weekly update

Hello again, time to update things on here. This week wasn't too bad as far as classes go. I hung out with some friends a few nights, even joined a bunhc of them and we kinda had a night of burgers, beer, and poker on Thursday night, which was rather interesting. Only wasn't so great when I woke up the next morning not only having a headache from the night before but with a sore throat, stuffy nose, absolutely no energy and probably a fever too. Thankfully though the loan money came in and I was able to access if on Friday so I could pay for the Sécurité Social Français which is the required health care system here in France. Essentiall everyone pays a fee each month, students pay 192 euros for a full year, and up to about 75 percent of any health costs are reimbursed back to you. For example the average doctor's appointment costs 23 euros and you'd be reimbursed for 17 euros. Then there are various mutual coverages that will reimburse the rest but that is paid for per month and separately, and so far I didnt opt for that.

So, I had finally gotten the energy to head out and get this done, though I was kinda pushing for time before places closed on Friday afternoon, but I was able to get into the school's health center which costs only 6.60 euros for a visit. The doctor said I had a sinus congestion / flu and gave me prescriptions for meds, so the next stop was the pharmacy where I picked up my meds. They're rather interesting. The multivitamin is a tablet that is dissolved in water or any drink, the one decongestant is a powder dissolved in water, the one ... idk fever/ generic medicine is a powder dissolved in water, the other one is a tablet dissolved in water. (I think the french like dissolving things in water!) So I'm on those for three days and hopefully thigns will get better.

But as such, I didn't do anything today except go and get some more things at Carrefour (basically their version of Walmart) and came back here. I had wanted to head out to Roubaix to see one of the museums out there but I was still too worn out this morning and slept in till mid afternoon to the point it was too late to head out there and have enough time to get through the museum. So here I am, finishing my soup and probably going to put a movie on and crash.

I was asked to join a couple others on a trip tomorrow to a farm thing where they need people to practice their english and it's some kind of country dance too. I said I'd be interested as I had no plans of going anywhere this weekend, even before I got sick, however I've not heard anything about it yet so not sure if it will happen our not.

There are many interesting things here that always kinda take me by surprise. One of them is the kind of places they have here that we have back home - Subway, McDonald's, IKEA, Claire's (didn't expect to see that!), Disney Store, Pizza Hut (that was a shocker to see!), Aldi's and a couple others that I'm now forgetting. Then there's the different cars - I was surprised to see a couple Ford's, as well as a few Toyota's, but most of them are european brands and the cars here are so tiny! My car is tiny compared to most cars in the US but here it would fit in and actually be larger than most cars here!

Of course you can't forget the different brand names and the price value. For example, I was buying tissues last night and I was looking for the cheapest kind, figuring it would be the Carrefour brank (the generic store brand) when low and behold the cheapest one was Kleenex! And of course they have coca cola products here and they actually are about the same price as they would be back home which is very surprising as most things here tend to be the same numeric value as they would back home however here it's in euros whereas back home it's in dollars which is so much less. (a pair of fingernail clippers would cost me 2 euros - I decided I can wait till my parents send me another package and they can send me the 59 cent ones from the US).

Money is something that I normally do well in tracking and save the couple mistakes here and there (not to mention that I have a horrible habit of not always updating my registers - oops!). However, I have to watch things ever more so carefully here because some things are more expensive here in general but I have to work around a high exchange rate. The American economy is horrible compared to all of Europe. To any European, a trip to America is cheap because they get more money for the euro. But for an American to come here, it costs us even more because the dollar is worth so little in comparison.

Well, it's getting late here, and I'm getting tired so I shall be going. Hopefully everything back home is going well. Laterz!