Oh-bla-di-oh-bla-da. . . life goes on

I've settled down into a bit of a routine here now: work (if there are patients who pass the preliminary tests), long meals, chilling/ hanging out in Lille in the evenings, and lots of sleep. Tuesday I went over to Melissa's and Ian's and we made chicken and pasta for dinner and then crepes with fruit sauce, fruit, and nutella for dessert. It was delicious, though I would be flattering myself if I said I could produce even close to the same result on my own. Wednesday I had the morning off, but stayed at the hospital late, and Thursday I was supposed to work the whole day but all the patients had vision problems that made them ineligible for our tests, so I had the day off! I then decided to go to the Palaix des Beaux Arts in Lille which was amazing! A grabbed a baguette sandwich at a local boulangerie and headed over to the museum. There was a great exhibit called "Miroirs d'Orient" which had really cool photography and paintings related to the Western view of the Arab world. It would have been even cooler if there wasn't a lady who was going right in front of me and only taking pictures of the little description and the paintings without even glancing at the paintings on their own. It would have been nice if she also didn't bump into me because she was so busy looking through the lens of her camera all the time. That would have been too much to ask though. I myself, though, forgot my camera, so unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of the gorgeous building the museum was in, so maybe I was just bitter. I plan on returning to see the rest of the "Istanbul, traversee" exhibit so I'll have my chance. The entire museum was also covered with little French children who were on their field trips, which gave the museum a nice, though somewhat boisterous atmosphere.

It was really nice to just be alone in the city for a day; even though I'm living alone, I've realized that I end up almost constantly being surrounded with other people or communicating with other people, which is great- but every now and then just taking myself out on a date in the city can be fun.
One odd little side effect of writing this blog for me has been that I have found myself almost subconsciously narrating the events of my life. I remember from psychology that one of the "identity confusions" of adolescence involved seeing yourself as the center of a some sort of movie or novel and your life as the story and I thought at the time that it was a funny idea. Now, I think I understand the idea a little bit more: recently, when I've seen something funny or thought something, I've ended up restating and retelling it in my head from a slightly removed point of view; it's amusing for a bit, though I'd prefer that this inner narrative come to an end soon. :-) Anyway, after I left the art museum, I went to the Eurolille shopping center, though I'm not quite sure why. Even before I went, I was fairly certain that I did not want to buy anything, that I was not in the mood for shopping, and even if I found something, that I should not buy it. However, I did make the important discovery that you have to pay for public bathrooms in France and that it costs 30 Euro Cents. I also now know that it's a good idea to figure out how the pay machine works before you get in line, because otherwise you'll have lots of very impatient people who really need to go, angrily rushing you as you fumble with your money and try to figure it out. Not that any of the above happened to me or anything. I also had my first craving for Asian food yesterday. I was waiting for it to happen, for I hadn't had my staple sushi or chicken tikka masala since I left home (the day before I left home to be exact). I had been walking past japanese, chinese, and indian places not remotely tempted by the foods that I ate more often than pasta at MIT, until yesterday when I went to Eurolille and spent a few minutes looking longingly at their sushi bar before getting pain au chocolat, my new staple food. Thursday evening was slow, as I missed Ian's email asking me to come to the center of Lille for dinner. I had some bad soup and went to bed early instead. I'll write more when I get back from Paris/Versailles this weekend!
And a quick last note to all of my lovely friends who have been writing me long emails and then inexplicably apologizing for writing them (you know who you are)...I love receiving your emails, so keep writing them and stop apologizing. :-)