Il pleut beaucoup

Day Five

Today I was planning on going to the metro station office with my host mom to get a student metro card with the papers I had proving I am enrolled at UCLy.  But since the metro card needs to be charged every month at about 30 euros, I decided to wait until next month to get a card since I won't be using it that much in the next few weeks.  Decided to go out and look around but of course, it was raining.  Good thing I brought my mom's raincoat because you have to be brave to use a normal umbrella here because with just a little wind, they turn inside out all the time.  As much as I can't stand those umbrellas that curve in and look really funny, that's probably why they were invented..lol.  They're wind-resistant, or at least I would imagine because of their structure.  I found a bookstore because I wanted to buy some school supplies and I was really confused to see that none of their notebooks had typical lined paper.  They were all either filled with little boxes (like for engineering/math) or they had a million little horizontal lines that really just hurt my eyes.  I'm sure it might be normal here but I feel like I would get a headache just trying to write my own notes.  Hopefully I can find a notebook, I brought some paper and my notebook from last semester but that won't hold me long. 

I had lunch with my host mom because I learned that for all students but university students (then, it depends), they all get off early on Wednesdays around 1330 instead of 1630.  It's very interesting.  This is the day they essentially leave to parents to set up appointments for the dentist, etc etc.  So since my host mom is a middle school teacher, she came home early.  We had some salad, a small steak with vegetables, yogurt, and fruit.  The vegetables had some kind of seasoning that was seriously delicious!  There's no way I could become vegetarian, but I'm definitely eating a lot more vegetables.  For dinner we had salad, boiled carrots in cream with ham, yogurt, and fruit.  I was scared that the vegetables might not be enough/good but with some bread, it was very satisfying!  Haha, the whole time I was eating that I was just thinking of my dad or my sister and what they would think about just eating carrots for dinner.  But it really was good! 

At the bookstore I was looking for post-it notes and a notebook but since I found neither, I bought a French verb conjugations book.  Came home and then finished the Twilight saga in French.  Haha :)  When I have subtitles, I can understand everything.  But when I turn them off, it's exponentially harder to understand because how fast they speak and how they shorten the words to colloquial speak.  I await the day when I can understand at least 70% of it! 



That basilique way in the background?  Yeah, that's where I hiked up to yesterday!  The sky is dark because of the rain and that explains how nasty the river looks too.