Chips

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You'll never believe the flavors of potato chips they have here. Wednesday, we bought a bag of Lay's chips that were 'Roasted Chicken with Thyme' flavored. The best part? They were delicious! It really tasted like roast chicken, which is either good or bad I guess. Anyway, I finished the bag in two days. Good stuff.

The Mall

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Yesterday Lauren and I went to the French version of the mall. But, instead of being called a mall, it is called a Centre Commerce. They look pretty much the same. Two levels of stores, all the same stuff. The mall has this huge store called Carrefour attached to it. It's like the Super Wal-Mart for Frenchies. As far as I can tell, it's about as big as a Wal-Mart. The only difference is that it was super crowded. Not that Wal-Mart necessarily isn't crowded, but this place was crazy. And a lot of people there had their dogs with them. The French dogs must be like best friends, cause they never go anywhere without them. And this are big dogs too, not the kind they can hold or carry in a Paris Hilton dog-sac. I'm really surprised I didn't see a dog shit in the mall, they shit everywhere else.

Saturday night we went to some French friends of Lauren's for dinner. They're names were Ileana and Mikael. I think one of them is originally from Argentina and the other is from Pakistan. They were really nice. They made us a kind of stir fry with only bell peppers. It was very good. Before dinner Mikael cut up some sausage and some cheese for an appetizer. He offered me some and I took the sausage and tried to take a bit out of it. It was pretty tough. He saw me struggling to take a bite and said, "Uh.. you have to take the skin off the outside first." "Oh. . . . Thanks," I said a little embarrassed. But, it was some good sausage. I think he said it was made with Blueberries? Then, after dinner, we watched Napoleon Dynamite, which we had brought. Both of them spoke really good English, so we assumed they might think it was pretty funny. Mikael laughed a lot, but Ileana just kinda sat there. I don't think it was her type of humor at all.

Soldes

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Today, Lauren and I went shopping. In France, they only have sales twice a year. Once in January and once in June. By sale, I mean EVERYONE has a sale. Evidently it's a pretty big deal. Every clothing store or shoe store that we walked by had big signs hanging everywhere saying "-30% -40% -50%." I got another pair of pants for 15€. The stores were so packed. You could barely move. One of Lauren's French friends informed us that the sales last for a month! So, we'll probably go back later and get some more cheap stuff.

Alcohol and (Dog) Shit

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Lauren and I went to Monoprix today. It's kinda like the French version of Kroger. Anyway, it really surprises me how cheap some things are here and how expensive other things are. Usually, a can of Coke (and they ARE smaller here, Robb, you bastard) costs around 2€ in machines and around 3.50€ in restaurants. Wine and liquor are completely opposite. There are often just as cheap as a Coke.

Anyway, I bought a six pack of France's version of Budweiser today called Stella Artois for 2.50€. John, Robb, and Charlie will appreciate this: a six pack of Heineken here is only 4€. How crazy is that. Liquor is the same way. It is way cheaper here. Josh and John, that same set of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey and two glass set that you bought me as a going away present is sold here for 19.90€. Crazy.

Well, that's really all I wanted to say in this email. It's cold as balls here. I doubt it gets over 40 degrees ever. It has snowed a bit, but not enough to amount to anything. All the mountains around the town are covered in snow. I think tomorrow I'm going to take a bus up to the top of one of the mountains so I can get some good pictures. I'll try to work on posting some soon.

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There is dog shit everywhere here! The Frenchies aren't required to pick up after the dogs like in the US. On top of that, the dogs shit right on the sidewalk, in the middle of the path! They don't even wait for the dignity of a patch of grass. Unbeleivable. It's like walking through a mine field, watching every step because it might be your last.

A Week of Travel

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I returned to Grenoble yesterday to find that my bag had FINALLY arrived! It was so nice to wear my own clothes again. Well, I'm going to try and catch everyone up on what we did for the last week.

Lauren's parents rented a car last Monday morning and we started on our driving tour. Our intention was to drive through the Loire valley (wine region) and tour some famous Chateaus (castles). Our first stop was the chateau at Chambord. It was described as "massively huge." That description was absolutely correct. The place was gigantic. So, we toured through there and then went to the hotel where we were staying. It was a smaller chateau built in the 1500's. It was really nice. The lady who owned the place was super friendly. She made a "simple" dinner for us that night which consisted of four courses. The cheese course was particularly interesting. We had heard that the worst they smelled, the better they tasted. That couldn't have been farther from the truth. I was naive enough to try the worst smelling one. I was able to swallow it, but I was afraid I might start dry heaving at any second.

The next day we went to three more chateaus that were close by. We toured the chateau at Amboise, Ussé, and Azay-le-Rideau. All of them were very nice. We stayed at the same place that night.

On Wednesday, we went near Orleans and toured a couple of more chateaus. I can't remember all of the names right now. I'll try to post some pictures in the next few days. I'll let everyone know.

Thursday we drove into Paris and dropped the rental car off. We spent four night in Paris and did all the normal tourist stuff. We went to Notre Dame, Saint Chapelle, the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Orsay Museum, the Louvre, and other stuff I can't remember. I did have to buy some more clothes in Paris because, even though I had washed my one outfit twice, it was beginning to get a bit stale. So, I bought some more underwear, some socks, another long sleeve shirt, and a pair of pants. I got them all for pretty cheap. The shirt was only 10 and the pants 15.

So, Lauren's family left yesterday to go home and we rode the train back to Grenoble. Lauren didn't feel very well, and it turns out today that she has a pretty bad cough and a 101 temperature. So, she's hanging out in bed. I just got back from the grocery store, which I went to with one of Lauren's gay roommates. He's really nice though. Lauren says the other one is really negative though. Alright, that's all for now. I'll work on posting some pictures on my website and I'll email everyone once they're up. Hopefully by Thursday or Friday. I hope everyone is doing well. I don't get any news here, so if anything major happens over there, email and tell me.