Today was an interesting day. Since it is July 4th, the group of study abroad students wanted to get together and have dinner. I was shown the location of the restaurant on a map, I already forgot the name, but it was French, and sounded funny.
I woke up at 6:40am, which is about normal, oh, I have not written about last night!
Ok, last night was even more interesting. A friend of my host family’s sister came over during the day. Around 9pm I was in my room bored and getting ready to go to bed. I went to the kitchen to see what everyone was up to and saw very nice wine glasses on the table and was quickly told to sit down. We drank wine and whiskey, ate some cheese with bread, and later some tea. Everyone was talking very fast, but I was happy whenever I understood anything. Two hours went by, I was enjoying myself, everyone else was too, my only problem was that I didn’t really know what we were celebrating. A lot of things went through my head, but most just didn’t make sense on a Tuesday night. After we stood up to leave, I asked my host mom and she told me we were celebrating the fact that my sister got an excellent grade on one of her final exams. I think it’s pretty cool that we celebrate those things, that is some great motivation, and everyone was so happy.
I went to my room, and around 11:30pm I went to get some water and tell everyone good night, well, I was wrong again. Ice cream! Yes, we all sat down and ate some ice cream, it was around 1am before I even looked at the time. Finally I went to my room and realized that that was the first time I ever used a lamp! Every other time I went to bed, the sun was still up. I am writing this around 10:30pm and the sun is still shining through my window, this is awesome.
Alright, so back to today, I woke up at 6:40am, showered, had breakfast, went to class, etc…
After class, I took a bus with some friends and arrived straight home. After that I ate lunch, met another of my sister’s friends, well, I was introduced, I didn’t really talk much. I did some homework and was later invited to have some tea. Around 6pm I got ready and left to go to the restaurant. Actually, it wasn’t a restaurant, it was a cafe. I told my host family it was a restaurant, and they didn’t let me leave the house wearing shorts. From what I understood, if you go to a restaurant at night, you wear nice clothes, where did my manners go?! I put on a pair of jeans and a polo just to look decent and left.
I was told to take bus 16 and get off at the stop after the big store. I didn’t hear correctly and got off at the big store. I then started walking in the wrong direction, that’s when the fun started. With my great( NOT!) sense of direction, I decided to walk in the direction I thought the restaurant was, that required not going on an actual street, but dirt trails. It ended up being the right direction for my situation, but I should have never taken that trail. I walked by next to what I later confirmed to be a prison, I thought the metal bars on the windows of all the nearby houses seemed strange… After that, I took out my map and figured out where I was. I started walking to get to the right street, and I walked, and walked, and walked. It was only about half an hour of walking when I finally arrived to the street the restaurant was on. As I was walking, I looked around, it’s a nice city, the only problem is that I saw a bus drive right by, it was the same route of the one I was in. If I had stayed in the bus for one more stop, I would have saved half an hour and not have to sweat like crazy. Now that I look back, I don’t really regret getting partially lost. I saw some very nice parts of the city, I also know where not to go, and learned a lot more about the bus routes.
The food at the cafe was nice, I had some salmon with mushrooms, sauce, and who knows what else, it was very good. After that, I took a bus home and got back around 10pm. When my host mother opened the door she told me she was very amazed at how punctual I was. I didn’t really planned getting there exactly at 10pm, but the bus I took worked perfectly, I didn’t break it, and I got off at the right stop. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to meet some students that are learning English so they can practice their conversational skills (I think that’s why I’m going, my Russian teacher, who teaches English too, asked us to go.) It should be fun.
Whoa, this post is long too! Ok that’s enough.