Settling down

I am now sitting in my room enjoying a cup of rather cold teh tarik(but nonetheless still teh tarik!!) after my first rice cooker meal of instant noodles. HOHO. Finally figured out how to use it. I guess it was a good decision to invest 5kg of my total baggage allowance seeing that my residence hall has neither a kitchen (only 2 microwaves) nor a kettle. NO KETTLE. I'm thinking I should probably retrieve mine from London, but for now the rice cooker will do. Oh brilliant, wonderful, multi-purpose rice cooker.

Strasbourg has been pretty exciting so far! On Monday I went to register with my hall and paid my rent, then went to check out the university. Had a lot of admin things to do especially with all the paper work, I'm STILL not done yet but hopefully they'll be sorted out soon. Also went to Carrefour to pick up some groceries and finally putting my mini fridge into use! 

Tuesday was more or less the same, went to photocopy some stuff and went to the post office to mail my visa form. I'm still quite confused as to how the French postal service works. Then I walked to the city centre to check out Galeries Lafayette!! There's a Topshop on the 3rd floor and omg, they have their own sales which is amazing because it's 70% off and I managed to find the Poppy Garden Bardot Top which I've been eyeing in SG in my size AND it was only 10.80 euros. 10.80 EUROS!!! They had 2 left and when I went back today (Thursday) again it was gone so very very thankful that I managed to buy it. Also saw they had one last piece of the burgundy knit top in my size but it wasn't on sale and I forgot to see if it's still there today ... Really need to figure out how the sales here work HAHA. I also bought books from this book market at the city centre, all the books were going for mostly 1.50 euros each and even though the books are secondhand they were in really good condition. I left my Les Miserables behind in London, so I bought a kind of like guide copy and also L'Etranger by Albert Camus. Very very happy with my purchases :D I feel like this is exactly the kind of life I've been envisioning for so long. Had a lonely lunch in macs at the city centre, then it started to rain as I was walking back but luckily I brought an umbrella with me. The rain here is quite like the showers in Singapore instead of the drizzle in London so my shoes got quite wet. Took a nap in the afternoon, then my neighbour Renato who lives opposite me came to have a chat and we went to the kebab place near the hall for dinner. The kebab was quite good and it's so much cheaper than London's T_T

Wednesday was quite chill too, went to check out the mall Rivetoile nearby and they have a lot of shops there like Zara and Hollister. There's also this giant supermarket called E.Leclerc which is exactly like Giant they stock everything. Bought stuff like trash bags (because they don't give plastic bags here!!!) and a mug-bowl (left mine behind in London T_T) and more food, but they didn't have cherry tomatoes and the yogurt drink that I wanted so had to go to Carrefour for those. Came back and napped again in the afternoon. I swear I sleep so much here because there's not much to do and life seems to be really slow at times and I'm just really tired everyday HAHA. But I wake up early though. Anyway after I woke up at about 4pm I was contemplating whether or not to take a walk to Germany when my new Turkish friend came to visit so we decided to just go to Germany. Yes, GERMANY. It took us about an hour slightly more to walk over but the Pont du l'Europe was amazing!!! We walked to Kehl and the moment we entered German territory it just felt different. Like the architecture and all. We wanted to walk to Lidl's at first but it was getting a bit late and we wanted to come back before sunset, so we didn't go that far. But still, it's pretty cool to be able to actually WALK to Germany I think I'm going to do that pretty often!! And of course now I've officially visited Germany too despite not going through the proper immigration border HAHA. 

Had our first Erasmus meeting in school today, didn't do much except to find out that we have to pick courses from Licence 3 so have to re-select the modules tonight :( Had lunch with the UCL-SXB gang, then we went to the city centre afterwards. Went to see the inside of the cathedral, then went back to Galeries Lafayette and OMGGGGG the jeans were 70% off this time!!! Like ALL the white jeans including Jonis and Jamies with and without the zip at the ankle. I didn't want to buy white jeans at first cause I already have a pair of white cigarette pants but I couldn't stop thinking about them ... Anyway the Jonis were nice but they were horribly sheer for jeans so as much as I really wanted them they're not too practical :( Also I already have a pair of baby pink ones (the ones that I've been eyeing in SG as well HAHA) so I passed on those. The Jamie jeans ran really small, I couldn't get the W25 past my hips ugh so I went for the W26 and they were really nice and not sheer! They were slightly too loose at the waist but the Jamies come with belt loops anyway so not really a problem. I went with the ones without the zip at the ankle cause they seemed more versatile and more practical anyway. Got them for only 16.50 euros (!!!) and I came back to find that they're still online for 40 quid (!!!) HAHAHAHA OMG I LOVE LOVE LOVE GALERIES LAFAYETTE!!! And I got a loyalty card today HAHAHA. I saw dungarees on sale today but they weren't in my size and now I'm a bit worried that my burgundy knit might be sold already :( Guess I might just make a trip back tmr if I have the time ...

Anyway, after I came back I managed to figure out how to use the rice cooker, so I cooked my first meal! Feels good to be eating some hot food at last T_T I'm going to do more admin stuff tonight like go through the guide pedagogique for the list of modules, then tomorrow I have my inscription administrative where I am going to present the 2 shitty passport photos I took this morning. School doesn't properly start until like October cause we apparently have 3 weeks until end of September to sit through all the classes we want to do and decide, but I quite want to fix my timetable soon-ish so that I can start making weekend plans at all. I am loving Strasbourg ^_^