Newfangled Alien Technology

Classes started this week. So far, so good. They’re pretty long but most of them only meet once per week. I’m also the only one in our entire UMD study abroad group who managed to not have classes on Friday! I’m not sure how it worked out, but I’m not asking any questions…

Mondays and Tuesdays are my longest days. This morning I had class from 10-1, 2-4, then 4:30-7:30. Needless to say, I’m exhausted. I’ll write more about classes tomorrow, but today I want to tell you about the fancy new technology    ( /best friend, machine category) I discovered that is going to get me through all of my dreadfully boring 3 hour classes. A hot beverage vending machine!!!

I’m sure this isn’t actually that new, but it’s really impressive (coming from someone who just learned the copy/paste keyboard shortcuts less than 2 years ago) AND it happens to be located in the building where I spend a significant amount of my day. And the best part is, it’s only 30 cents for a drink! I’ve walked by it several times and not even bothered to check, expecting it to cost 2 euros, minumum. But Monday I was really draggy in between my classes and decided to check it out. You can’t even imagine how thrilled I was to discover how cheap the drinks were. It’s only about a 6oz cup, but they have a pretty decent variety and since my morning coffee here is actually that terrible Nescafé Instant stuff, even a really small mediocre latté seemed like a win. It surpassed my expectations and the machine is so high tech it scared me…like self-checkouts at grocery stores. I just knew that something would go wrong and I’d have to go get help (or at least some big embarrassing light was going to start flashing to signal someone over)…but nothing! Even I could not screw that up. I ordered a latté so I got to adjust how much sugar would go into it. It was an extra step, but I still managed to make it through without problems. Blue lights flashing, a bunch of clicky noises, and presto-or should I say “voila!”…my drink was made right there. It was funny to see this crazy machine doing the job I’ve been paid to do by hand for the past 5 years.

 These are pictures from a couple weeks ago that I've been meaning to post. This is the area just outside of my apartment in Old Nice. I love all the little stores and markets.