May 22nd Thursday

The night before, my sleep was interrupted by frequent mosquito attacks. I tried to kill them during the night but was unsuccessful. My day started officially at 9:00am. I got up and called the doctor’s office. I needed to make an appointment to talk about getting a prescription. I had an appointment for 12:45pm.

While I was getting dressed, I noticed the various remnants of the mosquito attacks. I was now covered in bites. They were in strange places since parts of my body not normally exposed during the day were vulnerable at night.

For breakfast, I had some chocolate muesli cereal while I worked on my upcoming presentations. I got ready and showered before leaving for my appointment. The doctor’s office was near the Franklin Roosevelt metro stop on line 1. I arrived at the stop and walked a few blocks to find the building with the office in it. The office was in one of the nicer apartment buildings. It’s very common for businesses and apartments to share the same building. I walked to the end of the courtyard and found the proper door to buzz the office. They buzzed me in and I went to the third floor. I arrived at the office and talked to the receptionist. She was also an English speaker. She showed me to the waiting room where I had very little paperwork to fill out. I think I only had to sign one form. I waited in the waiting room for an hour but I passed the time with some reading for class.

I got to go see Dr. Salzman in her office. She was a Canadian doctor so she spoke both English and French fluently. She had a desk on one side of the office and then had an examination table behind a screen in the corner. This seemed strange to me since I usually saw doctors who had examination rooms separate from their office. I was slightly nervous because some of my friends had already seen her and it sounded like she was a kind of gruff doctor. She was nice enough to me at least. We discussed the prescription I wanted to get and she gave me it. We also talked about the relatively recent HPV vaccination that can help prevent cervical cancer. The doctor was very pushy about getting it done. I was hesitating because things were complicated with my French health insurance. She acted like I was being a difficult idiot for not getting the prescription right away.

We finished the appointment and I headed back toward school. I had some extra time before class so I stopped by a Chinese restaurant to get some food to go. I got some riz cantonais with poulet aux champignons noirs (chicken with black mushrooms). I hopped on the metro with my food and headed toward Sciences Po. I didn’t have very much time before my class so I sat in the cafeteria and ate my lunch really fast. Once I’d scarfed it all down, I headed to my class with Schmidt. This was our third class with her. Today’s topic was the politicization of the EU and how the EU could possibly represent all of the people in it.

After class, some of us hung out for a while and then I left. I walked home and got a baguette on the way. When I arrived at the apartment, I did some of the readings. They apparently weren’t very interesting because I soon felt sleepy. I took a short nap.

When I woke up, I was quite hungry so Adrienne and I had the Poêle caribéen. It was one of the frozen mixtures with rice, Caribbean vegetables and fish.

Once I was fueled with dinner, I worked on my presentations. I had some messages from Irene and Christine. They were freaking out about our presentation for Howorth’s class. I wasn’t as worried, but their messages started to make me nervous.

I got to talk to my whole family on Skype. Tyler always cracks me up. He usually takes the webcam and focuses it on his beard.
I worked until fairly late. I think I went to bed some time after 3am.