Thursday 29 June 2017
The
four of us met up after class again today and this time had lunch at a crêperie.
I ordered one with lettuce, ham, cheese, and egg. It was ok, but not mind blowingly
good.
After lunch we went to the Musee
Dauphinois. The museum is in a former Monastery for women established in the
1700’s. It was donated to become a museum by one of the nun’s descendants who
was a table craftsman in the late 1800’s. It had a really nice garden with an
insect hotel, which I thought was really cute.
 |
| fairy hut outside museum |
 |
| View of the river Isere from the museum |
I took a bus home from downtown Grenoble,
which was nerve-wracking to take a new way, but I knew it was much faster than
taking the tram all the way up to campus then taking another bus home. I found
my stop ok, and when I got off it was raining really hard. It was still
slightly warm, so I wasn’t cold, but it was pouring down rain. I had no umbrella,
so there was no helping it. I got completely soaked. It was actually really
nice walking home in the rain. Because I took the bus straight from the city I
had a longer walk back to Helene’s house, but I discovered a walking trail
along the way, and realized there is a little stream along my path that is very
pretty. I felt like a child walking home from school in the rain, but it
actually felt really good. I think there’s some sort of mental cleansing as
well as physical that comes from walking in the rain.
Nobody was home when I got there, so I
went straight to the shower to get cleaned up, and hung my wet things from the
line in my room. That bungee line I bought on Amazon for hanging things in my
room has actually turned out to be the most useful thing I bought for this
trip. When I got out of the shower Helene arrived and said dinner was ready.
It was ready so quickly because she wanted
to have the sardine salad again since I didn’t eat much the night before. She
said they were soaked in lemon juice and vinegar. I didn’t want to be insulting
so I tried the sardines this time. They weren’t as bad as I thought they were
going to be, and they did taste citrusy, so that was good, still though the
sight of them made me want to gag.
Pierre did not eat with us. Helene said he
went to his house in the mountains to paint until the weekend. She said he’s
the kind of person who needs a few days of alone time. I thought that was cute.
I really like Pierre, I wish it was as easy for he and I to communicate as it
is for Helene and me. Helene knows about as much English as I know of French,
so when I don’t know a word in French I just say it in English and she knows
what I’m talking about, and she does the same for me. Pierre doesn’t know much
English at all, and he has a thick white beard, and he mumbles, so it’s pretty
difficult for me to understand him. I think he struggles to understand my
accent as well. Still though, I would call him, and Helene as well kindred
spirits. 
After dinner Helene and I watched a TV
show about Queen Margot, daughter of Catherine de Medici. She was Catholic and
married a Protestant to bring an end to a very bloody war between the Catholics
and Protestants but her marriage was quite political and she didn’t love her
husband. Instead she took many lovers, and despite one of them being beheaded
for committing adultery with her, Margot still continued to take lovers. She
also was very into make-up and painting her face white, but got lead poisoning
from the paint.
I’ve been keeping my bedroom door shut and
the mosquitos are subsiding, but I still got a new bite on my toe when we were
watching TV, as the mosquitos have free reign over the living room. The rest of
the bites are healing though, so physically the itching is getting a bit
better.
No comments:
Post a Comment