France - 9/27/00

9/27/00

My stupid key [room key]  is giving me problems again.  It took Luke and me quite a while to get it out last night, and tonight, Sarah, Aimee, Christina, & I worked on it a long time before it finally came out.  Then I got the guy downstairs on night duty to come up - he finally got it out, but said he needed to call someone to get something done about it tonight,  At this moment, there are two men working on getting the stupid key out.  I'm frustrated.  I want to call Jamie.  They're pounding on the door  (hammering!  And everyone on this floor is trying to sleep!) and I keep hearing the French equivalent of "whoops!" and that's bad.  And some curse words.  I think they just removed the lock.  (sigh)  My teacher is never going to believe that I couldn't sleep because two men were changing the lock on my door all night.  And I still have that article presentation to prepare.  I think I just heard a "ça marche" ["that works"], but now there's more hammering.  Sarah is in here studying to keep me company.

[Later]

They finished!  I just tried my new key and it works.  I still have that presentation to do and my whole getting-ready-for-bed routine.  Sarah and I went to the gare today to buy our tickets to Cannes and the ticket lady told us there's an SNCF strike until Friday morning at 8am, so she doesn't know if our 6am train will be running,  We have to go back tomorrow to find out.  If we have to wait for the later train, there are two layovers and we wouldn't even arrive until 7-something pm.  I hope they tell us tomorrow that the 6am will be running!  We read our stories aloud in class today.  They were all good, but ours was incredibly long and even bored me.  Josh, the deaf guy, is here now and ate lunch with us; he's majoring in French and accounting.  That absolutely amazes me - deaf, and majoring in a foreign language.  He's really nice, though I feel awful when I can't understand what he's saying.  Sarah and I bought groceries at Ecoservice today and borrowed Aimee's pot and skillet to make dinner.  An herbed chicken & pasta thing, and fresh tomatoes & mozzarella in oil & vinegar.  Yummy!  I ate way too much.  Luckily, we'd had dessert over an hour before dinner (a vanilla and caramel ice cream thing) so I didn't have to worry about fitting that in!  Tomorrow night, Aimee is making us all French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon for dinner!  I'm excited.  I'm going to do my crunches while thinking of my wonderful man, and then I'll try to start the article.  I love you, Jamie!