Watch out for the Grenoble Strangler-Day 37- February 15th, 2018

I had plans to wake up early and go to the phone store, but it didn’t open until after my first class. This actually worked better for me because I was able to sleep in a little later then planned. Breakfast was typical, but all my online browsing had to be done on the frustratingly slow WiFi. I guess this probably a good sign that I am addicted to my phone, but who isn’t these days.

I double checked the bus times once more, and headed off into the internet free world.

I cannot believe how much better it felt without being able to use my phone. I felt more focused, could hear the beautiful sounds of the birds, and breathe in the fresh mountain air. It was absolutely wonderful.

Just kidding, it felt exactly the same. I just listened to music and tram felt especially slow today.

Despite my week long break approaching fast, class went by pretty quickly today and I never really lost focus. I have a really good grasp of what we are learning in differential equations and did well on the French quiz I got back. We were practicing the verbs for “can”, “must” and “want”. I learned some useful stuff and realized I had been using a lot of the really formal versions. I also always ask my professor to critique my conversational French, aka what I say to girls at the bars.

I enjoyed the sandwich I made for lunch and had a nice forty minutes to relax with some of my classmates before my circuits lab . Fortunately today’s lab was not being graded, so I definitely put in a little less effort. Today we were working with electric dipoles and did a bunch of tedious graphs and calculations.

Jonathon strangling Harry with a wire out of frustration from the lab.

After an hour and half, I finished the lab a bit early and headed off to the Free Mobile store. I knew the tram stop close to the store and took the B line on the tram to get there. There was a decently long line at the store, but luckily it went quickly and the worker spoke English. He sent me to some atm-like machine and where I could pay my invoice there. To my luck, it worked on the first try. Hopefully I do not have this same issue one month from now.

About twenty minutes after this, my phone service finally turned back on. I was in a great mood and used my new cell service to google the nearest electronic store. I wanted to buy a portable charger to have during my break trip. My iPhone’s battery life is really bad and I could use the peace of mind. I found some store called 1001 Batteries that seemed like the solution to my search.

The Store. Piles means batteries in French.

This was really some misleading advertising because there, in fact, was not 1001 batteries and they didn’t even have any portable ones. Disappointed, I headed home to my normal wall chargers and outlets. I quickly got changed and headed to the gym for chest day.

On the way to the gym I saw this giant wall of fog.

Nick was at the gym today, which was was nice because I could put up more weight on the bench press since he was spotting me. Nick also told me that the camping store next to the Monoprix had portable chargers. We made plans to head to that area after class tomorrow to pick up some stuff for our trip, and a portable charger for me.

After the gym, I took a shower and did some homework before dinner time. When I heard the dinner bell ring and went downstairs, I was very surprised to see sushi on the table. This is honestly the last thing I expected to eat in France and not to knock the sushi of Grenoble, but Grenoble is pretty damn far from any large bodies of water. I enjoy sushi, but really don’t know enough to truly judge what’s good and bad. That being said, this really seemed like some mediocre sushi. I ate it all anyway and am praying that it makes it through my system without issues.

The rest of dinner was more normal, as we had chicken cutlets with broccoli. Andre went to Lyon to pick up their grandchildren from the airport. I get kind of confused with the Lopez family tree, but I think they have a daughter who lives in Denmark. I had thought it was just Jerome and Fabrice, but I could be wrong. Since Andre wasn’t here for dinner, Anne-Marie tried to practice her English a lot with us. This meant less French practice for me, but I made do.

The rest of night was pretty ordinary. I studied some French vocabulary, watched an episode of the Sopranos, and went to bed.

Oh yeah I also made this colossal sandwich. I discovered today that I can get an even larger baguette for just 30 cents more. This entire sandwich cost less than 4 euros to make. I honestly have never been this proud of anything I have created before.

Look at the size of this thing. You’re looking at tomorrow’s lunch and dinner.