June 1st - 4th: Snap Back to Reality

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To ease the pain of playing catchup, and because the weeks are much less exciting than the weekdays, I will be grouping the past 4 days into one entry, and it shouldn't even be that long! Here we go!

Tuesday was a great day! We went to Beginner's French in the morning, but our teacher didn't show up, which would be the theme of the day. So we went back to the dorms and hung out for a while until our next class at 10am. As it turns out, the French teacher thought class was the next morning, and he felt absolutely terrible for the confusion, so much so that I heard he was almost in tears. In Project Management, our teacher showed up probably 20 minutes late because his flight from Vancouver was late arriving, and then to make things worse for him, better for us, all the Mac computer users couldn't run the program we have to use for the class, so they spent the duration of the class trying to figure that out. There was a lot of time spent that morning going through pictures from the adventure weekend on Facebook. Then, we had lunch and went to class at 1pm. Again, the teacher didn't show up, so we waited until 1:30pm and then left. I guess 4 people stayed and he finally showed up again at 2pm, but had to cancel class since no one was there. He felt so bad about the mix-up that he brought us chocolate the next day. Needless to say, all of the teachers here are such nice people. Tuesday night was pretty mellow. We did laundry in a big group of 6 people, and man is the laundry here expensive. I paid about 8 euro for mine, so like 10 bucks. What a rip off! There are actually pictures from our laundry party that I should be tagged in, so look out for those on Facebook. This was actually a grand ol' time. After that, we all just hung around for the night as many of us were still tired from the weekend. We all hung out in a group though, which wouldn't really have happened the week before. In case you can't tell, I'm very excited that everyone is becoming so close. It's already clear after 2 weeks that it's going to be hard to leave everyone at the end of the program, but pretty much everyone goes to UofM, so it won't be too bad.

The next morning, we had Project Management first, so we didn't have to wake up early. Again, the Mac users had a difficult time, so the Windows users went on with the tutorials while the others tried to get things going. This would be the case for the rest of the week, so I'm going to refrain from typing it again for the next two days. We had French Civilization, too, where the Professor gave us chocolate to make up for his missed absence. We talked about French history, which we ended up completing by Thursday. After class we went to play basketball like we did the previous week, but this time we actually got to play 5 on 5 basketball, Americans versus the French. We were more than holding our own (we were beating them) against who we later found out to be the UTT basketball team, but then disaster struck. I went to block the shot of a French player, only to come down on his foot and severely roll my ankle. It made a popping noise if I recall correctly, so I was a little freaked out. I was out for the next hour and a half and watched the Americans proceed to lose twice or thrice, and then Jason stopped playing and we went back. He tried to carry me, but it was awkward and I didn't like it, so we took our time and I walked back by my own power. I finally discovered the meaning of "blinding pain," as I sustained perhaps the worst injury of my life to date, which is actually quite fortunate. I sat in my room and iced it for the rest of the night. My roommate brought me some food from McDonalds, so that was very helpful of him, otherwise I wouldn't have eaten. I'm very upset because first of all I have to walk to class every day, and also because basketball is the only way I can keep in shape here, and now I won't be doing it for a little while. Anyways, I sat in bed for the rest of the night and fell asleep after not too long.

I woke up the next morning and my ankle was still swollen, so my friend Lee lent me his bicycle to ride to class. I still had to walk short distances, which was painful. We had Beginner's French and Project Management in the morning and French Civilization in the afternoon. As the day progressed, I became more and more able to walk on my ankle even though the swelling didn't decrease. In fact, it felt so good by the evening that I was able to go out with everyone (and I mean everyone) else that night, which I didn't think I was going to earlier on in the day.

