Broken Computer and Lots of Rain, but an Awesome Day of Fun!

Recently my computer was having difficulty connecting to the internet on campus until all of the sudden it froze and would no longer start up.  It hasn't been all that bad roughing it out without my computer, in fact, if anything it is liberating.  But still, with classes requiring research, friends trying to make plans to meet up abroad, and a blog left un-updated, I wish I would not have to walk fifteen minutes to the computer lab here to get onto the internet.  Hopefully I can get that figured out soon, but until then, apologies for the slow updates. 

So far, Lille has been quite on and off with the weather but there has been lots of rain.  I bought a cheap umbrella for the first time - unlike Seattle, where it sprinkles constantly but rarely ever pours down, Lille has lots of rain that comes down hard.  In addition to that, everywhere I walk to is at least a ten minute walk (school wise - luckily getting to Lille Centre is easy to get to by metro and I'm just a minute away from the metro stop), so by the time I get to class without an umbrella, I am absolutely soaked.  It only took one of these experiences to teach me that in Lille, an umbrella is a necessity.

Fortunately, the weather yesterday was magnificent; cold in the morning, still, but warm by day and throughout the night.  I say fortunately because yesterday was a sort of field day for all of the school's residences where we had a bit of a social.  They bused over 800 of us students to an off-campus location where there were bouncy obstacle courses, a mechanical bull (I resisted), dance parties, lots of food, and many other organized activities.  Each residence passed out different colored t-shirts so you could tell who was coming from which residence and there were some competitions between each one.  They also taught each residence a choreographed dance - nothing close in comparison to the Orientation dances, I will say - to the Black Eyed Peas song 'I've Got a Feeling' and at the end of the night after dinner we all did the dance together, all eight hundred and some of us.  Water was tossed in the air, people were jumping up and down, and everyone had a smile on their faces!  It was loads of fun and I was thankful to live in a school residence so I could have the experience. 

Lately I've been planning out my trips to go around Europe and if there's one conclusion I have come to, it is that I'm just going to have to come back.  There are too many things I have on the old bucket list that I don't want to rush and too little money in the bank account to make all of them a possibility (although, donations are welcome).  For now, London, Amsterdam, and Paris are on the books and hopefully more will be solidified soon enough!