Budweiser!!!!

It’s really quite amazing that I have yet to post this week and I have nothing to do. One can only read so many articles about reservoirs. This past weekend I actually did things so that was cool and a bit different. Because of the nation-wide train strike the Frenchies actually stayed here on Friday night!!! So I went to a beer bar with some people from the department, where we drank Belgian beer and ate local cheese and meat. So wonderfully French!!! They only had European beer and this precipitated an argument about the superiority of European and American beer. I was told that American beer is Bud, which admittedly does suck, but everyone knows that our microbreweries are what set us apart. Fortunately, one of the people in the department is heading to GSA in Denver this week so I’m helping prepare his presentation and I prepared a list of good beers that he must try so he can return and back me up. I was shocked when I learned that they thought we had horrible beer, the French may be able to do wine but we can do beer!!! Saturday I did a little shopping with my American friend, Anna and my Italian friend, Tiziana. And Sunday, I went running with other people!!! It was a pretty crazy weekend for me.

So yah, I did that on Friday and on Saturday I actually went shopping with other people and ate crepes!!! The first time since I’ve arrived!!! I’m a terrible visitor here but usually I eat at my house because I’m cheap. This does mean that I’ve saved money for traveling which I intend to start doing as soon as I can leave the country. At the moment, I can’t. Yes, due to administrative goof-ups I could not actually leave the country and re-enter so I will be stuck here for another month or so. I really can’t even get into it because it is so upsetting but it seems I’ve been screwed, even more, than most by the French bureaucracy.

My mom is coming this weekend so I’ll remain here then but after that I need to learn to break-free. It will be so nice to see her and Heidi. I’ve spent most of this week socializing a bit, hanging out with Frenchies, visiting Café Polyglot which takes place at a bar and is a place where you can speak most foreign languages with others (It’s pretty cool) and preparing for her visit. At Café Polyglot I met a French doctor who invited my friends and I to a birthday party this weekend and when I mentioned my mom and her friend he very excitedly invited her too (they really love English speakers here!) Make my apartment a little more inhabitable before it turns into a dormitory, as it is just big enough to inflate an air mattress in my kitchen/living room.

This week I also have made a huge coup, in my opinion, I now have a phone in my house!!!! And the piece de resistance, a neufbox!!! For those of you who are not familiar it is a box with internet (weefee), tv, an adsl phone and something else, don’t understand exactly. So, I now have the neuf box and have no clue how to use it. Luckily, I was giving the WEP code of a neighbor so I have internet access but I’m currently trying to work out the puzzle that is my neufbox and all of the letters I receive from neuf telecom with lots of information that I’m sure would be useful if I understood it all. This stuff is complicated enough in English, but in French it is like I’m reading Urdu. So that will be a work in progress or a “travaux en cours”, a term I use often in French.

So yah, I’m having an interesting week. In search of volunteer work here, which is way harder to find than one would think but I’m persevering and I believe I will find something. I also think I may try to learn Arabic because then I could do a lot more in life depending on what I want to do but I’m learning French and share an office with a Moroccan (we have the international office) plus there are tons of Arabic speakers here so I figure why not? I also have access to the language center’s resources so I’m going to try. It’s also similar to Hebrew so if I can manage to remember some of that then I’m all good. I’ve also been told that I have the good accent (I think due to my Hebrew training and my ability to say the “ch” sound) so that is how I’m preparing for my future.

Ok. So this post is really long and I'll try to post more regularly again.

Good night and good luck.