We wake up early to speak to our contact teacher and get the bikes from her that we are borrowing. When we get to her office, she is not there. So, we head down to the access card office to get our access cards, which allow us into the buildings after hours and serves as our library cards. We are a half hour early and I (Jen) am thirsty so we head to the library to get a drink. The vending machine eats almost $2 of mine. We head back to the access card office and now there is a line through the lobby and almost out the door. We wait patiently and then it is our turn. Christine is helped by the man on the left and I am helped by the man on the right. Christine's man says so her, "have a seat so I can take your picture... ok I am going to take your picture now" Mine says "have a seat so I can take your picture (I am looking at the floor while I am waiting for him to tell me he is ready to take the picture) then, "ok you are done." What?!? So, my picture is lovely - of me staring at the floor. This puts me in an awful mood.
Next, we get tested for MRSA by the school nurse, which includes a wonderfully comfortable throat culture. The test is required for our fieldwork placements. After that, we head to the bank to get our debit cards activated. These two activities are surprisingly successful.
We then meet up with our contact student for lunch. She takes us to a restaurant that costs $10 per meal. That is not what we would have spent on lunch normally, but how could we say no? We end up staying too long at the resteraunt and are late for class. Our very first class, and here the Americans are late. Great! When we walk in EVERYONE is sitting on the left side of the room, but we decide to sit on the right side of the room, just Christine, me, and Tess (our contact student). Awkward!
After class we met with our contact teacher and she gave us the bikes. The one that Christine ended up with had a flat tire so we walked to the bike store. We filled my bike with air and purchased a new tire and tube for her bike. It took us over an hour since we had never
changed a bike tire before! A passerby helped explain a couple steps of the process to us and the staff at the bike store ended up helping us take the tire off, but we were on our own to put the new one on. I did a lot of the work because I ended up being better at it, and I ended up splitting my thumb nail. Ouch! When all was said and done, we were quite proud of ourselves and happy to ride the bikes, but a little grouchy.We ride to the grocery store, where we bought way too much food for riding bikes there. We ended up with 4 bags and my backpack. But, we think we can handle it. We get out of the parking lot and I notice that Christine's "new" tire is flat. What?!? How could that have happened? Christine was quite annoyed, but at this point, I was hysterical. What else could I do? Everything just became hilarious to me. We walk the bikes and our groceries back to the bike shop to put air in it, to find they are closed and took the air hose inside. Now what? Do we leav
e the bikes here overnight or do we walk them home? Christine walked her bike home. I rode my bike, dropped off the groceries, then walked back to help her carry the rest of the groceries. What a day! We were so happy to be home and able to relax.
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