Today was the Ides of March, the same day when Julius Caesar got stabbed 23 times in 44 BC. I was hoping my circuits exam and physics quiz wouldn’t so the same to me today.
I gave myself about an extra hour to relax this morning before class. I knew it would be a long day and I definitely could use this time to myself. After eating breakfast and chilling in my room for a while, I headed to French class.
We had a quiz in class today, but I was not too worried. My professor told me yesterday that it was only on the two new tenses we learned. I spent some time last night studying them and felt prepared. We got the quiz and I was surprised to see that the questions were on completely different material. What the heck Christine?? Luckily I knew almost all of it anyway, but there was a section I was clueless on.
After the quiz, I confronted Christine on this (as politely as possible), but she said she didn’t remember saying this. Safe to say this annoyed me a lot, but I bit my tongue. It’s not always easy being the superstar in French class.
We had an hour break in between French class and our circuits exam. I headed to the cafeteria to get lunch with Nick and Harry. For the hot food area, you can only pay using this service called Izly where you add money to your student ID. I tried many times, including today, to add money, but my card gets rejected anyway. They had sandwiches downstairs, so I grabbed one and met the others upstairs. The hot food today was fish and I’m not to sad I missed out on it.
We ate pretty quickly in order to get to the exam room early. Before we knew it, it was time to start the exam. The exam was pretty tough, which seems like an annoying trend for all my classes and engineering in general. The hardest part was the way questions were worded. It was extremely obvious that the exam was written in French, then translated using some online service. This made it really difficult to understand what was being asked in some questions. I was able to work my way through most of the exam and felt like I gave okay answers. On the bright side, the exam only counts for 20% of our grade, so doing badly won’t ruin my grade for the class.
After the exam, my brain was completely fried. I felt weirdly similar to when I got shocked by the electrical outlet yesterday. On top of that, I knew I still had a lot to get done for the rest of the day. This mainly consisted of fixing my laptop and studying for physics.
Yesterday when I was about to leave for the museum, Anne-Marie asked me if I was going to the office first. Shen then frantically put on shoes and grabbed a bag. I was very confused. Did she want to walk me to the office or something? She said a lot in French that I didn’t understand, but after some struggling I realized that she wanted to give me a flower from the yard to give to Celine. I was in a rush and asked if I could bring it the next day, and she said yes. That brings us to today.
I had to stop at the office anyway to pack up my special screwdrivers I ordered, but it would be super inconvenient to stop home first then come all the way back. The office was directly on my commute home. Plus, it was raining pretty hard outside. I decided to stop at the office before going home, and deal with the rest later. My package was there and I grabbed it before heading home.
While walking back, I came up with a plan for Anne-Marie. If she wasn’t in the kitchen, I would just sneak up into my room. When I finally arrived, A-M was in the kitchen. I thought about sneaking upstairs, but felt too guilty. I went over to her and asked if I could just go tomorrow since it was raining. She said yes fortunately. My day was starting to turn around.
Even with the pain of my laptop being broken, I was weirdly excited to try and fix it. This is one of those moments where I really feel like engineering is right for me. Why pay money for someone else to fix it when I could just do it myself.
I recall one time freshman year when my roommate’s tiny fan stopped working. He spent about two weeks trying to fix it, and when he did, it barely worked. I asked him why he didn’t just buy a new one for $10 at Target. He responded with something that has stuck with me until today, “If I did that I wouldn’t be a real engineer”. That’s the motto I was thinking about when fixing my laptop today.
My new set of screwdrivers and unique bits
I had a bit of a struggle getting all the screws off, but with some force I finally removed the back plate. I then unscrewed the battery and prepared for the big moment. I knew the problem was with the power supply and I had a master plan: Unplug the battery then plug it back in.
It didn’t work.
I got a bit annoyed and realized I might have a bigger situation on my hand. I didn’t want to give up yet, so I tried one more thing: I plugged the charger into the laptop.
Voila!
My laptop turned on again.
Safe to say I was pretty pleased with my work. I may have done terribly on my exam today, but at least I could fix my laptop like a true engineer. It is just circuits after all.
Me smiling after successfully fixing my laptop
With the use of my newly restored laptop, I started working on homework for culture class. Our 18 journal entries were due tomorrow and I had to sort through my blogs to find 18 where I discussed cultural differences. Most of these 18 are from my first two weeks, but I chose some randoms ones from afterwards.
It was soon time for dinner and I had almost forgot, Jessica’s parents were here! I was ready for a nice meal and change of pace after the sauerkraut PTSD two days ago. The bell rang and I went downstairs. We were eating in the dining room and A-M put out really nice, ceramic plates. I introduced myself to Jessica’s parents, who I already have forgotten the names of.
We were having raclette for dinner tonight. Jessica had said her dad knew French, but that was a real stretch. I have never felt more confident in my French skills until tonight. Compared to Jessica’s dad, I was practically fluent. Most of dinner consisted of Jessica’s dad saying something, then Jessica translating it for A-M and Andre. I mostly spoke in French with A-M and Andre, but said occasional tidbits to Jessica’s dad and helped with translation. The raclette was delicious as always and I could tell her parents liked it a lot.
There were two highlights of this dinner for me.
1: They were talking about Jessica’s birthday, which was right after she left France. I said it would be nice because she would be able to legally drink when she got back.
“I’m actually turning 23”- Jessica
Whoops. I guess I really don’t know Jessica as well as I thought.
2: Jessica’s dad went on a nostalgic trip about how Jessica used to do Civil War reenactments when she was a kid. Her dad made her translate this into French for Andre including many details about it. I thought this was hilarious.
All in all it was a pretty entertaining dinner and it was nice to have some new company around. Having them at dinner made me realize how integrated I have become as a part of Andre and A-M’s home life. I may not speak the language well, but at least I had a presence at the dinner table. I wonder if they will be sad when I leave.
After dinner, I was hit with the realization of how much studying I needed to do. My exam was at 8 AM tomorrow and it was an oral exam. I studied for about an hour and a half, then realized I actually was feeling pretty good with the material. I’ll have to see tomorrow if my opinion is still the same.
I then typed up this blog, happy to be not typing on my phone for once.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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