Beaujolais

warning: if you are hungry, you may want to wait to read this blog, because i can tell you right now, it's all about food.

but anyways.

today. today was a great day. the whole eap group (both the immersion and language and culture programs) got to go on a field trip to Beaujolais, a beautiful area north of Lyon and south of Macon, between the Saone and le massif central and is the world capital of gastronomy. here, we were fed an amazing meal, learned a little about wine, a little about bread, and got to hang out in a vineyard. oh. and it was a gorgeous day on top of that. not too hot, not to cold, but juuuust right. talk about a perfect day? i'd say so. alright, well that's the short version. now let's really start from the beginning.

we were told to meet at 11:30 am where 70 of us boarded two buses that would take us to Beaujolais. from there it was about a 45 minute drive (okay, i'm not actually sure about that number.. but it wasn't all that long) to where we would be spending the day - the home/vineyard/bakery/winery/whatever else of Marie and Ludovic Gros - the lovely couple who made our amazing day possible.

the couple on the right are our hosts

the whole group of eap kids

they spoke to us for a bit, then we followed them into the cave where we would be eating our meal. we found the tables set, glasses of wine poured, two types of bread already on the table, and it all looked amazing.

soon, the first course arrived. pate, and more bread to go along with it:

next, came the salad. which had some amazing dressing on it.

and then. the real dinner arrived. rice and beef.

then a cheese course of course:

and if you thought we had already eaten enough at this point, you would be mistaken. next came dessert. and two kinds at that:

 oh. and some more wine. this stuff i liked more, but we were told not to drink to much because it could make us sick.

 

and that was our meal. oh wait. there were a few other breads too that i didn't get pictures of. but it was delicious and i wish we could go back every week. on top of this amazing meal, we were told a little bit about making wine:

and baking bread (as well as shown how it was made):

 Marie described the bread's texture as feeling like baby's skin. and then invited us all to touch it

 and best of all (as far as the bread is concerned at least), they sent each of us home with our own little loaf! and fresh out of the oven i might add.

and on top of all of this amazing food, we got to hang out in their vineyard for a bit.

oh. and these are the two amazing directors of the program who helped pull this together, and who help with any questions we might have along the way:

Christine and Chris

but all in all. today was amazing. and i wish we could have days like this every week. great food. great friends. great scenery. who could ask for more?

i. love. france. <3

who actually goes to class?

it's been another week in lyon, and another week of school. but this week was much shorter than last, in fact, i didn't even go to all of my classes! which are, by the way:

histoire de lyon
psychologie sociale
SLM (the international student course)
sociologie: problematique de genres
psychologie developpementale

with mondays and fridays open! (until november when the ILP course starts up of course :() oh. and my earliest class is at 2pm. which is really wierd for me. but pretty nice. i can wake up at 10am, eat breakfast slowly, shower, get stuff done... or procrastinate.. its just lovely :)

but anyways. this week i missed histoire de lyon and psychologie developpementale. i missed history because instead of having the class in the classroom, they took a field trip up to fourviere (the church and the view). i, however, had my social psych class at the same time as this excursion, and seeing as how i had missed social psych last week, i figured that was probably more important. plus i have friends in the history class who i figured would fill me if i missed anything truly important.
i also missed my developmental psych class this week. but this was because the class was actually cancelled. so i guess that doesn't really count.
i figured next week would finally be a full week.. turns out i was wrong. my sociology class is cancelled next week. BUT. we've already kind of been put in groups for orals. i think mine is in early december (good its one of the later ones, maybe ill actually speak french in time for it!). and i have email addresses of french students! this is progress since i have still been too afraid to get notes from french students in my other classes. i keep telling myself next week. maybe next week really will be that week. 
plus i think my professor may have emailed us some notes from today? maybe this sociology class won't completely kill me!

other big news: i have a plane ticket to germany for october! i still need to buy train tickets to get between munich and passau, since i can't fly directly into passau where i will be staying. but its progress. and i am super excited :)

we also have finally been assigned our doctor's appointments, which means i really will be able to leave the country.. which is good since i just bought the tickets.

