2 February 201

Today was my second day of class. The way it works is that we only have one class per day, but each class is 3 or 4 hours long. We also only have each class once per week.

Today I had Microelectronic Circuits II lecture. It was easy. So far everything we covered has pretty much been review, except for a BJT power dissipation equation I don’t recall seeing before. (A BJT is a bipolar junction transistor. Transistors are in pretty much everything electronic. I’ve been instructed in their use as amplifiers thus far– making a signal bigger, smaller, inverted, etc.) I like my professor, she seems very nice.
Today I enjoyed coffee for the first time. After fighting sleep for the first hour and a half of class, I decided to try coffee during our 20 minute break. A girl was already at the machine in front of me. She said something to me in French, to which I replied “Parles vous anglais?” and then in English she asked if I wanted a drink. I said yes and she proceeded to press a special button on the machine with a special key bob and so I got my Café Lait for free :) People here are so friendly, really. The “French people think Americans are assholes” stereotype simply isn’t true. (The staff member in charge of international students has a Barack Obama pen holder on her desk) Most people are happy to get a chance to try their English, just as I want to try French. And the coffee was actually good. Erin tasted it an informed me it was full of sugar, and it had a frothy milk layer, so that’s probably why <_<>

Last night we all went to Auchan (the super walmart type store) again. Erin and I bought groceries and tissues and such and it only cost us 55 Euros for the two of us (we decided to share food and cook together – what fun!); we were pleasantly surprised. For dinner we ate pasta with Bolognaise sauce. The sauce was pretty much like Chef Boyrdee (sp?) sauce. So eh, we’ll try another one next time. And we got a bag of croissants –mmm!!! I’ve eaten so many… - a couple long baguettes, jam (they have the bonne mamon that I like to get at Wegmans from France), cheddar cheese that tastes more like a mix of cheddar and American, a brick of margarine that was the cheapest we could find, green beans, clementines (a deeper orange than the ones we get in the states, these are form Moracco), lettuce, and milk (we were looking for skim but I don’t think it exists here. There were three different types and we chose the one with the least amount of fat and calories, and it still tastes creamier than 2%). I also bought a small bread pan that I can make banana bread with. Oh, and travesty! Bananas cost 1.70 Euros per Kilo! What happened to $0.40 per pound? :( I need to find a new cheap fruit… Hey Central/South America, thank you for being in the same hemisphere as the US and making bananas cheap!

Tonight Erin and I had grilled cheese, clementines, and green beans. We realized we need more food. Preferrably something that isn’t a carb… So we have to go back to Auchan again…

One thing I learned: In America, you know how all nutrition labels list things in Calories? Turns out, 1 American Calorie is actually 1,000 Calories. Europe has everything listed in kCal. So a 100Cal snack bar in America is 100kCal in Europe. There’s marketing for ya.

This evening I think I’m going to O’Sullivans, a British pub, for Foreigner Night with the other US students and Thibau, Tim’s French room mate.

Last night we all played cards in my room around my desk – which is big enough to be a dinner table.

More for my list of things different in France:

• They have plain Doritos!!! So they’re basically tortilla chips. Awesome.