We Don’t Like Oui Bus-Day 18-January 26th, 2018

Today started early, too early, around 6:45 am. Fridays are my worst day for classes and I have class from 8 am to 5 pm. I got ready for school, ate breakfast, and headed to class.

Electric circuits went surprisingly quickly because we were just working on practice problems. We also learned about Grenoble’s famous synchrotron, which is a famous research facility where electrons are sped up to nearly light speed and emit x rays. This facility is used by many countries for groundbreaking research.

We had 3 hours of French culture class afterwards, which was actually enjoyable. We pretty much get to discuss all of our weird cultural experiences and our professor would try to explain them. It’s really cool to hear everyone else in the group talk about their varying experiences and life with their host families.

I had a brief 45 minute break for lunch, where I ate a premade salad I had brought from home. It was pretty good and nice change from the microwaveable meals I was having. After eating I headed to physics, where we were all dreading our quiz in class today. I spent the 20 minutes before class studying for it. Physics was interesting but dragged on towards the end as it was all proofs and complicated algebra. We had the quiz in the last ten minutes of class, and it wasn’t too bad.

After physics, I headed to my last class of the day, differential equations. Safe to say that by this point my brain was exhausted and didn’t want to absorb any more information. Luckily we were practicing more partial fractions in class, a topic I already knew how to do. I used this opportunity to do the problems really quickly and zone out while the professor took a long time explaining them in over-complicated ways. I know my mom will probably read this and scold me for not paying attention in class, but when its last period on a Friday that is impossible.

Class ended after what felt like an eternity and I headed home for the evening. I still had my bus to Paris, but it was not until 10:10 that evening. When I got home, I hung out for a bit and typed up some blogs. After a bit, I was hungry and made myself dinner.

Tonight’s microwavable meal featured a pasta and some mysterious meat dish combined with Uncle Ben’s 90 second rice. Uncle Ben’s rice is always a classic and I knew this would be good. The pasta, not so much. It was edible, but that was really it.

Here’s some pics, featuring my Uncle Ben’s face on the Uncle Ben’s rice package

The rice was 9/10 but the pasta was a 5.5/10. It was an alright dinner overall, but definitely could have used some wine and bread.

That concludes the microwavable meal review portion of this blog.

After dinner, I began to pack my stuff for the Paris trip, and quickly realized I had to rush to the bus stop or another one wouldn’t come for another hour. I packed super quickly and pretty much ran to the bus stop, catching it at the last second. However, I misread the directions to the the Paris station and got off at the wrong stop. I had to run through the rain to get to the right tram stop. After an exhausting and very wet run, I realized I missed the tram by one minute. The next one wasn’t for twenty minutes, so I checked the bus schedules and ran to another bus stop to catch a different bus. I ended up going to the wrong stop, and had to run once again to another bus stop. The bus came one minute later, and I finally got onto the right bus. A few minutes later, I was at the Grenoble bus stop for Paris.

By chance, I happened to run into Sebastian who was going to a different French city in the north for the weekend. I helped him find his bus gate, and then went to my group who was waiting by another gate.

This is where everything went wrong. We were waiting in the cold rain for our bus, and found out our bus was delayed. It was only thirty minutes, so we weren’t worried. I took this opportunity to get McDonalds with my friend. We took our time and when we got back, we found out our bus was delayed once again, but this time an hour. After this happened, we got tired of standing in the cold and went to sit inside the station.

We were getting pretty bored, so I pulled out my speaker and started playing music. We also started talking to this French student, Adile. He was very nice and hung out with us while we waited for the bus. After a bit, I put on a rap beat and freestyled for my friends. They gave me various topics like Paris, buses, and French Culture. A little later, the security made everyone go outside because the inside part of the station was closing.

This was okay because the bus was coming soon. Or so we thought. The bus got delayed again to 1:30. We had a lot of time to kill. We stood in the cold for a while trying to think of stupid things to do. After about 45 minutes, the speaker came out again I started bumping crowd pleasers. A good amount of the other people waiting for the bus actually seemed to enjoy my music. I also started doing really stupid dance moves and the French people were laughing at me. It was so late that I really didn’t care and just had fun with it.

1:30 came around, and out bus still wasn’t there. We were beginning to get very miserable and cold. We all dug into out bags and threw on some more layers. Everyone was getting very annoyed and some people called Oui bus to see where the bus was. Apparently it was broken down, but a new bus was coming.

Here’s some pictures that show how we felt after waiting in the cold for 3+ hours. Without the speaker, we would have been even worse.

After an eternity, the bus finally came and we all angrily boarded. After they checked our tickets, we finally hit the road. Unfortunately, we had to stop in Lyon after an hour and take another bus to Paris. I slept during this leg and it felt like two seconds despite being an hour and a half bus ride. We got off the bus in Lyon and waited in the cold once again. After about 20 minutes, we finally got onto the second bus. I immediately fell asleep and when I woke up, we were in Paris.

I usually can’t sleep on buses, but I was so exhausted that I actually got a good amount of sleep. After a very long night, we finally arrived in Paris.