Good weekend

I think this was the second weekend I've actually been in Nantes since I first arrived, and it was a good one.

Thursday night I went over to my classmate Abdel's house for a "Managerial Economics and Pizza" party. I went over fully expecting that we were all just going to drink, eat and have a good time. I was surprised when everyone actually had their books with them and we started discussing economics. I took econ last year, so it was all review for me, but many of my classmates weren't familiar with it, so they asked me to give them an overview of the key concepts as best I could. When we had class the next day, I felt like I actually explained things pretty well. Not sure how much I'm going to enjoy 10 weeks of repeat information, but maybe there will be some new information or at least a different perspective from the prof.

After class on Friday, I went to lunch with Pan, Cherif and Gihad at the University Cafeteria. Amazing bargain: 3 course meal for less than 3 euros because it's subsidized by the government. I had a salad, pork jambalaya, spinach with mornay sauce, and some sort of chocolate cream for dessert. Not too bad.

After lunch, I had to take care of getting my OFII form mailed in to the French government. Since I'm staying in France for more than 3 months, I had to fill out a form that gives them my local contact information, and eventually I'll probably have to have a medical exam and pay a 55 euro tax. That part seems kind of silly to me since I'm only here for three weeks past the three month deadline, but I'm not going to argue with it. The form had to be sent registered mail, so I was hoping the postal worker would speak English so I could be sure I sent it in the right way. No luck. I told them I spoke French, but not very well, and proceeded to explain what I needed. It worked out just fine... and in fact, the postal worker told me I spoke French very well. That was a nice confidence booster.

Friday night I had dinner with Ivan a few blocks from my apartment. An interesting meal, with chicken, carrots, mushrooms, onions and rice in a tahini-coconut milk type of stew/sauce. Probably not very French, but it was delicious. I had a pineapple-apple-chocolate crumble for dessert, and it too was fantastic. We went to a bar for a glass of wine after dinner, and then it was time to call it a night.

Yesterday I went to the big shopping plaza, Atlantis, in hopes of finding a sports store that Ivan told me about. He said they had very low prices on good quality sweaters and sweatshirts, but when I asked where the "magasin du sport" was, no one knew what I was talking about. Maybe next time. I did go into IKEA and had a slice of almond cake because it was a 1 euro special. I'm starting to appreciate French desserts more and more every day... though I'm really going to have to make sure I keep walking around a lot to make up for it.

Cherif and Abdel came over last night for some drinks and conversation. Cherif made me speak to him in French all night so that I would get some practice, and it actually went pretty well. The thing is, I basically know how to say what I need to say, I'm just really bad at conjugating verbs correctly. Practice makes perfect (or at least a little improvement) I guess. We went out to a dance club around 2 a.m., it closed at 3, then we went to another one until about 5. I had a great time dancing with the boys, but I was exhausted by the time I got home.

Today I watched some TV, wrote and edited a group memo for our law class, and did a load of laundry. It's going to be another pretty easy week at school. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday have class from 9-12 and then free afternoons, and Tuesday is class from 9-12 and 2-5. We have Thursday off, though, so I'm going to take a train trip somewhere to use up the last day of my rail pass. Not sure where yet, but I'll figure something out.