August 25th (day two in Bordeaux)

Wednesday, August 25, 2010, Valeria and I went to the grocery store Carfour to get stuff for breakfast.  We got chocolate croissants, boxed orange juice, and nectarines to last us for the week.  Then we got ready because we had a “pique-nique” with everyone and the directors of the EAP program in Bordeaux.  Then we had our first and last meeting in English.  It was about safety and scheduling and stuff…

Afterward, a bunch of us went downtown.  We all of course split apart because it is hard to keep everyone together in a group of like 20-25 people.  My group wandered, went to a phone store, got ice cream, picked up my black and white film, went into a bunch of stores and did some minor shopping for necessities like bath towels and such, and then proceeded to get sandwiches for dinner in the park.   

While eating dinner, we saw this major fight break out.  A man and a woman were hitting and kicking this other woman and yelling stuff in French.  Dogs were barking like crazy and both girls were bleeding down their faces! It was insane! I immediately told the girls I was with to get up and leave.  I didn’t even want to risk the chance of being involved in that… especially since they kept moving closer and closer to us.

As soon as we got back to our dorms, people were leaving to go back downtown… so of course Valeria and I went with them.  We met a bunch of the EAP people at a bar downtown.  We hung out in the bar for like 20 minutes and then everyone decided to leave… besides the fact that half of the group left the bar when we got there or didn’t even bother to go inside.  We decided to just catch the tram back to our dorms… unfortunately the tram wasn’t running in that direction anymore.  By that time, there was a group of like 30 trying to figure out how to get back to the dorms.  We ended up calling a bunch of taxis to take us back.  I’m not sure that much effort to get back to the dorm was worth the 20 minutes at the bar. :/