Day 23, October 16th

Sunday was a busy day. Melanie and I left the apartment at 10:30 and proceeded to endure an hour-long car ride to her parent’s vacation/weekend house. Once there, all of us went for a walk along the beach – dog included.

After that, we ate a fancy, elaborate lunch. It included raw Salmon (which I passed on. Raw fish and meat just… doesn’t work for me), followed by rice and chicken with mushroom sauce, and baguette, followed by cheese and then a dessert. We then returned to Melanie’s house.

That evening, she showed me around town a bit, then we headed off to her parents again; this time their normal house, only twenty minutes away. There, we had dinner with her parents, brother, sister and her sister’s husband. Little pretzels as snacks before dinner, then a cucumber salad, followed by a beef and carrot stew, with a baguette, followed by cheese and then dessert once more. Though Melanie’s mother did tell me they don’t have dessert like that every day. She seemed worried I’d think badly of them.

By the time we got back to the apartment, I did very little before bed, hence yesterday’s blog post is today. I promise, for the last of my days in France, daily posts will resume!

Day 24, October 17th

Back to work today. The day passed easily enough. Did some labeling of shelves and whatnot and at one point, Sylvie and I went to buy new English study-related books. I’d never looked around that bookstore before, so I sought out the English section and found more of the Penguin Popular Classics.

Including Dracula!

It is now mine. Including The Wizard of Oz, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

No more bookstores for me. It’s bad that there’s one with a good English selection only two minutes away from where I work. It takes me fifteen/twenty minutes to eat lunch and then I need to figure out what to do for the rest of my hour, sometimes nearly two-hour, long break. It often leads to browsing, which leads to discoveries.

Discoveries are bad.

More playing Plants vs. Zombies during my break, it seems. Or Angry Birds. I have enough games on my phone to keep me entertained. Of course, I’ve almost finished the main first play-through of Plants vs. Zombies. Level 5-8 and no deaths yet! There are only 5-10! I refuse to let this blind no-death run go to waste in the last three levels.

Moving on!

After work, Kujtesa and I had some dinner together and looked around the town a bit. There’s still no sign of a Mario reference. Four days left; think I can still find one?

Four days and I’ll be home. Time to get the unnecessary items into my suitcase tomorrow, just to start cleaning things up a bit. I also need to mentally prepare for the attack of Trouble. And by Trouble, I mean my cat. She’s going to kill me when I return. Leaving her for four weeks.

What was I thinking?

Related articles

• Life in France: Day 1 + 2 (natashamcneely.wordpress.com)
• Life in France: Day 22 (natashamcneely.wordpress.com)