gloomy week

the past week has been gloomy and cloudy. literally and figuratively. i started the week down with a flu and cough. no thanks to the fact that at 1/4 of the class are down with the flu bug. no thanks also to the fact that it has not stopped raining since monday till the point i write this post. what a way for the sky to celebrate the first week of autumn. afternoon temp has been averaging from 10-15 deg and evening temperature fell as low as 2-3 deg occasionally. i never thought that i would wear my long johns this early. today i wear 4 layers when i go outdoor: long john, t-shirt, a sweater plus a windbreaker. tmr is predicted to be sunny. i hope the weather forecast is true so that i can go down to Vercors Natural Park, south of Grenoble, to do a little bit of walking and hiking. i just bought myself new hiking boots because my shoes stink from all the rain!! hopefully i will get to use it tmr!

academic content is just getting heavier each day. the more i go to class, the more my french vulnerability is exposed. i just dread going to school more and more every day. i am quite lucky that i only have 3 modules at the moment; the other 3 will only start in early November. nowadays mr google also doesnt seem to be able to help much. there are many terms which are "truly french" which cannot be translated directly to english, which makes it really hard to find relevant information online.

yesterday nite i went to play vball for the 2nd week in a row. last week was really bad because the ppl i played with practically did not know how to play. they couldn't even receive the ball. yest was slightly better because at least some of them knew how to dig, set and spike. but...it was so cold (even indoor) that i didn't perspire even after 2.5 hrs. then walking back at 11 pm from the sports hall to my hostel was a disaster. it was drizzling, cold, and i forgot to bring my umbrella. great. when i reached the hostel, all i wanted was a hot chocolate or coffee. but i realised i had no water boiler. and the hot water from tap is just not drinkable. they call it hard water with very high mineral content, esp copper content. there was one time when one of my friends put hot tap water into her water bottle and when the water cools down, there was white solid (chemistry students call it precipitate) in the water.

ok till the next post!