Downtown Grenoble

Today was one of those days I couldn’t have planned even if I tried my hardest. After walking for about an hour around the residence area buying food from various local shops in 36 degree weather, I was eating a hard-earned peach outside of the main residence building sweating buckets. Somebody mistook me for someone else, which made her walk closer before she realized I wasn’t the person she was looking for. She was very friendly and invited me to hang out with her and 3 other Canadian girls in the ORA program downtown. After running upstairs to my room (and changing my clothes because I was so sweaty, all before 9:30 AM), I went with them after some hesitation and ended up having a fabulous day downtown with three new friends.

​We walked about 30 minutes there, enjoying lovely “what even is my life” moments along the way, and sat at a little restaurant eating lunch right by a farmer’s market, where I bought a mini cantaloupe. We walked a bit more and enjoyed a cute expresso at a cafe, where we sat and sipped for probably an hour, before heading back.

I’m reading my first real french novel (yikes, embarrassing) but so far I’m realizing I understand every single sentence without any problems at all. Shoutout to my cousin Melissa for letting me borrow “The Diary of (Le Journal de) Anne Frank.”

Bonus: I met somebody from the Congo who tried to teach me some Portuguese. I later learned he speaks French, English, some Spanish, and four languages from home, too. ​

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