Matlab, Mojitos and Me-Day 107-April 27th, 2018

The nice part of skipping Monday and Tuesday classes is that it makes the school week go by much quicker. It was already Friday and I had three classes to get through before the weekend.

My morning and breakfast routine was the same as always this morning. I’m starting to get sort of sick of my cereal and pastries though. I spent a little time messing around on Matlab this morning to try and organize the data from circuits lab and write a small program to do the needed calculations. I haven’t coded in a while, so I am a little rusty.

Before heading out, I made myself a pb&j for lunch and packed it with some chips and an apple for lunch. I listened to my audiobook on the way to school as I did yesterday. We had our original culture professor again for class today. I was getting a little sick of the other two professors, so this was a welcome change. She went on a really long tangent about budget airlines and how they related to some of the anthropological studies we were doing. This was a surprisingly interesting conversation.

In class we often study the differences between different cultures of different countries. The fact that everyone in the class has traveled so much in the past few months definitely fuels this discussion.

After class, I briefly went to the cafeteria with Harry, then we headed to physics. The rest of the class arrived and we were all surprised because the professor was nowhere to be found. The whole class was theorizing where he could be. It was cool to see everyone in the class chatting and joking around because there was a clear segregation between French and American students the first few weeks of class. Now it was like any other class.

After fifteen minutes, the professor still wasn’t there. Shortly after we got an email saying he had something come up and couldn’t be there today. The whole class headed to the cafe to enjoy the nice day before our next class. Our class is somewhat small, but I think nearly everyone went to the cafe. We all sat at a big table outside and got some drinks.

One of the best parts of France how casually you can drink beers. There is less of a taboo about them and having a beer around lunch time is much more normal. I got a pint and bunch of people did as well.

Harry and I at the cafe

After an hour of relaxing, the Americans and I headed to math class. We finally got our midterms back today after about two months. I got a 16/20, so I was happy with my grade. We took the exam so long ago that I barely remembered what the problems were. The rest of class was really boring, but I tried hard to pay attention.

Class ended about ten years later and I headed with a bunch of others to the beer festival that started today. It was in this big building called Palais Du Sport in the park near my house. There would be a bunch of local breweries and vendors to try. I was with Dylan, Nick, Jonathan, Harry, Katie, Kim and Anna. We got to the park and were shocked to see how many people were just hanging out in the park. There were so many groups of young people playing volleyball, tossing a Frisbee, having a jam session, and all sorts of activities.

Just Look at this, this was just a small part of the park

I had never seen anything like this before. It was just a warm day and everyone must have thought to go to the park. I even saw Greg and a bunch of my French classmates there. I don’t know why, but this seemed like the most European thing ever. This is something you would see in a French textbook. You would never see this happen in the Boston Common.

There was also a ton of hammocks and slack lines set up as. I asked some people if I could try their slack line and they must have thought I was pretty clueless based on their comments. I took of my shoes, got on, and walked about halfway across. They must have been impressed because I got a “ça va!” from them.

We learned the beer festival had started, but they had a tasting going on at 6:30. We wanted to wait until then to enter. We decided to hang out in the park until then. We split up and some people went to buy some beers for before hand. Harry came back with me to my house, so we could drop off our bags and see if we could find some ball or frisbee to bring back. I figured there must be one around the house somewhere.

When I got back, Andre searched through the house and yard and found a soccer ball for me. Harry was oddly impressed that my backyard had a pool (that is not filled or used)  and that we could see the multiple turtles. I changed into some more athletic clothes, then Harry and I headed back.

At the park, we all had a blast drinking our beers and kicking the soccer ball around. Katie, Jonathan, and Nick’s friend Laura Joy was visiting Grenoble and was there with us now as well. She is an engineer studying abroad in Madrid right now. Since she was an engineer and in the honors college, I had interacted with her before but really never hung out. It was nice to have some new people to hang out with.

My beer and Jonathan, Nick and Harry kicking the soccer ball in the background

A bit later we headed into the beer festival. They way it worked was you bought a glass as admission and a bunch of drink tokens. I bought four of them to start. It was different for each vendor and brewery, but generally the system was that one coin got you half a glass to taste and two coins got you a full glass.

The glass and coins

The setup of the event

I tried a bunch of beers ranging from stouts to IPAs to Lagers. I have drank a good amount of beer in my day and am pretty confident in what types I prefer. Blonde beers are definitely my favorite type of beer and this has been proved a bunch of times. My favorite beers in France, Kanterbrau and the Shakesbeer house beer, are both blonde beers. I like IPAs as well when I am in the mood for a hoppier taste. This is really good for a first beer of the afternoon. I am not the biggest fan of stouts, unless it is a Guinness.

We found some English brewery at the festival that had a good beer called the New England IPA. We made conversation with the workers about how a lot of us are from New England. Since I go to school in Boston, I consider myself an honorary New Englander when relevant.

They also had a bunch of beer pong setups and we played a bunch of games. I am a little rusty, but got some good games in. We soon ran out of tokens and left the festival. The plan was that most of us would go to get food afterwards. People wanted to go to this Asian place and get pad thai to bring back to Laura Joy’s airbnb. I gave people money for food, then quickly headed home to shower and change. I also wanted to grab Harry’s bag for him.

I hopped on the bus once I was ready and met them at the restaurant. They were getting take out, but were still waiting for the food. It was soon ready and we all headed to the airbnb. This apartment was huge despite only having one bed. There was plenty of room for everyone to sit and eat.

While France might not be known for it’s Asian food, the pad thai was really good. This was a nice change from all the French food I have been eating  and the first time I had eaten Asian food since January. This is very contrary to my brother’s study abroad experience in Shanghai.

Yang’s Dumplings    My pad thai     

There was a guitar hanging up in the apartment and safe to say this made me really happy. I tuned it and started to play. I try not to be “that guy playing the guitar”, but my friends seemed like they wanted me to play. I also asked them for what songs to play. I had a super nice session where I played for like an hour and tried to do a lot of crowd pleasers so people could sing along. I haven’t played for people like this in a long time and it was really nice.

Eventually we were getting ready to head out to the bars. This one bar was having an event where you could get a giant mojito for five euros. We headed to the bar and grabbed an outside table. The bartender said they were done making mojitos, but when we asked for five of them he changed his mind. Though they ended up being seven euros because the event ended at 10.

While waiting for our drinks, I ran to a tacos place across the street and got one. When you’re the bar area of Grenoble, it’s possible to get a cheap taco anywhere and at any time. I was craving one at the moment. Our mojitos came out shortly after I got my Taco.

From my snapchat story

The mojito had a questionably low alcohol content, but still was pretty good. We were all decently tired and headed home after finishing our giant drinks. I went to bed when I got home.