Saturday July 2nd, 2022:
I woke up at noon today, a little later than I had planned for when state side but an acceptable time to wake up in my opinion, considering it was only 2 hours off the mark from the time I want to wake up at. Eric was already awake and playing games on his computer. I checked my phone to see that we could meet with Dr. Smith and our other instructor at 2:30pm. I stayed in bed for another hour and half before getting up, taking my medication, getting dressed, and going to breakfast at the cafeteria housed within the Cité Universitaire main building.
I got in line, got served a breakfast of eggs, beans, a
sausage
(looked more like a hotdog), bread, yogurt, a pancake, and a small cup of Orange Juice. Honestly, I had hoped for something a little more interesting, but I wasn’t really surprised since the quality was decently close to the standard I expect from University Cafeteria Food, nothing spectacular but nothing to complain about. I had been to this cafeteria the prior day around 5-6pm to see if they were serving dinner and left with a salad (they were not serving dinner), and then I had to pay for my food with my card. I got confirmation both from my professor and from getting breakfast that students don’t eat free, so I payed 5€
for my food ate most of it, except the meat which I again couldn’t explain that I didn’t want, and then left to go get my roomate at 2:00pm to tell him we should get going to the RER station to go meat up with Dr. Smith. He was already leaving the doorm building so I caught him literally at the door and we both set off to the RER station across the street.
My RER card wasn’t scanning properly so I eventually had to just jump the mill thing, and we got on the train headed to
“Denfert Rochereau”. We were apparently the first to arrive. So we decided to stop by a bakery less than 5 minutes walk away and I garbed a croissant. It wasn’t particularly remarkable in any way, I mostly did it because it’s something your supposed to do in France, similar to buying a Baguette, trying cheeses, tasting wine, and getting a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Regardless, I wasn’t displeased by it, and the people who were running the shop seemed to recognize us as americans or at least english speakers, though I still tried to only speak and respond in French since the order was extremely basic, saying the name of the item, “Merci” (as they grab the item ), paying, and saying “Merci, au revoir” as we left. We then walked back to the RER station to meet up with Dr. Smith.
The whole group had decided to show up, all 12 of us were present plus the other instructor, Dr. Smiths children, and Dr. Smiths mother, making for a total of 15 people. Each of us was given a number to make keeping track of us easier and for the next 20 minutes we walked along the streets entering a few stores including a grocery store called “Monoprix” and a department store called “Muji”. At Muji I bought some clothes hangers and at Monoprix my roomate and I bought some food for the dorm.
Around 3:20pm we began to walk down the pedestrian only street of
Denfert Rochereau. It was relatively compact, with buildings and shops
being only 4 peoples lengths away from one side to another, and it was
full of small bouquet and specialty shops.
Around 3:30pm Dr. Smith bought us all fruit, pointing out how these stores sold extremely high quality stuff at very low prices. There were dedicated honey stores that sold honeys that only were made with the pollen from a specific flower, multiple fruit mini-markets, stores that specialized in selling fresh fish, stores that specialized in selling fresh meat, multiple bakeries, a bubble tea shop, café’s,
restaurants, and many more small shops. My roommate went and bought an extension cord to try and use to extend for our refrigerator, which had a cord far too short to reach the outlet on the other side of the desk.
Around 4:00pm Dr. Smith took us all to get Ice Cream. We got it from this little stall called “La Glace”. They do double scoops, so I got lemon sorbet and raspberry ice cream. It was very enjoyable, though the lemon was a bit strong. I commented to one of my classmates that the raspberry mixed with some other berry flavor would go great with a chocolate flavor, adding a little sweet, fruity flavor with little flex of the seed of the other berry complementing the chocolate nicely. Most the class got at least one of the coffee flavors of ice cream. Then we dispersed being reminded that at 2:30pm tomorrow there would be a cheese and wine tasting for us to attend.
I walked with my roommate further up to the end of the street, got some
Bubble Tea, and then we walked back to the RER station, where we got a
little “discombobulated” as I like to put it.
My roommate thought that we were taking the wrong train initially, and I, not being 100% sure if we were, followed him down a path to put us on a train facing the other direction. Turned out we were now going to get on a train that would go from Denfert Rochereau
to
Luxembourg Sénat.
As we got on the train something didn’t feel right to me. I kept staring
up at the little light sign that showed the trains route, showing it
blinking on Luxembourg Sénat, and more importantly not being lite on
Cité Universitaire. I looked over at him and based on his face
asked, “You thinking the same thing I’m thinking?” He didn’t hear me
properly and by the time he did the voice over the speaker was saying
something like, “Arrive maintenant au Luxembourg Sénat.” as the train
slowed into the station. We both got off, and this time I looked up at
the boards to see what routes were light up. We had to take another
tunnel to get to the other side of that station to then get on a train
that would take us back to Cité U. It was a simple mistake, but we got
back just fine, i had our bag full of stuff, my card still wouldn’t
read…ugh…jumped the gate again, tearing the paper bag some in the
process, and we returned to the dorms to put our stuff away.
Surely this was the end of things for not turning out quite as expected for us…right…well…
As you can see above the fridge has is plugged in to the far right in this picture. that short black cord was unable to reach that small power strip which was only able to extend to the location of the foot of my chair when in the image, and the outlet is the far right wall in the picture. However, we just bought an extension cord that clearly works, as you can see in the picture, but that wasn’t initially the case because this was the extension cord we initially bought:
It turned out the extension cord we got wouldn’t fit the darn plug because of a plastic stupid cover, as you can see above, so we couldn’t get it to work with the power strip and thus we still couldn’t use the fridge. Neither side was compatible with the fridge because of that cover. So, mildly annoyed, we decided to go walk back to the RER station, go back to
Denfert Rochereau, and this time bring a backpack so we could get some additional items that we needed like hand soap and a fan to cool off the room. We went to Muji’s again to buy the fan, which costed 69.95€
by itself, and then went back on the RER to return to our dorm. I asked my roommate how he scaned his card to get the RER to work for him and now I have no issues with getting the card to work, so apparently i was scanning it wrong in a hurry not to delay people behind me. Once we got back from this additional unplanned excursion, we had an extension cable that finally worked and allowed us to plug the refrigerator into the power strip, as you can see below:
Here is also a picture of the fan I bought, I didn’t get a warranty on it since Ill hopefully be donating it when I leave France. Should be a godsend on hot and humid days & nights:
Finally, we could settle in for the night. I was planning on taking a shower but I think that will wait till the morning, I will be checking on the showering facilities tonight regardless, they are a floor beneath my rooms, in the same place as the kitchen. Ive been typing these things up since ruffly 17:00pm
(5pm)
European time which is ruffly 11am back home. Its now 22:50pm (10:50pm)
European time or 4:50pm at home, and I best be off to bed.
Posting the contents of 2 days may not take this long in future, and I
could probably shorten this down by removing detail, but I feel a
detailed record of the days events will be beneficial both as a way to
remember the experience of this trip, provide ample examples for a
potential final project, and provide someone in the future amusement or
act as an experiential guide to a foreign students experience of
existing in France for 30 days. As stated on Day 1′s post, I will attempt to be
posting every 2 days about the events of the previous day and the
present day. My next post will be on Monday after we go through a boat
ride along the Seine River.
Till then, au revoir bonne soirée.
Sincerely,
-Me