February 7th Thursday

I slept in until 11:00am and it felt marvelous. I showered and ate chocolate cereal while checking my email online.

I went to the post office to pick up an envelope for my roommate and to mail 3 postcards. I mailed one to my parents and the others were from Adrienne to her family. I like the post office near our place. It’s small, not very crowded, and the people are friendly. I ended up buying 5 postcards with envelopes that are already stamped for international mailing.

I walked to BNP Paribas (our bank) because I had received a notice that our cards were ready. It turned out that they were not ready and that they, in fact, needed our landlord to fill out the bank’s form. At least I tried getting them to take the letter.

I left the bank feeling dejected and ended up seeking solace in the crêpe stand across the street from the bank. I was very hungry and it was time for lunch so I ordered a crêpe with ham in it. It was hot and delicious. Right next to the stand there was a band playing and trying to sell CDs. I bounced to the music as I walked home eating my treat. On the way home I got a severe stomach pain that made me stop and wait for it to die down before I started walking again. It was painful but over pretty quickly.

I got home and cleaned the apartment from top to bottom. Our party was supposed to start at 7:00pm. We were having a Chinese New Year party. It is the year of the Rat. Adrienne and I are both rates. I thought this was a good thing until Adrienne’s friend set us straight. She said “Well we’re safe every year but our own.” Apparently one superstition is that you can have really bad accidents in your year. Hopefully all the rats will make it through unharmed.

Adrienne and I made some samples of the food that we bought for the party. We had egg rolls and vegetable dumplings complete with dipping sauce. They were actually really good. I also made a very bad batch of rice. I didn’t put in enough water so the rice was slightly crunchy.

I excitedly opened a bottle of the rice wine expecting it to be like sake. Then when I poured it into a cup, I got an unpleasant surprise. The liquid was brown instead of clear. I adventurously tasted it before making a face. It did not taste good at all. I looked up rice wine on Wikipedia and discovered that in Northern China they make rice wine with rice and wheat. So even if it wasn’t tasty, it was at least authentic. I was really disappointed that it didn’t taste like sake.

I suddenly felt rather sick. I knew it wasn’t the wine. It had been creeping up on me a little before. I felt achy all over as if I had the flu but I had no other symptoms. I lied down on my bed knowing that people would be here for a party and hoping I would feel better. Lying down did help. I was able to be up and ready by the time people arrived.

Eventually people showed up to our party closer to 8:30 and 9. We had TAM people and a few Euromasters. We were joined by Leonel, Heidi, Amanda, Matteo, and Amanda’s friend Chris. Alberto was on his way here but couldn’t find the place. As they came in I prepared egg rolls for everyone. Luckily, people brought good wine with them so there was something reasonable to serve the guests. I was able to convince people to try the rice wine. They all shared my opinion of it. We also had various candies from the Asian market in different packages. After a while we cut into the soy cake to see what mysteries it held. It had a white powder outside and a yellow powdery/creamy inside. The first bite didn’t taste like anything. It took a few bites to realize that it had a subtle flavor that turned out to be very pleasant. I enjoyed it.

I thought it was a fun party and I hope our guests did as well. We took a fun picture together. The idea was to pretend like you were taking a school picture, but everyone just turned out looking really hot. Eventually people trickled out the door and back home on the last metro trains. We were free a bit after midnight. We managed to completely clean up the dishes and the kitchen, get packed for our morning flight, and get into bed at 1:00am. Tomorrow, Spain!