oh! and i went to an african museum with my friend sheila on wednesday. i didn't have class until 4, and she didn't have class at all. so we figured hey, why not? we thought this drum was pretty cool:

tonight, friday of course, i went out to indian food with a bunch of friends. it was rather delicious. and since i've promised i would try to take more pictures of my food, here it is:

afterwards, a few of us headed to a nearby pub to continue hanging out and chatting - no rude bartender at this one, but lots of old music :) unfortunately i had to leave a little before midnight because i didn't feel like paying for a taxi to get myself home.

but. tomorrow is going to be a long, fun filled day i'm sure because we are going to beaujolais! so i'll let you know what that's all about later :)

bon soir!

banana bread and twins

what did i do this weekend? oh man. a lot. first off i'd like to start off by saying how ridiculously long a four day weekend is. though the possibility of having that every weekend is kind of amazing.

i had my first adventure to the grocery store here toute seule. the store? carrefour. location? really close to my house. excellent. won't get lost on the way there. what was i looking for? ingredients for banana bread of course!
thanks to mom sending me the recipe, as well as translating it for me, i set off to the store, list of ingredients in hand. when i got there two minutes after leaving my house, i realized a few things.
one: i had no idea where anything was in this store.
two: i had forgotten they don't keep their eggs in the refrigerator section.
three: i don't think they have exactly the same ingredients as us when it comes to baking soda and baking powder... so i decided i would just buy what the guy said and hope it works for both! oh yea, as far as making sure i got the right sugar and flour, i asked some random woman standing by the sugar. i wanted to be sure i got regular sugar and flour. not any of this powdered sugar or special flour business.
four: you have to print out the label for your produce before you get to the register. i definitely knew that but had forgotten, so the lady sent me back.
five: you have to both unload all of your groceries from your cart (like at home) as well as bag them yourselves. not a problem. but i felt a little bit like i was at a self-checkout, except that i wasn't scanning everything myself.
but i managed to find everything i needed (or at least i thought i did), and headed home. turns out i forgot a couple things, so kirstin and i headed back before we actually started baking.

 oh. the reason for the banana bread? kirstin's (who is basically my best friend here, and i am sure i've mentioned a few times) sister is coming to town this weekend. but since i have space for guests and kirstin doesn't, they will both be sleeping at my house for the weekend. a couple weeks ago i had mentioned banana bread to my host family, and promised i would make it for them at some point. they told me that the last girl they hosted had mentioned it, and having no idea what it was, handed her some bread and a banana. but anyways. i figured because they were being so gracious as to host even more americans (at this point francois had met kirstin for about 5 minutes, and veronique not at all), it would be the perfect opportunity to thank them buy finally making them this treat.

 and for the record, the banana bread turned out wonderfully :) veronique finally met kirstin, and tania is pretty cool.

but anyways, the rest of this very busy weekend:

friday, i went to a cognitive psych class in the morning, but decided i'm probably not going to be taking that class afterall. later, kirstin and i made the banana bread. she then left to go pick up tania, who would be arriving a little before 7. i stuck around home, deciding i would eat dinner with my host parents before heading out to hang out with them for the rest of the night. i ended up meeting them at a restaurant because they were all still eating, and was finally introduced to tania, as well as four of tania's friends. when we finished up there (about 10:30 i believe, remember french dinners are long and late?) we headed to Ayers Rock, an australian bar/club where i had been once before and met up with another girl from the program, Hili.

and luckily enough, the music was better than last time! this closed at 1am, and from there we headed to a jazz club where we hung out until 2ish? at which point we decided we were tired and were going to head home. so we walked tania's friends back to their hostel (which is right by the quai campus), and then kirstin, tania, and i went to find a taxi. this took a lot more effort than we anticipated. and it was raining. though more on the weather later. we tried calling to cab companies that we had numbers for, neither of which were answering. and then decided to walk along the river hoping to be able to hail a cab. i'm not sure that you're actually able to do that here, because when we thought we actually had, it turned out he was looking for the person who had already called the company. eventually we wandered back to bellecour, and decided if we didn't find a cab there, we would just crash on kirstin's floor because it was already late. but it turns out there's a taxi stop there! perfect. after an hour of trying to find one, we at least knew it would be super easy the next night. we ended up getting home at about 3:30 and going to bed by about 4. (happy nathan? i got closer to staying out all night!)

saturday. we were out of the house again by 11 to meet up with tania's friends again - after eating the banana bread of course. we started by heading to the marche to get some food for lunch, and then going up to forviere so they could see the church and the view, as well as a nice place to eat our lunch.

and i finally got my tourist picture!
we let them take the funiculaire up the hill, but we walked down through the gardens, which continued to give us a beautiful view.

