Best and Worst Week Ever

Let's start with the bad to get it out of my system.

To Lexobus, pretty much the only bus company I can take in Lisieux, here is my middle finger. I hope you like it. It hasn't been given to anyone since the last time I drove in New Jersey.

Lexobus was on strike this week. I've written before about the uphill nightmare that is the walk to Laplace, and since I discovered Lexobus I've pretty much gotten fat and lazy and taken the bus to get there. But this week on Tuesday and Friday I had no choice but to walk it. I impressed myself on Tuesday. I got to school in twenty minutes and, while my face was red red red, I wasn't exhausted or anything. Friday was a different story. It was raining, Normandy style. Which is to say a lot. It was also super windy, so it took me double the time to get to school. And when I arrived I was soaking and assuredly stinky. After classes and lunch were over I noticed that the sun was shining bright. I though I should leave ASAP to get home without a repeat of the morning. About five minutes into my walk it started to hail. That's right. It wasn't raining. It was hailing! I'd already been suffering windburn and now I was being pelted with rock-hard pieces of ice. And do you know what happens when hail lands? It turns into water! So I'm soaked and sore from small hail bruises and my umbrella has just proven that it can do gymnastics when the wind blows hard enough (it's so mangled I don't even think it will ever be usable again). I finally get within a block from home and do you know what I see? Can you guess what I see? A fucking Lexobus! Arg!

I thought that my rant would end there, but last night I started to smell something disgusting in my apartment. Like a wet dirty dog. And then I realized that my new bag, the one I bought at soldes, was made of wool. If you don't know what that means, ask Tara.

OK. Breathe. Everything was fine last night. I got home, took a shower, worked a little on a V-Day present, had a nice dinner. And realized that a lot of good happened this week too:

-I understood every single word in "I Robot, You Jane."

-I can now choose between synonyms in French. For example, whereas before I could only call someone a man, I can now choose between the French equivalents of guy, dude, and bro.

-I did walk to and home from Laplace twice this week, and I'm not sore at all.

-I have a new neighbor who is very friendly, talkative, and generous. He cooked dinner for the two of us the other day and we had an entire conversation in French. I never get tired of hearing my accent and vocabulary are impressive!

-I made pancakes from scratch! I was missing baking powder, so in the end they were crepes, but it was fun to try a recipe from home.

-We have a new English assistant at Michelet. She's from Ghana and super-sweet. We won't be working on the same days, but maybe we'll hang out on our own.

and finally,

-Nathalie invited me to Paris next weekend! So I am finally going to see it tourist-style. Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, Champs-Elysees. Though I am supposed to think of other things I'd like to see. But I don't know too much. Any ideas??