OMG New Phone!!

So yesterday morning we were supposed to get up early, since we had errands to accomplish and wanted to still be back by 2pm when Sierra's suitcase was supposed to be delivered. It was lost by her airline, so she's had to deal with being here without any clothes or most of the things she packed. We all woke up early to shower, but then her suitcase arrived anyway, so we didn't have to worry! We took our time eating breakfast, and headed out!

First we went down the Boulevard Heurteloup, which is one of the main arteries in Tours, and visited La Poste (the post office). We all had some immigration paperwork to mail in to the government, and then Valeria and I had post cards to mail as well. It was a lot cheaper than we thought, though; we were worried that it'd be a whole Euro to mail each post card and it was only about half that. Then we walked up the Rue Nationale to the Orange phone store.

Apparently Orange is the best company to go with in France, at least if you only want to do a pay-as-you-go temporary thing. The poor guy must've felt a little overwhelmed when 6 of us descended upon him, all wanting new phones. We explained what we wanted and got phones for fairly cheap; they were only 29 Euro. I was pretty ridiculously excited to get the phone; I finally will be able to tell the time when I'm out and about! We went home and spent a while exchanging our numbers and playing with the new toys, trying to figure them out. The one thing that is strange about doing pay-as-you-go in France is that they never give you your remaining phone time in minutes; they give it in Euros. I imagine that's because you can use that credit for surfing the web and sending texts as well as actual phone conversations, but it makes it really hard to know how much you have left.

After we spent a while playing, we got ready to go back outside to get lunch, shop and hang out. We ended up at Rue Bordeaux again; it's kind of becoming our default place to go. We got delicious panini sandwiches for lunch. Mine was tomato and mozzarella, and it was really good and hot! We then wandered around a bit. We went in Sephora, which is a perfume and make-up store that I'm pretty sure we have in the US. Sierra wanted to look at perfume, but she didn't end up finding anything she liked. The rest of us wandered around and tried all the testers. Then we went down the street farther, and into a little store called Dress Code's. They had clothes and shoes, and I found an adorable pair of boots that were on sale for 9 Euro! I was really excited; the only shoes I brought with me are ballet flats and my high-heel boots, which are cold and heels respectively. Now I have warmer feet! I also went to a tabac (which is a place where they sell drinks and cigarettes and lotto tickets and other little things- they're everywhere in France) and bought some more minutes for my phone.

After a brief stop at a little grocery store to get snacks to have back in our rooms, we went home again. I tried to figure out how to reload my phone, and I think I did it right. We hung out and tried to find classes on the Université website, which has proved to be almost impossible. Apparently you pretty much have to just email the head of the department and they can send you the classes you're interested in. Dinner last night was a little strange; first lentils in some kind of slightly acidic sauce with a bit of lettuce, and then endives wrapped in ham with hard-boiled eggs. It was okay, but strange; I couldn't identify a lot of it myself. For dessert we had chocolate pudding, which was good.

After dinner Luzé had said she would take us to a café in town where they have a sort of cultural exchange evening thing. Basically a lot of students (especially exchange students) will come, and people will speak lots of different languages at different tables. You're supposed to just go and join in a conversation somewhere, so you can meet new people and talk. It apparently fills up really quickly, though; we left the house at about 9pm and it was way too packed when we got there. We ended up having to sit downstairs since there wasn't any room, and so we mostly just talked to each other. It was fun though; I got the first actual Diabolo grenadine I've had since July 2006, and it made me ridiculously happy. (A Diabolo's basically a combination of limonade and grenadine syrup, kind of like a Shirley Temple. My host mother in the south introduced me to them, and they're fantastic.)

Luzé introduced us to her friend Sarah, who is on an exchange from a little school in New York. She'd been here since September, which was cool. We also met another friend of Luzé's named Charlotte, who is from Belgium. She had only been here for about a week, like we have. I think she kind of struggled with the fact that we were speaking English, but she seemed pretty nice. It was really fun to meet new people and just hang out for an evening. When we walked back I was really tired, and ended up falling asleep.

This morning Valeria, Mamie, and Sierra went out because they wanted to go shopping and find somewhere to get identification photos taken. In France you apparently need passport photos for practically every single piece of official paperwork you do. I brought a few extras with me (I have seven; that should last me at least the first couple weeks of school!) so I decided to sleep in instead of joining them. I didn't wake up until 10; it's one of the few times so far I've been able to actually sleep for more than 6 hours at a time. I took a shower and ate breakfast downstairs, and now I'm waiting until 2ish, when we're going to the Université again to figure out our classes finally. Wish me luck!