May 8th Thursday

I set my alarm for 12 but didn’t get up until 1:00pm. I had some fruit cereal for breakfast and got dressed. Adrienne and I were planning on going on a trip to Chartres the next day so we researched it a bit online.

We wanted to print some things out so Adrienne and I headed toward the library. The library was closed. All of the school buildings were closed up so we figured Astrid’s office was closed too. We’d wanted to go get something from her but it would have to wait.

We decided to go to the grocery store but Franprix was closed as well. We were sufficiently confused at this point. It appeared to be a holiday today. We didn’t know what it was. We were able to go to 8 à Huit which was still open. We got some lettuce and other groceries. I also went to the bakery to get a baguette.

We got to the apartment and looked up what holiday it was. It was V-E day. I wasn’t aware that this was celebrated in France but it made sense. It was Victory in Europe Day and celebrated the unconditional surrender of the Nazi army. The act of military surrender was actually signed in Reims on May 7th. At least now we knew why the school and grocery stores were closed. These holidays really snuck up on us. It seemed like every time we turned around, the stores were closed.

We went home and Adrienne ate some lunch. I made some lunch later and it consisted of some frozen Chinese vegetables and some bread.

We sent out an email to the people in our program to see if anyone wanted to join us for our trip to Chartres. I called Jeannette because she had shown interest in coming. I told her the details on our train tickets.

After that I uploaded some pictures on Facebook and typed in my journal. Meanwhile, Adrienne napped. For dinner I made a hamburger patty with cheese on it. I made some spaghetti noodles on the side with butter, paprika, and pepper on them.

I ate my dinner and researched Chartres. I was the planner on this one since Amanda had already been.

I got to talk to my dad on Skype and chat with Tom a bit. I did some more Chartres research. After that I typed in my journal again. I typed up 6 days. I was in bed around 1:15 or so.