Oi-Ster

Sunburns are not cool. Ice cubes are. The two together often work out quite nicely.

It’s a little weird to think that I’ve been in France almost a whole week. Weird because it seems so long, yet so short of a time. It’s a good thing that I’ve still got a good amount of those left. The past one has been really fun, though, I have to say. I’ve been meeting people, doing different things, using public transportation *gasp!*, sleeping with the window open every night and letting the sun wake me up (though alarm clocks help), and a myriad of other things. (Did I just use the word myriad? Really?) Anyway. It’s slowly starting to connect that I’m actually in France; it’s taking a while, despite that everything’s in French and is very Frenchified.

So today was a good deal of fun. We went on our big excursion to le Bassin d’Archacon, a bay south-west of Bordeaux that specializes in oyster farming. We ate at a little cabana right on the water, and the main part of the meal was oysters. I was very brave… I tried one! After that I don’t think I could handle anymore, so I stuck to the wine and bread for a while. Good dry white wine. Other things included the Dune du Pyla, the largest sand dune in Europe. Climbing it sounded easy enough, it didn’t look that huge… imagine climbing up a ridiculously steep hill, but in sand. Yeah. I thought I was gonna die. But I made it to the top, which was worth it for the view. Then we went to a lovely French beach, where we all went swimming in the cold waters. The beach was in this really adorable French neighborhood, so I just enjoyed all the cute houses. A fun adventure for sure, except that now I am ridiculously sunburned on the top of my head and on my face. Blagh.

Other big adventures include having to walk from l’Hôtel de Ville all the way back to Village 3, about 8 km walking on google maps. The trams were down due to an accident, and didn’t look to be going up anytime soon. That was fun, and that got me a little sunburned to begin with. Another time I had gotten back to my room and got my key into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn and I was panicking. After a couple people came over to help, someone asked me if I was sure if they were on my keys… sure enough, I had accidently picked up a friend’s keys from her desk and was trying to use those. Embarrassing. Another adventure was going to an Irish pub together and trying to figure out how to split the tab (I got my first Guinness! Sorry Dad). Grocery shopping, figuring how things work and then bringing all our groceries back on the tram, was quite exciting. One night, the tram ticket checker-thingy ate my ticket, which made me very angsty, as I still had two trips on that thing.

Alas! The very biggest thing, I would assume, is that we now kind-of officially have a place to live. It’s four studio apartments together, two smaller and two larger. One of the smaller is habited by a French student who’s studying for some Engineering degree, so he’s always busy. The other will be Lisa by herself, since the very kind landlady lowered the price for her (after hearing about the other place we were looking at, which was apparently very amazing). Then in the two bigger studios, me and Danita will be sharing one, and Saudith and Jennifer will be in the other. Each studio has its own bathroom, closet, and kitchen, and there’s a garden and a laundry machine and… it’s really freaking cool. Pictures will come when I get them, we don’t move in until September 11th.

Random things: Does anyone recognize the phone number 805-497-7833? They decided it would be a great idea to call me not once, not twice, but four times a few days ago. Which would be fine and dandy except they didn’t seem to realize that I’m in a different country, meaning that they called at one when I was sleeping, and that it’s ridiculously expensive to call me. Also: food is cool. I am still working on my pasta, canned vegetables, apples (which might go bad soon, I worry), and bread. Drinking lots and lots of water – I bought a 1.5 litre thing of water for 0.25 Euros! It was super sweet. It’s sufficing, though. Still eating the cheese that they gave us, which is like string cheese but with god added. So good.

And with that, I feel like I’ve blathered enough. There’s always more to be said, but I feel this is nice and jumpy enough. The intense language classes start tomorrow, and I’m a bit terrified – both to see where I’m placed, and to get my ass whipped into Frenchiness. I shall hopefully be in touch before too long.