a dose of crazy

oh lyon, what am i gonna do with you?

once again, thursday classes were canceled because of the greves. luckily things were up and running again by friday... but i don't have class then.. well at least not until next week. and unfortunately, i actually like my thursday classes. and we don't have class next thursday because of a holiday. i have only been to my sociology twice so far.. and yes, you read that right. between confusion the first day, the teacher canceling class once because she was out of town, the greves, and vacation, i am starting to wonder if i am ever going to go to my sociology class again!

then fridayyyy, my friend rachel came to visit me! her visit was short, less than 24 hours, but we made the best of it :)
after stopping by my place after picking her up from the train station to drop off her bags, i took her up to fourviere to see the view and the church, then we walked down through the gardens to vieux lyon where we wandered around for awhile before meeting up with kirstin near hotel de ville to get some coffee. well i mean they got coffee. i got hot chocolate. afterwards i showed her the rest of the presqu'il and we headed home for dinner to make omelettes since my host parents were out of town and we didn't want to pay for dinner.

it was after this dinner, when we headed back downtown to meet up with friends, that things really started getting interesting. we got some wine and were sitting at hotel de ville outside the opera house enjoying ourselves before we figured out what we were really going to do with our night. suddenly some crazy french girl (yes i have had some creepy guy encounters since i have been in france, but i think this crazy french girl takes the cake), comes up and picks up our bottle. we then try to get it back from her and she goes nuts. i'm not sure what we did to offend her so badly, but she was cursing at us in french/arabic (according to my friend), and said she would do worse to us if it weren't for the nice old man wondering what was going on. she did actually smack one of my friends. the entire situation was kind of crazy. another friend of mine got her purse taken by another girl.. which luckily she got back.. though she later realized she was missing her mp3 player. it was an unfortunate beginning to the night, and i kind of wondered if it would have been very different if we had had guys with us this night (i might add this was one of the first times we didn't have guys going out with us). oh and don't worry. we're all fine.
from the strange encounter, our night did get better. we went to a dance club where we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. and from there to a pub.. where it turns out rachel got carded, and unfortunately didn't have her id on her, so we headed off to a different dance club. all in all it was a pretty fun night. though rachel and i headed home at about 1 because we had to be up early in time for her to make her 7am train that would be taking her to italy.

it was fun, though, to have a visitor from home, and get to hear about her study abroad stories as well as share my city with her :)