Day 75: Pau, France

Today was a pretty good day.  I woke up early to do a little bit of trumpet.  It is still going really, really slowly, but it is also going alright.  I do think I am making progress.  I think I will need to start judging my progress on a week to week basis, in order to maintain my sanity.  My elective class was ok.  We continued preparation for our performance in the second week of December.  It will make us famous. 

After, class, I ran home and grabbed my OFII forms.  That is the Office Francais de l'Immigrations et de l'Integration.  Had to get a medical examination in order to gain permission to stay in France.  I walked to the medical center with Rehana and Laura. (Our appointments were arranged alphabetically.) 

While I was waiting, I was paroozing some magazines, and I found this photo of Kate Middleton bashing a small chile over the head with a frying pan. 

Laura is showing off her OFII letters.

The appointment was a lot of paper work, a chest X-ray(good news: I don't have tuberculosis), and a quick visit with a doctor. 

Here is the fancy room where I got my chest X-ray.

after the appointment, we walked back, and I practiced for a little while. Then I met up with my friend Megan.  Megan is a friend from high school, and she is currently living in Aberdeen for work.  In Houston, she works for Mustang Engineering, but she is currently contracted with a company called Talisman.  Go figure.  Megan was sent here with another girl from her company, Jayna, who is also visiting Pau.  When I met up with them, it was too early for dinner, so I showed them a bit of the city.  It was a little chilly, but a nice evening. 

This is le Palais Beaumont, all lit up at night.  It was built by English aristocrats in a century.  Probably the 19th. 

 After the tour of beautiful Pau, we went to get crepes.  Laura and Jenny met us there, and we all had a great meal.  Chez Maman was closed for vacay for the last month, so I was happy to be back.  Megan and Jayna really liked it, as they should.  We then all went to Le Garage for some drinks.  It ended up being a really fun night, and we had a great time.

I would say this picture accurately captures everybody's personalities.

Here is Megan with Erin and Courtney in the background.

I ended up being out until almost 3am, but it was a very fun night.  It was great to see Megan, and Jayna is very fun as well.

I took a few pictures of this box of cigarettes because I find the different approach to packaging and warnings very interesting.

"Smoking kills"

On the other side: "Smoking creates a strong addiction, don't start."

This is standard on all cigarette packaging.  There are other messages, but every box is packaged the same way. It would be nice to see the US act as responsibly.