Parc de la Tete d'Or, Le Defile, and the end of ILP!

its the end of another weekend (and then beginning of a new week), and not gonna lie, its so much nicer when you're not sick! this weekend was lots of fun. saturday i got to sleep in a bit, ate some breakfast, wasted some time, ate a delicious lunch with my host family, and then headed back to le parc de la tete d'or to hang out with some friends. it was a gorgeous day out too, which made hanging out at a park the perfect idea. for a while we just sat and chatted, and then a couple of us decided we were going to go see the animals this time! (thomas and i hadn't seen them yet, so sheila was going to be our tour guide).

just chillin' with the giraffes, no big deal :)

i just thought this one looked so cute and awkward :)

it was basically a zoo attached to the park. but free. which made it even more cool (both the park and the zoo, that is). but basically, i love this park, and plan on visiting it often. we also decided it would probably be a really cool place to check out once it starts snowing.
 i knew my family wouldn't be home for dinner, and thomas was starving, so we decided to go get some kebabs. mine would have been SO GOOD if the guy had given me ketchup like i asked for instead of mayo. i mean it wasn't bad, but if you know me, you know i really hate mayo. so i guess next time i will very careful to make sure he knows what i want. 
next i headed off to kirstin's because i figured if i went home, i might not go out that night. she still needed to eat, and her family wasn't home either, so we ended up meeting up with friends at a restaurant. luckily they were ok with me only getting the dessert. but dinner was a blast. they all enjoyed their food, and the desserts were all amazing. plus because its french style, we were there for about 3 hours taking our time and enjoying ourselves. honestly, i love that about this place. the waiters don't rush you, and even keep bringing you water when your done eating if you still feel like sitting and chatting. we were seriously there until like 11:30, it was great. a couple of my friends were then going to go out after, but i had a headache and realized if i didn't go home now, i'd probably be out all night because the buses stop running a little past midnight, and don't start again until 5am. i think there's going to be some other night bus soon though! i definitely need to figure that out. but it was a lovely evening nonetheless :)
then sunday was exciting. apparently every other year there is this parade called le defile (with accents on the e's). this year the theme was 'la vie en rose'. basically its this parade for amateurs, which a segment for each of the different areas of the city. it was pretty cool. but three hours is kind of a long time to be standing in one place, so i was pretty tired by the end of it. but i was glad i got to go :) here are just a few pictures:

then today. well today wasn't super exciting. other than that fact that it was the last day of ILP (intensive language program)! which means that because i'm not taking any classes at sciences po, i have almost a week off! pretty excited about that, and about getting to sleep in tomorrow, because most of my classes have started at 8am.
anyways, that's it for now! but it looks like it's going to be a good week :)