Dinner Chez-Malou

Fridays seem to be days where I wake up thinking that I'll get so much done, and by the time I go to bed, I realize that I accomplished nothing.

Yesterday, the other Holy Cross girls and I thought we were going to finally get our student I.D. cards from the IEP--the Institut d'Etudes Politiques--which is the political science division of the University of Strasbourg that we are all enrolled in. Having a student I.D. card means that lunches at the university restaurants cost only 3.15 euro as opposed to the 5 or 6 euro I've been paying in cash each time; the I.D. also allows you to enroll in the free sports and exercise classes at the university; and most importantly, the I.D. also allows you to actually enroll in university courses (because at the moment, I'm going to classes that I'm not technically allowed to be in.....oops). As one can imagine, receiving my student I.D. is now a priority for me.

Well, since Fridays seem to be doomed for failure, you can probably guess what happened: we were unsuccessful. The 9 a.m. IEP meeting ended up being yet another hour-long "welcome" speech when we thought it was an appointment to get our I.D.'s. We were then told to go to the IEP after lunch to get our student cards. So of course, we turned up after lunch only to be told that the IEP didn't have our I.D. cards--and that we needed to trek back to main campus to the Agora building. However, when we entered Agora, we were told that the office was having issues, and to come back on Monday.

Typical France, being so disorganized and non-functional.

The back-and-forth hunt for our I.D. cards actually ate up most of the day, unfortunately. It also made me walk miles for no absolutely no reason. After the final failure, Kat and I decided to go shopping for a bit, which was fun (and I bought a cute sweater on sale!). At 5:30 p.m., though, we took the tram and headed to Malou's apartment.

Malou (our cultural coordinator and on-site academic advisor) had invited us for dinner last night, and it ended up being quite enjoyable, actually.

The five of us--Melissa, Marissa, Jacqueline, Kat, and I--showed up at Malou's around 6 p.m. and started preparing dinner (the other three HC girls are traveling this weekend). Malou was making us Thai chicken curry with zucchini and rice, complete with a plum crumble for dessert! We helped her prepare that, then the five of us struggled a little to make chocolate chip cookies. Melissa has a special family recipe for the cookies, but the problem arose when translating all the measurements into grams, since the French don't use cups and tablespoons. Also, the French don't have real brown sugar. They have natural brown "cane sugar," but they don't sell the packed molasses-brown sugar that is used in U.S. cookie recipes.

Dinner and both deserts were delicious. Malou's 24-year-old son, Lucas, ate with us as well, along with Lucas's friend and an Australian guy who has been couch-surfing at his house for the past few days. Conversation was in English since the random Australian guy doesn't speak French, but his story was fascinating: he was unhappy with his job, so he quit and then planed a 5-and-a-half month journey through Europe, hopping from Turkey to Spain to Croatia to England to Italy to Russia to Slovakia to Sweden.... honestly, he's been pretty much everywhere in Europe! And in a few days, he's leaving for Boston to spend another three months exploring America, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba! I imagine that hundreds of people wish they had the guts (and the freedom and the financial stability) to take that adventure...

Oh, the people you meet, right? Yesterday turned out to be unsuccessful and, at times, a little frustrating (stupid French bureaucracy), but the dinner chez-Malou (at Malou's house) made it all a little better. I'll just have to live without my student I.D. until Monday... unless another problem arises, of course.