Tea Time-Day 114-May 4th,2018

After a very easy week, Friday would be a daunting day. I didn’t just have class, but I had three classes today! I had to get up at 8 AM too, which is pretty much the crack of dawn for me these days. I found some energy deep inside of me managed to get up. Then again, there’s nothing a bowl of coffee can’t fix.

With a complete breakfast in my system, I quickly made a lunch before heading out. This was a complex process that involved two primary steps:

1: Open my back pack,

2: Put the premade salad in my backpack.

After completing this complex series of tasks, each one more difficult than the last, I headed to school with a wide grin and a feeling of victory. Today was a day to be seized.

The first class of the day was French Culture class, or more commonly known as, “American students share the same cultural anecdotes for the fourth week in a row”. We were asked to talk about some customs or intangible things we learned in France and want to take back with us to the US.

This started out with the expected ones, but quickly evolved into “screw France, let me talk about American things I miss”. This lead to some interesting discussions. One of my classmates, Dylan, talked about how in NYC it’s normal to plug in your headphones and tune out the rest of the world. I added to this by describing the cultural phenomenon of a crazy homeless person coming onto your subway car and every preceding to ignore him. Dylan and I agreed that there was a hidden unity among all the people in the car ignoring the homeless person. This led to a discussion about the differences between homeless people in the US vs Europe.

Eventually our cultural discussions wrapped up and everyone got a chance to share something about their time in France. Class was only halfway over, and our Professor, Veronique, took us on a field trip to a cafe in Grenoble. I was very confused at first, but realized this just was supposed to be a nice way for everyone to end the class.

The tram ride to the cafe was the real cultural experience, but for Veronique and not us. No there weren’t any approaching homeless men, but I got the satisfaction of watching Veronique cringe. This was solely due to the incredible volume that our pack of wild Americans produced in the tram car. It really isn’t just a stereotype, Americans are loud as hell.

I am not the type of person to frequent cafes, but this one was really nice. There also conveniently was a giant table that could fit all of us there. A lot of people ordered food, but I planned to eat my salad later and just got a tiny pot of English breakfast tea. I am briefly going to complain about cafe food; I just don’t get the appeal. Sure it is artsy and aesthetically pleasing, but you’re paying like eight euros for the tiniest amount of food.

Like come on, THIS IS JUST A SINGLE EGG!!

Well anyway, my tea really hit the spot at least. I also used Jonathan’s artistic abilities to take a photo of me for blog purposes.

I predict my mom will find this photo funny

We had nice little lunch/tea time and Veronique told us how much she enjoyed teaching us and wished us a save journey home.

After leaving the cafe, I loitered on the street for half an hour with some of my classmates. A couple of us had physics somewhat soon and headed to class shortly after. When we got to class, almost all the Americans were there and only one French student was there. If this doesn’t show you the mental difference between paying $70,000 a year for school versus 400 euros, I don’t know what does.

I usually am on the verge of sleep in nuclear physics class, but everything we did today was review for the final and extremely helpful. I surprisingly felt really good about the practice problems we did in school. This made me feel a lot better about the exam ten days from now.

Differential equations was right after physics and a similar story. It was all review and made me feel much more confident about the material. All the problems were supposed to be useful for the first half of the exam. I only have one more class next week, and it is another math lecture. We will be doing even more review then, so I won’t even mind going.

We ended up staying a bit later in math and some of the buses were delayed. This made me get home a bit later than usual and I made the decision to skip the gym. This mainly was because I had another host dinner tonight. I know what you’re probably thinking:

Will!? What do you mean you have another host dinner? You have made it clear that you only get two dinners per week, and any real reader knows you do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You already ate dinner twice this week with Anne Marie and Andre!! What is this madness, I swear I don’t even know you anymore.

Well if you’re currently thinking that, I can explain. Trust me. I am going away next week from Tuesday to Friday. That means missing both my host dinners and having to rearrange them for other days. I made arrangements with AM to have one tonight, and one on Monday evening. Crisis averted.

By the time tonight’s meal came around, I was starving. Tonight’s meal was really only one course, but was really good. It was some fried and breaded fish (I think cod), and had tater tot like balls of potato. This was all topped off with a sauce that looked and tasted like the sausage gravy you would get at a diner. I am not a huge fish person, but this was delicious.

I also had some really good discussions in French with everyone. We talked about different airlines, our exam schedule, and about five minutes of AM and Andre trying to explain to us what a donkey is in French. Jessica and I thought they were talking about a lamb, so we were very confused. AM and Andre must like us a lot because when we talked about leaving France, they kept joking about reasons why we had to stay. I said something about how I’m going to miss baguettes, and Andre said I have to stay in France then because I won’t be able to find good ones in the US.

I stayed at the table for a while after we finished eating, but eventually headed upstairs. I know I talk about this quite often, but I can’t help but be amazed at how far my French has come. I went from knowing no French to being able to have full thirty minute conversations after dinner.

After dinner, I took a shower and got into more comfortable clothes. I typed up this blog then which took a surprising amount of time. I looked at the clock when I finished and it was almost 11:30. I ended up watching an episode of The Sopranos then went to bed.