On Wednesday I pretty much just got up and had a lay down until I felt a strong enough desire to get on the tram down to Bordeaux Montaigne to get those books.
While I knew a smidge of the campus from the French class there in August, I didn't know where the library was so that was fun to follow signs to get there. All of my books were in the Science of Language which is on the 2nd floor (really the third if you're a normal person). Like all the libraries here, the study tables were completely full and so silent that I felt awkward and loud walking through the stacks to get to my books. I wanted to ask someone how to check out a book, because I obviously didn't know how, and I didn't see any obvious machine to do it, but it was so quiet I couldn't bring myself to make any more noise than my footsteps.
Instead I went down to the ground level and asked a person who may have been a library. She helped me and checked out my books for me.
They were deceptively heavy and much larger than I had expected, since I had not brought my backpack with me to Montaigne. I got on the tram with my books between the arm resting on a pole and my body (this is important to the story, I promise).
About mid-way through the tram journey, the driver stopped super suddenly and slammed me, my books, and the lady behind me into the pole. I will inform you that my arm still hurts from this, and I must be blind because I can't see a bruise but there HAS to be one. That's what it feels like. Crazy.
I decided that since I was now injured, didn't have my backpack, and it was about 4, I wasn't going to try to make it to my voluntary Grammar course in 15 minutes and went home to eat some food. I did buy a muffin though, from the pastry shop at Bergonie. I've decided they have the best muffins. But the pastry shop at the end of Cours d'yser has the best Opera chocolat. My favorite. Nom.
I watched some of the democratic debate on youtube because I couldn't get it to stream at 3 that morning, but I find it doesn't really have the draw when you're not watching it live and you're alone in another country with a muffin.
At 8, I met Ana and Magy to go latin dancing at some place behind the FNAC (which is a very quality store, I would suggest it). I thought the class would last maybe an hour, so I wore regular person clothes, and did not buy toilet paper before I went cuz I was foolish and was like "I'll just get it on my way back". FOOL.
First we had an hour lesson on some dance that I don't even know what it is. I can do it though.
Then we had a two hour lesson/social dance on the Merengue. This is a very quality dance that I would suggest to everyone everywhere. As long as you have a good leading partner, you don't have to do anything. While this does account for pretty much every dance anywhere, in that as long as the leader knows what s/he is doing you can follow to the end of the Earth, the Merengue is the extreme of this. It doesn't matter what foot you use for anything, as long as you just keep moving your feet to the beat. At one point, you can do this weird spin thing that takes two counts instead of one, but you really can't mess that up because your leader just drags you about. If I had an experienced dance partner, I don't think I would ever stop doing the Merengue.
Obviously, having three hours of dance class instead of one put me at a disadvantage for toilet paper buying. I went first to the Casino shop on Argonne. It was closed. Then I went to the Carrefour on Somme. It was closed. My last hope was the Vivo Shop right up from that. On record, I will tell you that I do not like the Vivo Shop. It is a foolish, tiny store that all the old men in Bordeaux stand in from of all day long and that sells basically nothing.
It does sell toilet paper though. I bought some. It was really hard to reach though, cuz if you wanted unscented toilet paper you had to buy the two-ply on the top shelf. Ugh.
I walked home then, having gotten to the Vivo Shop at about 11:30. I decided I needed a victory gift, and I used the vending machine in the lobby to buy a new water bottle for 1 euro.
I then wrote a eulogy for my first water bottle (you can refer to it on fb if you missed it somehow), as I was feeling nostalgic.
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