Friday

Got up around 9 and had a breakfast of fromage frais and a banana-chocolate granola bar. There wasn't much else left... Watched tv and flipped through travel guides that I had checked out from the library while Erin got ready for class. Eventually got dressed myself and walked to school around 12:30. Stopped along the way to get lunch from a pasta place called Francesca's. They always have four different types of pasta to choose from and then you choose your sauce and parmesan - it's all take-away in Chinese take-out shaped containers... good stuff. Ate lunch in the cave while reading e-mail. Blake came down around 2:30 and we ran over to the travel agency to get our money back - fortunately they were able to pay us in cash which I wasn't expecting since I had just heard the accountant tell another American student earlier in the week that it was illegal for them as a business to give a customer cash. Stopped by another travel agency on my way back to school to check on transportation options for some of my traveling in May. Eventually made it back to the cave where I had planned to get all sorts of things accomplished online, but ending up reading and responding to e-mails for the rest of the afternoon.

Decided to go pick up some things I needed from the grocery store and ended up taking a detour to get a snack with Regina. As we were walking by the Hotel de Ville, three oddly-dressed guys walked by us wheeling something blaring music, instruments and various other items as they announced dramatically that "it" would start in 30 seconds. Of course, we had to see what "it" was all about. We ended up spending the next 10 minutes or so watching the three guys juggle in various forms, play accordion, do handstands and just generally act like clowns. A highly amusing performance. :o ) We eventually ended up at Ben & Jerry's cafe where we both got hot chocolate and discussed various movies that are out here, some of which Regina had seen or heard about. I finally made it to Monoprix after that and arrived home around 8:15.

We usually eat around 8 so I was surprised to find Joelle, with her new haircut, hadn't even started cooking. She was cleaning her room and since I didn't have anywhere to be, decided to finish before starting dinner. (Erin left to go to Brussels for the weekend so it was just the two of us.) Since she started cooking so late, she decided to make pasta. We started with lettuce and a green soup that I thought was pea soup with the peas leftover from last night, but then those made an appearance later so I don't know what the soup was. Naturally the whole thing was finished off with cheese and bread. And I don't think I ever explained, the bread we have at dinner every night is baguette that Joelle buys on her way home from work each day - that's how we can run out of bread at breakfast and still have it for dinner.

Anyway... as we were finishing dinner a movie called Stupeur et Tremblements came on and I knew the lead actress had won a Cesar (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for it so I sat and watched it with her. It was about a Belgian woman born in Japan who is hired by a Japanese company to be an interpreter. However, she hardly does any interpreting in her job as she's given tasks to keep her busy (they even admit as much) while she learns about the hierarchy and cultural differences she was previously unaware of in the Japanese workplace. I didn't catch everything, but got enough - it's a movie I'd like to see in English since I think I'd get more out of it that way but I thought it was well-done even so. Went to bed shortly thereafter...and that concludes the daily "what I did today" portion of the journal. :o )