 

ok. actually i am going to take a break here and explain something about the weather this weekend. it has been entirely unpredictable. for instance. friday morning i woke up and it was raining a little bit. then it cleared up some when i was in class and heading home. by the time i wanted to go the store, it wasn't raining at all. then it started pouring. when kirstin showed up, and i realized we needed to go back to the store, it was actually sunny out (so i didn't bring an umbrella), and by the time we got out of the store it was starting to rain hard again.. pouring while we were baking, and then clearing up again. and that was just the morning/afternoon. understand a little bit? also note that these last two pictures were only taken about 30 min apart i believe. and don't be fooled by the sunshine in the first one, it was cold!

so anyways. we headed down from forviere, where it had been windy and cold but not actually raining while we were up there. but seeing as it was raining on the way down, we decided to go hang out in a cafe in vieux lyon. we were there for a while, and eventually patrick joined us. we then decided to head find somewhere that one of tania's friends could eat before she headed back to switzerland that night. on the way out, we ran into rowan, and irish guy kirstin and patrick had had class with, so he joined our group as well! (something i love about this program is that everyone is super nice and you can just run into people in town and add them to your plans). so we headed to a different cafe, this one with lots of crepes, and stayed there until it was time for her to head to her train. so the rest of us wandered around vieux lyon for a while, while waiting for kirstin to return from dropping her off at the train station. we decided we were cold though, so we ended up finding ourselves at an irish pub - where, apparently, the bartender was a real jerk.

next, we realized it would probably be a good idea to get some dinner. of course, because at this point there were 8 of us, it took a little while to decide where we wanted to eat. the irish guy told us one place was good, so we checked that out, but decided to keep wandering for a bit. eventually we decided his place looked best though. the food was amazing. i got a salade exotique and a crepe jambon/fromage.

after our lovely dinner, we decided it would probably be a good idea to go somewhere inside, because it was cold. but we all just kind of wanted to chill, so we headed to another pub where we hung out for the rest of the night. we even ran into some other eap/erasmus (the international program for non-americans) kids on the way, though we just chatted with them for a bit before continuing on with our own little group.
the night was a blast, but i was really happy we knew where to get the cab this time, and by the time we got home i was definitely ready to sleep. it has been a busy two days! i kept having to remind myself it was only saturday.

first week of school

if you thought your classes were hard, think again. (ok maybe they really are, but bear with me right now). taking classes in a foreign language in a foreign system is all kinds of hard. between trying to pick classes that sound interesting, hoping that these classes will actually transfer back, and finding out if you can actually understand what's going on when you show up, there is a lot of stress involved.
for eap kids, we will be taking 6 classes total.    
    one is called SLM (its some class we will take for 3.75 hours every week - in one sitting - that is for international students to continue to help us with the language).
    one is a class we only take for half the semester, and i will start that in november.
    then we get to pick our other four classes. this is where things get a little complicated. the french system is very different than the uc system. instead of getting to pick all of their classes every year and take them whenever they want, they basically have their whole year already planned out for them (and all at one campus - oh yea, there are three here). for uc kids (aka eap kids) this makes things a little more difficult. we are allowed to pick any classes we want to try to complete classes for our major. but this doesn't always mean they will be at the same location. for instance, i believe all of my classes are going to be at the bron campus... except the SLM class (and probably the half a semester class), which will be at the quai campus (where we had the ILP (intensive language program)). by the way. these are in complete opposite directions from my house. and on wednesdays, i might have a morning class at bron, and an afternoon class at quai. good thing the public transit here is really good, or that probably wouldn't end so well.
    so anyways. because we get to pick our classes, we have to go to a bunch the first week to check them out, and then we will pick later. as a result, i went to 9 classes this week. one was cancelled though because there was a strike yesterday. some of them have been scarier than others, but i'm really hoping i will survive this semester. luckily, it looks like i wont have to take the one that scared me the most (a small class where the professor and students all spoke really fast and i was the only international student). i still don't entirely have my schedule figured out (due to one class being cancelled, and not knowing about another one till after it had already happened). but so far it looks like i will be taking: 1. the SLM class. 2. Lyon ville d'histoire (a history of lyon) - this may not transfer back for me, but i figured hey, as long as i'm here, i might as well learn a little bit about this city. 3. a sociology class (problematique de genres) - this is the one that was cancelled though, so i'm still not really sure. 4. a social psych class (but this is the class that i haven't been to yet, so also unsure). 5. a developmental psych class (which we are trying to figure out if we need to go to the section for... the section has its own amount of units and its own final, but the two are related.. so it could replace a sixth class? we're still working out the details on that one..). and 6. a cognitive psych class. and 7. the half a semester class. ok i realize that adds up to 6 instead of 7, but that is because i am still trying to figure everything out.. but i more than likely will be choosing 2 of the 3 psych classes.
    another interesting thing. i don't exactly know how semester schools work at home, but at my quarter school we have each class two or three times a week. here, we will only have each class once for an hour and forty five minutes. cool right? oh! and i have mondays off :) ...unless there's some section that i can't change and don't know about yet... but let's hope not. because having mondays off will make it a lot easier to travel. and actually, if i choose not to take the cognitive class, i might have fridays off too! that would be amazing.
    i am also figuring out very quickly that if i am going to survive i am going to need to borrow notes from french students. but i'll start with that next week. it's going to be hard for me since i'm used to being the one taking notes for other people... not the one receiving them... but i guess i better get over that. hey. maybe it will be the perfect way to make french friends :)
     oh. i guess sorry about the lack of pictures. maybe i will remember to take some of the bron campus next week - which by the way, is super confusing to navigate.  sometimes to get up to the second floor you have to walk up some steps, down some others, and finally up some others. i swear it makes no sense - and if you try to ask someone where something is, half the time they don't really know either. awesome right? but at least their version of a bigger campus (because bron is a lot bigger than quai) is still small in my book. i guess that's what happens when you attend a big public california university.
    but at least as of right now, i have made it through my first week at a french university (and its only 1pm :))!