In the evening, we left around 7pm for dinner. There were 14 of us in total, and we went to a small pizzeria in the city center. The pizza was fantastic, and it came with a dessert and drink for 11 euro. It was huge, too. I got the "San Pietro," which was cheese, sausage, pepperoni, and ham. It wasn't quite as good as the pizza that my friend Amanda and I had in Millau, but it was still pretty wonderful, especially compared to the cafeteria food we're eating twice a day around here. After dinner, we first went and hung out in a very nice part of town with colorful lights and fountains. I think people took pictures here, so keep an eye out for those, too. After this place, which no one wanted to leave, we went to meet one of the French UTT students at his house for a party. His apartment was incredibly small and packed, and I think it might have been 100 degrees in there. It was nuts; quite similar to a frat party. We hung around there for a little bit, and the highlight of the night came in our time here. Amanda, Jason, David, and I were all standing in a corner talking when all of a sudden I saw something fly across the room. I just kind of ignored it until I heard Jason going "oooow, owww." So, I turned and looked, and someone had thrown a chunk of cucumber clear across the room and hit Jason in the jaw. I made sure to ask him first if he was injured, unlike Amanda who laughed at him for 10 straight minutes, and then proceeded to laugh, a lot. David, also a French UTT student, told Jason that it was a French game and not to get upset. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and I'm laughing out loud right now just thinking about it. Shortly after the cucumber incident, we took off for greener pastures.

Our next stop in this already crazy night was a night club called the Cotton Club. There are pictures of this for sure on Facebook, so let me know if you want to see them (I say that a lot, I know). No one was there when we arrived, but there were so many of us that we made the party. There were at least 20 of us, if not more. We all just started dancing and having a good time, which we did for the next hour or two. Luis did salsa dancing to techno music (yes, that is unusual) with a bunch of girls, but refused to do it with me...I was told not to return his calls because now I have to play hard-to-get. Just kidding, but it was really impressive, so now he is going to teach me how to salsa because it looked wonderful. Also, I plan on visiting him at his home in El Salvador next summer, so I need to learn before I go. The rest of us mostly just jumped around, clapped, and yelled. We stayed for a few hours, but everyone got tired and the club was beginning to fill up, so we took off. It was 1 am and time to return home and sleep. We all walked the 40 minute walk back to UTT because the buses weren't running anymore, and then came back and crashed. A long night, but easily one of the most fun so far in our time here. Once again, it was a great bonding experience for a few of us (Luis, Jason, Amanda, Jessie, and myself). The most amazing part was, I was able to jump around and walk, so my ankle was doing pretty well.

My ankle still felt fine in the morning, but this time it was a bit purple in a few places. I can walk on it even better than I have been, without a limp even at times. I talked to someone who helped me the other night playing basketball, and he said this was normal because while the ankle is healing blood does something or another that makes some places turn purple. He said not to exert myself too much. I've also done some extensive searching on the web, and I've come to agree with him. It seems to be a sprained ankle that is getting better, and I need to rest it and ice it. This weekend will be great for that, as we don't have all that much to do. Today, we had Project Management in the morning, so we didn't have to be up too early. We just did the tutorials again, then went off to lunch. After lunch, we had a course on Champagne which taught us all about wine and included a wine tasting. The white wine was the best without question, followed by the rose. The red wine he gave us was completely disgusting because it tasted like a tree. The point of the tasting was to prepare us for our trip tomorrow, which is a tour of the Champagne region with a champagne tasting included. After this class, a few of us went to the grocery store, where I got milk, cereal, and water. Then we came back and had a siesta for quite a while. At 8pm, a few of us went to get dinner. When we came back, a lot of people were bored and looking for stuff to do. Many people ended up going out somewhere on campus, but Amanda and I were tired and needed a break, so we just stayed in and watched Wedding Crashers and Beerfest. We went briefly to check out a barbecue, but it was boring so we left. Many people followed our lead, so much so that for Wedding Crashers we ended up sitting 5 of us on my twin bed and watching it, which was very uncomfortable. We finished the movies around 2am, which left me to play catchup on my blog before things got anymore out of hand. Now, I think I'm finally caught up. And my ankle is getting better to the point where I can spell the alphabet with my foot (apparently it's good for the ankle sprain). So, things are going well now and still look promising for the next few days. Besides, how can anything be too bad when my day tomorrow is centered around tasting champagne?

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Comments

[Amanda]

oh man. take care of your ankle! I want it to be strong enough to hike around the alps with me. of course I use the term 'hike' loosely. glad you're making friends with an amanda. we are good people. and finally, i laughed pretty hard at your description of the red wine. i believe that's what they call 'oaky' flavours. but 'tasted like a tree' is way better.