An unexpected arrival

Most of yesterday wasn't super eventful. I went to the university in the afternoon, and found the office of international relations, only to find that, despite the clearly marked hours next to the door indicating that it would be open, it was in fact closed. No one could tell me why. I even stopped some American exchange students to ask them, and they said they had no idea because their program was independent from the rest of the exchanges that the university does.

So, since I was still within the hour in which one is allowed to reuse one's tram ticket, I went home.

It was disappointing to me that I couldn't get a jump on getting my student ID card. I am beginning to fear that I will have to take a passport photo to them -- and the extras that I had made for this trip got packed up during the move out of my apartment at OU. At any rate, there are a lot of things I'm paying a lot more for without a student ID than I will with one -- the tram, for instance, which I'm paying for one ticket at a time instead of buying a monthly pass.

I went and found Auchan, which is a really large store for groceries, etc. It turned out to be located inside the mall, which I never would have expected. The first time I went, I was bewildered by all the new and different things, and only noticed the first floor. There are actually three floors (unless there are more I haven't found, which is entirely likely since the escalators aren't in the same location on each floor and I didn't look very hard). The first floor was the most interesting though, since they had a lot of food selections I wasn't used to. They have a whole aisle of butter, and butter substitutes. A whole aisle of red wines, a whole aisle of white wines (a novelty in itself, since in Oklahoma you can't sell anything but beer in a grocery store). And? A whole aisle I have yet to explore that was labeled "pâté". There was also a bafflingly large selection of cream.

I came home and was in the process of cooking some chicken with some mushrooms and onions in a white wine cream sauce (and totally winging it, I might add) and I heard a buzzing sound. I wasn't sure what it was, but there are all kinds of noises coming from the street and the pub and I just kind of ignored it. A few minutes later I heard something that sounded strangely like my name coming from the window onto the courtyard. It turned out to be Alex, wandering around the building shouting my name, trying to find our door.

I let him in and we hung out at the apartment for a while, and then we took another trip to Auchan so that Alex could buy some grape juice. After that we walked over to Place de la Victoire and had a beer on the patio. There were four or five bars on the same square, and they were sort of sharing outdoor seating. There were a really surprising amount of people out on a Monday night, and I was glad to see that not all of them seemed to be students.

We left Place de la Victoire and went to Dick Turpin's, which is the name of the pub underneath our apartment. It turns out to be English themed, and plays mostly old rock by English artists, but they did also play a selection from Monty Python, though I can't remember which one it was now.

We came back upstairs and Alex crashed, and I watched some X-Files on my computer.

I may try going back to the university here in a few minutes.