oh. and i realized i arrived a month ago! man time flies fast. :)

last free days

school starts tomorrow and i'm not sure how much i'm looking forward to that. mostly because i am still completely afraid of taking all of my classes in french. but i am excited to get started and hopefully improve my french a lot more.
so this was my last weekend of freedom, and it was pretty fun.

i stayed in friday night because i was super tired after paris. but it was nice to have a break. saturday i hung out with kirstin - as usual - before heading home thinking i was going to eat dinner with the french fambam and maybe lay low again. turns out there were different plans in store for me. i got home, and five minutes later i was heading out again because my host mom told me marc-philippe was head over to manu's (both of whom are my host brothers) and asked if i wanted to come. so i figured hey, why not, that sounds like fun. we went to a bar first and met up with manu, my friend chloe, and eventually a couple other people showed up. the exciting part of this part of the evening being that i found a beer that i like (because i was following mom's instructions to keep drinking of course)! its called kriek, and if you've never heard of it, it basically tastes like cherry soda with a little bit of a beer aftertaste. after the bar we all headed back to manu's place. and i got to rent one of the velos (bikes) finally! (i used them last time i was in france, but it was the first time since i've been here this time - so i was super excited). oh. and since i hadn't had dinner, due to the leaving as soon as i got home business. chloe and i went to eat at mcdonalds. shameful. i know. and the chicken nuggets were ridiculously tiny. so then we had a little party. it was pretty fun. oh. here's a picture of me with my host brothers!

omgosh. then sunday for lunch. the food was sooo good. i feel like i have been forgetting to continue mentioning how amazing the food is here. but anyways. yesterday my host dad made this spanish dish called paella (i don't think i spelled that right). it was super good. and once again i got to see shrimp with faces! and i got to meet my host grandma? i guess.
after lunch, kirstin and i dragged chloe and christina up to forviere (the church and place with the amazing view, for those of you who have already forgotten). we couldn't believe neither of them had been up there yet! we were going to take them to le parc de la tete d'or too, but we were all tired. i couldn't believe it when i found out they hadn't been there yet either! kirstin and i were starting to wonder what they've been doing with themselves that past couple weeks. but we'll drag them there another day.
today. well today kirstin and i got some stuff done. we started out by meeting with chris (one of the directors of the eap program) to discuss the classes we were going to take and what we want to accomplish while we're here. kirstin realized she need to pick some new classes, but in general she was prepared. i learned that hopefully the classes i picked are going to work for me, but i need to take things one step at a time.
next, we headed to this cute little shop next to bellecour that has scarves and jewelry and bags and such. so i bought a scarf! the french love their scarves, and i just wanted to fit in. plus i think i might go back later this week or next and buy a bag.

