Day 9: The Carnival

9 septembre 2009 (Day 9)
I had my first classes today. French culture should be an interesting course and I really enjoy the teacher. French writing was a drag today. We had a girl who kept arguing with the professor to change the curriculum. There are a lot of Asians who study French, and it is very difficult to understand them. It is also difficult to understand those soggy burrito Spaniards, they say everything like it is in Espagnol. It will be quite the challenge to understand what my classmates are saying.
I went to E. leclerc, a GIANT grocery store (equivalent to Walmart) to do some shopping. I took down lots of notes of how much different things cost here. The following are a few random items and their price in Euros ( around $1.31) per kilo (2.2 pounds).
Apples 1,45-1,95
Bananas 0,79
Carrots 0,90
Flour 0,38
Granola bars 15,09
Grapes 0,90
Olive oil 4,50 per liter
Oranges 2,10
Peanut butter 7,04
Soy milk 0,99 per liter
Sugar 0,85
Tomatoes 1,15
Yogurt 1,72
I noticed that fruit flavored things don’t really exist. Practically all the children’s cereals had chocolate in them if they weren’t plain. They also don’t seem to have fruit snacks, macaroni and cheese, top romen, or brown sugar. Most of the salad dressing here is a mustard vinaigrette. There lunch meat is really expensive and you only get 2-6 slices per pouch.
There has been a carnival going on in Nantes that we tromped off to last night. It was exactly like carnivals in the states, except they sell some different foods and concessions, like chichis, which are churros but Spanish, crepes, gaffres (waffles), etc.