Once again I had a long night's sleep, but when I headed to the shops today I found that not even the bakery was open, which seemed strange for 8am. Having missed dinner the night before, I was left pretty hungry. Lunch with people from work, once again at a cafeteria (wrongly, in my view, called a restaurant), helped a bit with this.

In the afternoon I went to the bank in town to open an account. I'd been told that the lady helping me would speak English, but this wasn't the case. Still, we battled through with my broken french, and I left with a debit, cheque and savings account. I should be able to pick up the card and chequebook next week - the card in particular will be useful, since Australian cards don't have the smartcard chip that many vending machines here require, leaving me overdependent on cash.

After that I tried the prefecture, a really depressing place full of people who didn't want to be there. I would have been glad to leave, if only my turn in the queue had come around before closing time.

I skipped dinner again, partly because I was tired and partly because I couldn't face a walk to the shops in the rain. I haven't even been into the common room at the residence where I'm staying yet. Even more depressing, I fell asleep reading work stuff, at the absurd hour of 8pm.