I woke up around 8 AM and immediately checked who won the super bowl. To my delight, the Eagles had won and I spent about fifteen minutes watching highlights on my phone and funny commercials.
I thought this one was particularly funny.
When I went downstairs to eat breakfast, I was surprised to see that Anne-Marie and someone who I assume was her friend having breakfast. No offense to A-M, but I usually enjoy the nice silence of eating my breakfast alone. I also felt really stupid because I accidentally greeted them with “bonsoir” which means “good evening”. Yeah I am dumb. A-M and her friend were talking to me in French and her friend said she spoke some Italian. I talked to her in Italian for a few minutes about where I was from and what I studied. I wanted to get to class early today, so I headed out shortly after.
The bus came a few minutes late, which meant that I ended up missing my tram at the Chavant stop. I had to wait 11 minutes for the next one, meaning I would certainly be late to class. When the tram finally came, it was super packed and I had to shove bodies to get in. It reminded me of being on the NYC subway. I felt a little better about being late after I watched someone next to me accidentally drop his tram card through the gap between the tram and track. I felt bad for him, but it’s a dog eat dog world out here.
Differential equations felt very long today and everything we learned was unnecessarily complicated with way too much tedious algebra. Everything made sense to me, but it didn’t make the class go any faster.
After class, I had a two and half hour break so I headed into the city to get my food stipend from the BU office. After getting my 120 euros, I went with Dylan and Katie to have lunch at La Natation, the place where I had the really good pasta carbonara the other day. I wanted to change things up and went for the Roquefort pasta. We had learned about the significance of Roquefort cheese in culture class the other day and I was inspired to get it. Both Dylan and Katie got the pasta carbonara.
Here’s my very large and very cheesey pasta.
The pasta was good, but Roquefort cheese is very strong and after a while the taste was getting a bit too intense for me to enjoy. Today I learned that I like strong cheeses, but only in small quantities. Dylan and Katie loved their pasta and we made plans to return to this brasserie again next week. We finished the meal with espressos and chocolate. I tried to use my new chocolate tasting skills.
We headed back to school for circuits and physics. These next three hours of class were super painful. I don’t know why it was worse today, but the material felt particularly boring and time moved extremely slow. These three hours of class took years off my life and my brain didn’t want to hold any more information.
I headed home after class and got ready for the gym. I ate so much food this past weekend that I needed to go hard at the gym today. Today was leg day and was really not looking forward to it. The gym was pretty crowded today, but I still managed to get the one squat rack. An hour and one very intense leg workout later, I was exhausted and starving. Instead of going straight home, I went to the supermarket to get some meals for the week. I bought three premade salads, a box of tissues, and this cool French craft beer in a growler.
There was a beer pong tournament at a bar tonight that I was planning to go to with my BU friends, Sebastian, Ben and some other Americans I knew. I figured this giant beer would help me save money at bar tonight.
I got back from the bar, showered and ate my dinner. I had this salad a few times now and it did not disappoint. The beer was also super good, I definitely am a big fan of blonde beers.
My salad and beer, featuring the dressing in a tube.
After eating, I headed to the bar to meet my friends. It was about a 25 minute walk, and when I got there, Ben, Sebastian and Harry were already at the bar. For the tournament, everyone had to pay 2 euros and the winner got all the money. Harry and I were a team with the appropriate name, “Hairy Willy”. Being in an American fraternity, I had a lot to prove tonight. I warmed up with a few beer pong games and was doing very well. The bar started getting really crowded and it was mostly North Americans to my surprise. There was a ton of Canadians. Everyone was super friendly and I talked to pretty much everyone at the bar.
A little before the tournament started, some more of our BU friends arrived and joined in the bracket. It was my friend Aleks’s birthday today, so I bought her a shot. I was feeling ready and prepared for the tourney.
Harry and I’s matchup was against these two Canadians, Paul and Maxy. The tournament was supposed to be country themed, so they both wore denim on denim, aka the “Canadian Tuxedo” . The guy running the tournament was also Canadian, which meant we played beer pong with Canadian rules.
This meant:
Bounce shots are worth two cups
Island is two
There is no heating up
Bouncing of the rim of one cup and going into another is two cups (what is this high school??)
One rerack and no gentlemans
The no gentleman’s rule, which means when your opponent has two cups left you straighten them as a courtesy, was bizarre to me. I though Canadians were known for their politeness.
Paul and Maxy had a lot of trash talk, but I was on fire tonight and we won the game. Afterwards we shook hands, and it was great effort for American-Canadian relations. They said they won the last tournament here, so Harry and I were feeling good.
Here’s what the bar looked like before it got crowded.
Eventually it was time for our second game, and we were playing another Canadian team from Ottawa. One of the guys was named Sawyer, who I talked to about hip hop for a bit earlier in the night.
It was a close game, and they got a lead on us because of the stupid off the rim rule. The only time I’ve seen this rule was in high school. It is very frowned upon in American college games. I luckily got an island shot in, and knocked off two cups.
Unfortunately, Sawyer made his last shot and won the game. I was very disappointed and Saywer’s team went on to win the whole tournament. At least I could be content with losing to the best team.
We stayed for a little while longer, than I headed home for the night.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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