Slower days

The past couple of days haven't been up to the torrid pace of the week, but have still been great times.

Friday afternoon was spent walking around downtown Rouen and the large shopping centre there. I was planning on staying in Friday night as I had less than 4 hours of sleep the night before and had to get up at 9 am again Saturday for a French intensive, but when the opportunity presented itself to head over to a bar for a bit with 3 others, I was too tempted to turn it down. And it turned out to be nice, as the bar was a semi-Irish pub and that night had live Irish music with this little boy and his mother doing some Irish tap dancing type stuff. Still it wasn't a late night, as we got back by 1 AM-ish.

The French intensive was interesting. I was placed in lvl 6, which is the highest level offered here for exchange students, and found things rather easy. There were only 6 people in our group, so the classes were pretty informal, with lots of time spent discussing (in French of course) the countries each of us came from (2 Canadians, 2 Germans, a girl from Singapore, and a guy from Mexico). The last part of the class was oral comprehension, and one of the activities was listening to a french Celine Dion song and trying to decipher lyrics. I found that kinda funny.

Saturday night a big group of us were going to head out to this upscale club called So.Be as it was having some kind of special event with no cover. However, by the time we got there, it was completely full, and a sign on the door read "Desole, complet" or "Sorry, full/sold out." So we walked just up the street to where Las Vegas (the club we went to during the week) was, only to find the place pretty much deserted. Maybe 5 people were in there. And there was a 15 euro cover charge for guys. So we left there, and at this point, most people were ready to just call it a night. The remaining 4 of us simply headed over to O'Kallaghans (the same bar we had been at the night before), had 1 round of drinks, and then got home by 2:45 am or so.

Today I slept in till 11:30 AM and woke up to a major surprise: THE SUN! Yep, for the first time on my French adventure, it was a clear blue and sunny day. To take advantage of it, I went for a brief walk, and then at 4:00 headed into the city with pretty much the usual group. We took some touristy-photos and ended up going to... ermmm.... McDonalds... for supper lol.

Now it's almost 10 pm sunday evening, and I'm certainly not going out tonight. I'll likely go to bed fairly early as I have 6 hours of classes tomorrow.

So on that note, that's all for tonight. Still missing you all, but having an incredible time.

Dan