for lunch we decided to eat american food. i know i know, im in france, i shouldn't eat american food. but i was handed a magazine this morning that mentioned this place called 'best i ever had', so we figured we would check it out and decide if one, it was really like american food, and two, if it would be the best i ever had. plus kirstin pointed out that "as citizens of the world, it is our duty to try and critique american food to help them out". so basically, we didn't have a choice. i got a cheeseburger and fries, and i must say, it was not the best i ever had. it was alright, but not amazing. the fries were ok, but really should have been crispier. and there were no pickles on the burger! what's that about? but in general, a good experiment. i do think i will be sticking to french food while i am here though.

oh! i forgot to mention last night's dinner! (and part of tonight's dinner for me too since there were some left overs). but we had tomato farcie (not sure i spelled this right either). basically it was a tomato with a meatball stuffed inside it. and rice. it was sooo good! oh and there was flan for dessert. yummy :)
and finally. seeing as classes start tomorrow, kirstin and i figured it would be a good idea to find our classrooms. there are multiple campuses. so far i have had the language intensive program (ILP) at lumiere 2 (or the quais campus). and i am going to have my SLM class there too (don't really remember what that stands for, but its a class all eap students have to take). but the restttt of my classes are going to be at porte des alps (also known as bron), and i had never been there before. luckily this campus is actually closer to my house.. so that's nice and convenient for me. though it still involves a bus and a tram. but we got there, and man was it hard to find one of my classrooms. i didn't even really end up looking for the others. but i know my first one is close to the tram, sooo i figure i'll just show up early tomorrow and find it. but tomorrow i have three classes. each of which is an hour and forty-five min. two psych classes i believe, and a history of lyon class. then five other classes later this week. i don't remember if i mentioned already that this week we just have to attend a bunch of classes. and we'll figure out after which ones we will actually end up enrolled in later. i kind of miss being enrolled in the correct classes ahead of time. but this is france. and things are different. they keep telling us to forget california, because it's just going to mess us up. plus it doesn't help that all the french students basically have set classes they have to take - so really we are kind of messing with the system taking different classes in different departments.
but anyways. wish me luck tomorrow! i'm going to need it.

Paris!

First off, my host mom gave me a new bag because she wanted to make sure i had a bag that zipped when i went to paris! i really thought she was going to give me some dinky thing to borrow that would just insure my money or something wouldn't get stolen. and then she came upstairs with THIS:

i was amazed! I love it. and it fits everything i need it to :) plus she said i could keep it!

Next. After 2 1/2 days in paris, i can definitely say i am glad i chose Lyon to study abroad in. Paris is massive and a little overwhelming. butttt onto stories of my adventures for the past couple days.

after buying last minute tickets and making last minute plans to head to paris since we had a few days off, kirstin, christina, and i began by taking the TGV (the super fast train), and arrived in paris around 1pm.

our first mission was to find some lunch and a place to eat. it was a long walk, but we decided we wanted to eat in the beautiful jardin de luxembourg. so along the way we bought a couple baguettes, some brie cheese, some tomatoes, nectarines for each of us, and some cookies. what a delicious lunch. seriously. and super cheap!

afterwards, we decided it would probably be best to figure out where our hotel was.. plus then we could ditch our stuff which was starting to get heavy. this was a bit of an adventure. our hotel was not in the main city center of paris, but rather in what i believe were the suburbs known as chelles. man was that far. we had to take a bus, and then a different train. and then another bus. which as it turns out we got on in the wrong direction, so we ended up back exactly where we started (something we didn't realize until much later because we left from one entrance, and returned to a different entrance of the same station) - man did we feel cool when we figured that one out. we then walked however far it was to the hotel, which also took some effort, and a lot of kirstin's amazing map reading skills - which were used on a picture of a map that christina had taken at the station! - we didn't have a real map of this area, unfortunately.

