First day of work

Let's start with the beginning of the day.  That occurred at approximately 4AM, because that's when it gets fairly light outside my apartment.  Lesson learned: close the doors to the bedroom.  It also helped me figure out what the mysterious black paper in my room was for.  After making those adjustments, I got a bit more sleep, but less than usual.

This morning, at approximately 7AM, a crew started painting the front of my building.  This placed a large "cherry picker" machine directly in front of the exit from the building.  That was fun to get by on my way out the door.

I've resolved to myself to keep discussions of work to a minimum on this blog, but I'd like to chat about lunch.  Lunch differs in several ways from the usual American lunch in three principal ways: it's the main meal of the day, it's typically eaten at 1-2 PM, and it's only 30 minutes long.  Fortunately, the workplaces have cafeterias with prepared foods in order to handle these constraints.  Today, I had to face one of these alone, but I made it out with some pork and golden potatoes (and it only cost about $4.50).

I also had my first experience with public transportation today.  I purchased a ticket from an automated machine for about $1 USD and got on a tram in order to get home.  It went fine.  I'm slightly confused about what I was supposed to do with the ticket.  No one asked for my ticket, and no one else seemed to be doing much of anything with theirs.  There were some orange boxes that looked like they were for the tickets, but no one was using them, so I didn't either.  Tomorrow I start using the trains, and I suspect they'll be more organized.

Update on the public transportation: I went to the language exchange group tonight, and they confirmed that people are supposed to use the little orange boxes.  I took a tram home and had the ticket successfully validated.  It seems like a lot of concentration for two small punches on a card the size of a post-it note.

After work, I tried again to battle Carrefour.  This time I got an English-speaking cashier, but one of my items (a stack of notecards) wouldn't ring up.  I wound up just leaving without it.  Boo.  The rest of the purchases, however, allowed me to make my first dinner at home.  Nothing exotic (just sandwiches) but a victory nonetheless!

Tomorrow the real work begins...provided I can actually catch the train.