Riding the Struggle Bus

Hi. After a pretty hectic month, I'm finally writing my second blog post! Anyways, this week's blog challenge question by W&J's Global Education Dept. is: "Write about a problem you had and how you solved it.” Did you fix it yourself? Ask others for help? Who did you turn to for support? What was the resolution?".  First of all, I think this topic is very ironic because, just last week, I had a whole bunch of problems (some that could have been avoided and others that were just bizarre). However, the largest ones happened all on the same weekend...lucky me!

Friday: After going grocery shopping, I realized that I had either lost my tram pass walking from the tram stop to the store or while walking inside the store.  Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal because you could just go to the tram station across the street and show them your receipt.  However, since it was Friday evening, the station had closed for the weekend leaving me stranded a half an hour away from where I live.  I tried going back inside the store to see if someone had picked up my pass and had turned it into the front desk but, sadly, no one has turned it in.  I then asked if I could leave my groceries at the front desk to search the store for my pass.  The lady working the front desk then directed me to lockers where you can put your stuff  while you shop.  After putting my things in the locker, I looked through the store for 2 hours (the store, Casino Geant, is the equivalent of a Walmart, so it is massive) but, I didn't find it.  Then, when going back to get my things from the lockers, I had locked my stuff inside because I accidentally closed the locker door without memorizing the combo. Oops! At this point, I wanted to cry because I had no more cash on me to get home because I just spent it all on food for the week, no tram pass, and now I couldn't even access my groceries that I had just bought.  Luckily, the lady at the front desk remembered me and opened the locker with a master key because she felt sorry for me.  I'm not exactly proud of this part, but in order to get home and get around the city for the weekend because I had no cash, I had to get into the tram without paying and jump out whenever the controllers came around to check tickets.  Anyways, this problem was fixed when Monday finally came around.  I just went to the tram agency desk at the train station, explained what had happened, showed them my receipt, and I got a new card for 7 euro without having to pay for the month all over again.  Tram passes per month for students are 26.50 euro which is around $35.

Then, my weekend got even better on Sunday...

Sunday night, I was working on a presentation that I had on Tuesday for this master's class I'm taking.  Just when I had finished writing it up and was about to save it, a message on my computer pops up saying my hard drive had crashed and then it died.  After this happened, I obviously started freaking out because I had just worked on this presentation for 7 hours straight and now had nothing to prove it.  Luckily, one of my friends here is a computer science major and was able to reboot my computer (I have no idea how but it saved my ass) and all I had to do was redo the second half of the presentation because the first part was auto-saved.  This incident was strange because before I left for France, I had my computer checked by Geeksquad for viruses or any other problems and they said it was working fine.  I rarely use my computer here so I have no idea why it crashed, but I'm glad that my friend was able to restore it.

I finally got my internet to work on my computer!!!

Hi everyone!! After not having internet for nearly a month (besides on my iPhone), I have finally just gotten it today and I couldn't be happier! I never really imagined how limited I'd be without having internet on my computer for three and a half weeks in a foreign country.  All I have to say is thank God for iPhones!! Well, this post is really to just inform you all that I can finally keep up with my blog because I can use my computer.  There will be more substantial posts to come in the future.  Fun fact: When going to a fast food restaurant in Grenoble, France to use internet such as McDonald's or Subway, make sure you have Google Chrome or it will not work.

Bon soir!