Shopping again with French people! What a crazy day!

Today again, I decided to meet up with Elsa at the the Dinosaur mall. Today she was going to buy a cellphone and a present for Audrey, since it's her birthday today. Hiem came too. What would a French girl like Audrey want? They decided a scarf was a good idea. Elsa told us that there were scarves in the store she bought her flip flops in, and Hiem said she wanted some flip flops too. So we went. When we walked into the department store, Elsa was going directly for the scarves, but Hiem stopped immediately to look at a blouse. And a shirt. And some pants. Dépêche-toi Hiem! (Hurry up!) ;)

We arrived at the flip flop section.  Hiem didn't like them. Moving on. We found the scarves, and they started looking for one that was Audrey's style.  They found some good ones, but not at a good price. So we looked in other places, and they finally found one!

 

They were planning to go eat sushi with the birthday girl.  They invited me, but I was already booked. So we parted ways.  I went home, ate a quick lunch and went to UBP.  I was going to meet a professor from the architecture program. She had asked around if there was anyone willing to give English classes and my name popped up. So we chatted and organized for our classes that will start next week.  I also saw Carolina! She was on campus today because there was an HR event today. We started catching up, but when I saw my classmates walking by, they reminded me that I had class. Caro and I decided to meet up later and have merienda (afternoon snack).

After class, I was hanging out with my friends, when a bunch of journalists came to take pictures and interview Keisuke.  I have no idea why, but they were doing a story on him! It was so funny watching them take him aside, put him in poses and take pictures! What a crazy day! but it's not over yet...

Keisuke (his back is turned) "studying" for the journalists.

I like shopping with French People!

Last night, Elsa asked me if I could go with her to the Dinosaur mall today because she needed to do something. I said sure and met her there this morning. We did what she needed to do, and as we were leaving, she mentioned she wanted to look for some flip flops, so we looked around. We went to 3 or 4 stores and she looked at the shoes, considered the price, and moved on. Sometimes we would comment and say these are cute, those are terrible, etc. Finally, she found some flip flops that made her happy at a good price, so she bought them. I'm glad that she's feeling happier. 

Afterwards, we went to her house to drop off the shoes and have a cup of water, and then we went to UBP, 

Elsa found some flip flops!

Shopping with French People!

Thursday, August 7

So today at UBP, we had a short discussion about our insurance.  We had to subscribe to this insurance company in order to come here, but it's pretty good. OSDE offers 100% coverage for us, so we're covered. Then we chose the classes we could take.  We could take up to six. I'm probably going to do four. The other two I want have an additional cost, so I probably won't take them.

After all of that, Yasmin, Elsa, Valentin, Audrey, Hiem, and I decided to meet up a little later at the mall. The Dinosaurio is of walking distance from my house, so I told them to let me know when they were planning on coming. When they told me they were on their way, I left home and started walking towards it.  It seems I got there first, because I got to the mall, and since we didn't set a meeting spot, I looked around the entire mall and didn't find them. So I got a Sprite at Subway (cheapest deal) and sat in the food court to wait.

While the malls in Birmingham tend to have department stores as the mall's anchor, like Belk or Macy's, this mall's central store was a supermarket... like Publix.

Anyway, I finally saw them at some cell phone kiosks near the food court, so I joined them.  Some of them were looking for a phone, so Valentin and I sat down and chatted until they were done.  When they finished, we went to a photo shop that took our photos for our visas. We had to wait an hour 20 minutes for the photos to be ready, so we walked around the mall and window shopped. Some of the girls were really attracted to the candy store. They also noticed the shoes and commented on how high the heels were. Valentin was also into shoes, and then we went into the grocery store.  They were looking for agendas, but there weren't any. So then we all went into the SONY store to look at the newest technological innovations. We ended up back in the food court, and when it was time, we went back to the photo place.  We picked up our photos and parted ways.  Elsa walked home, I walked home (in the other direction), and the others walked to the bus stop on Rafael Nuñez (so we walked together for a little bit). It was fun.  I hope we go out again soon. (Sorry no pictures this time.)