College

I remember at my freshman orientation connection class, one of the speakers who was also a student, told the crowd that "a frebreezed shirt is nearly the same thing as a clean shirt". I had always wondered if my life would come to a point where I resorted to febreezing clothes and washing them less often. It has; enough said.

We made plans today to travel to Paris this coming weekend. A charter with Eurotravel is taking us from Brussels' Central Station at 6:35pm to a depot in Paris sometime around 9:35pm. We've got a hostel booked for the three nights we'll be there and then plan on returning Sunday afternoon. All in all none of it was too costly since the round trip cost 38euro and the hostel cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 euro for all three nights. The trip should be fun. I know some other American students there that can hopefully help us out and show us the ropes for our time in "The City of Light" (as its commonly translated).

I saw on the weather report on my desktop that Clemson was sunny and had a high today of 67 degrees today. You have no idea how envious we are of this. The weather is completely different on this side of the world. When we arrived, it snowed for days on end (which was honestly pretty cool considering I'd never seen so much of it over an extended period) but now the weather has returned to what the locals are calling "normal" (33 degree rain and drizzle).

I think I've started to blend in a bit more lately. I now know my way around the parts of the city I commute to and from decently enough. It probably helps that I got the metro down pact and no longer look around anxiously and wide eyed as I try to read french. I have even started to pick up bits and pieces of the french language. I may look a bit more like a local than I did when I first arrived, but if anyone has doubts about whether or not I'm foreign to this country, I think all I've gotta do is open my mouth. Apparently a strong southern accent confuses people who aren't familiar with it and I've actually been incorrectly placed from the former soviet block on three separate occasions.

Time to get a bit of sleep though. We've got a full day of classes tomorrow and small amount of accumulated homework.

All good; all the time,

Thomas