way back home haha. The 3rd book I got is a novel (in english) called In Our Strange Gardens by Michael Quint. It's about kids during WWII. I got all that and the postcards for around 10Euros, so yay!! I was smart, too, and didn't go out for the usual 50% off crepe night dinner. But that's why I won't buy anything next week!!

After wandering around with Emily for a while (which included going into a cheese shop that smelled like every kind of cheese in the world except for cheddar), we returned to the Cite and decided to make dinner together. This was a brilliant idea, as I never would have figured out the kitchen by myself. There are buttons on the wall you have to press and lights go on, but it only lasts a couple of minutes....it's complicated to say the least. Plus, Emily has dish washing fluid and I have yet to buy some. So it all worked out. She cut up some veggies for herself to make a little carrott-potato saute in olive oil, and I made couscous with roquefort cheese mixed in. We learned that we only need the tiniest bit of water and couscous for one helping. But I was apparently hungry enough to eat the entire plate, so I guess it worked out okay!

Now that I know how to use the kitchen, I plan on cooking a lot more. For instance, at least on the weekends I would like to make pancakes or crepes or eggs or something. And for lunch, an omelette or grilled cheese sandwich would be amazing. And I'll have plenty of pasta, rice, couscous, and veggies for dinner. It's kind of exciting planning your meals out, until you have to decide what you need to buy at the grocery store! Then it gets kind of stressful! But I'll get the hang of it!

After dinner, I went back to my room to study and opened (with only slight difficulty) my bottle of wine (yes, the same bottle that's been sitting in my fridge for the last 2 weeks). It's not bad, but it's no white zinf ;p

Tomorrow is a test for civilization, which will be easy. Today I had a test in my culture class, which was just listening to a phone conversation and selecting the correct answers. I was surprised at how easy it was. I'm glad, though!! Then on Saturday are final evaluations and possibly the beach and then dinner with Elodie and Floralie (the monitrices). And of course on Sunday we are going to St-Guilhem-Le-Desert. Then it's registration week!!

I'll keep everyone updated. I love you all. Please send my love to Gramma and Mocha. And if possible, let Gramzie read these!!

Luvvies forever,
Heather