To address the latter part of my title: I'm not experience culture shock (I think) I'm just shocked that I cannot find any spicy foods in this country. Being Mexican (half) and having spent the better part of two weeks before my journey to France eating spicy home cooked meals, or at least grabbing a burrito with hot salsa from Chipotle, I allowed myself to go "spice-free" for two weeks. Well, enough is enough, I told myself, so I ventured off in search of a Mexican restaurant or at least some tortilla chips and salsa this past week. What I found was an empty building that used to house a Mexican restaurant (I could stay make out the fainted letters that spelled "Restaurante Mexicano") and small bags of tortilla chips and a jar of "hot" salsa from this Wal-Mat-esque establishment called Geant Casino. The chips were passable as low-grade 99 cent store nachos and the salsa was more sweet than hot. As I've come to learn the French do not like spicy food. I'll try to make the most of it, but there's really nothing much I can do but tell my taste buds sorry and keep eating more cheese. For you Chapel Hill folk, I could really from some Bandido's or Los Pos right now, a postcard from those places might suffice.
I went to another class at UPV called Politique Economique. It was meh, not horrible but not as good as the other classes I've had. It reminded me of my Poli238 classes in that I found myself doing the crossword and sudoku from some newspaper and my Hist127 class in that I could not understand much even when I did pay attention. And it was at 815, which meant I had to leave my place at 7 when it was still mad dark outside and pretty damn cold. Needless to say, I'm not taking that class. I'll stay with my Grand Defis and other Econ class at UPV, or "la fac" which the French use for the word university. Other than that, classes were fine the first week, not much different than UNC. Syllabi, assigning books to read and projects to do.
This past weekend was pretty good. Friday night was spent hanging out with other people in the program. The highlight was the football match (in American: soccer game) I went to with Isabel, Beth and Dan. The match was Montpellier vs Lyon at the Stade de la Mosson. Kickoff was at 9pm, it was late and pretty damn cold but it was worth it. Currently Montpellier is 2nd in the French league and had a chance to go to first place if Paris lost (but they won) and Lyon, currently in fifth, has dominated the French league over the past several years. The 1-nil victory was huge, and the goal, scored in 67th minute, resonated around the stadium. You could feel a huge sigh of relief from the supporters who had been frustrated throughout the night as Montpellier had chance after chance on goal but were unlucky. It was a fun experience, especially since the home side dominated the game. We were sitting around midfield in the second tier, not terrible seats at all. The sections of die-hard supporters, seated on opposite sides of the stadium, for both teams were intense. A tall chain-linked fence, barbed wire and about 50 security personnel separated the Montpellier die-hards from the field. For Lyon, the same except they were also monitored by armed police officers. Football in Europe is legit and dangerous. We arrived at the stadium at the same time that the Lyon fans were being let into the stadium (about 20-15 minutes before kickoff) and we were told to wait for a couple of minutes as they closed the gates to general admission so that the Lyon supporters could be let into the stadium escorted by police officers. Nuts.
Sunday, I did a ton of walking. I got to the city a bit by bike on Saturday, but Sunday I ran to and from the city center in the morning and later in the afternoon I walked there trying to figure out the quickest way home on foot so I can avoid paying 10 euro if I wanna get home after a night out. My bus line stops running at 840pm every night and the bus that is a 15 minute hike form my place stops at 1230 am. Not exactly ideal.
Starting to regret my "I'll wait until I get to France to get a haircut" approach to my last days in the states. I need a haircut now. And whereas I could've gotten one for 15 bucks, tip included, from my regular barber in NY it looks like I might drop upwards of 20 euro on a haircut that may not be exactly what I wanted. Jason, you really thought this through didn't you? Just like you did when you deposited all the cash you had left in your French bank account without having received the ATM card yet. Yea, I did that. I get the card on Monday, no worries. I was just a bit cashless.
No comments:
Post a Comment