but eventually we made it! we checked in without a problem and were told where our room was. it was a nice enough room, meant for four, with one large bed as well as another that was a pull out couch - though the couch had to be turned at an odd angle because the bed was too long for that room. there were also interesting pictures of strange men on the door.. not so sure about that one. it also had a little kitchen, so we were able to just buy some pasta for dinner instead of paying a bunch to go out. overall it was a nice room.. other than the shower which we realized was a bit of a problem when it soaked the entire bathroom floor as well as a large amount of the bedroom floor when just one person showered. that was a little bit ridiculous. on the bright side though, this place wasn't all that expensive.

 after our pasta dinner we decided it would just be wrong if we stayed in our room even though we were tired, so we headed back to the city to see paris by night. we couldn't figure out how to pay for the train, or what the system was, so we just hopped on. when we got to paris and tried to leave the station, we realized we needed tickets - though we had no idea where we would have bought them. luckily the man was nice and just let us through and told us we would need to buy tickets next time. and so we made it into the main part of the city taking another metro just fine. when we got there we decided we wanted some ice cream. i had mentioned that my family has a tradition that it's not a trip unless you get lost and have ice cream, and we'd definitely already done the getting lost part. so we were on a mission (ironically enough we never ended up getting ice cream this trip! how sad!) we ended up walking along the seine for a while, seeing a bit of champs elysees, and hanging out near the eiffel tower - where we decided it would be a great idea to get crepes (so much for ice cream, chance number one).

next, we headed back to the hotel. we were tired and were thinking about waking up early to see the louvre (another thing that we planned multiple times but never happened because we decided we didn't feel like getting up early enough to make it worth it). getting back was even more interesting. we took the bus just fine. and then the train. except we accidentally got off a stop too early. we knew we were going to have to call a cab already though because the last bus we would have needed stopped running at 9:30. we ended up having to call twice, because after waiting for a long time we were thinking they may have forgotten about us. they did. but when they did show up, he was in a mercedes! ridiculous.

oh. side note. getting into and out of these train stations involved lots of exercise due to a million stairs. there were a few escalators (and a moving sidewalk) as well, which were amusing to us, because the stairs and the handrail definitely didn't move at the same speed. i'm not sure if i've ever really experienced that before.

anyways. the next day we headed back to the city. we started by heading up the hill to sacre coeur/ montmartre to see the church as well as the view. both of which were amazing. although a million more stairs were involved, which is always tiring. at least we didn't have our backpacks this time!

afterwards we went back down the hill to get some lunch, at which point christina turned around and happened to see the 'i love you' wall (a wall that says 'i love you' in practically every language) that we had been planning on seeing, but weren't sure where it was!

after the wall we started heading towards notre dame where we would be meeting up with a couple of kirstin's friends from home, as well as friend of christina's (and girl who was in our french class in santa cruz). we took the metro to get closer, but since they are different than the one's in lyon, we couldn't figure out how to get the door open to get off at our stop. at the last minute we figured it out and kirstin jumped off. just in time for it to slam shut again with christina and me still inside! this obviously meant some coordinating to meet up again, but it actually went pretty smoothly. along the way we looked at the little book/poster/postcard vendors that are next to the seine. eventually we made it, however, and managed to find everybody!

at this point though christina and i took off with sophie to check out the latin quarter while kirstin took off with her friends to check out some garden. after getting a snack, sophie, christina, and i headed back to notre dame to actually check out the inside this time. (dad you should be so impressed that i was happy to check out two churches in one day! big improvement from middle school right? i thought you would be proud.)

anyways. it was beautiful of course. sophie then took off to head home. and we met up with kirstin and her friends again to get some dinner. it was delicious, though i was really surprised when they came over to us at 9:30 and told us they were closing. so early for france! but we'd started early, so it's not like we were being rushed.

after dinner we said goodbye to kirstin's friends and started heading back to the train station. slowly because we were enjoying see paris by night once again. we also stopped to take a break on the bridge with lots of locks attached to it (put there to symbolize people's love). but all of us agreed that as much as we loved paris, we were ready to head home to lyon.

once again we took the long journey back to the closest train station (though this time we got off at the correct stop) and called a cab. soon one showed up! we got really excited and climbed on in. turns out, it was for someone else. so we waited for another 45 minutes before deciding to pick up the phone and figure out what was going on. turns out they forgot us again! and when our cab showed up, it was the same exact one! oh. and this one was a beamer. they have some pretty snazzy taxis in paris. no wonder they're so expensive.

oh. other side note. there were also these really creepy signs saying 'don't grow up too fast'. paris is wierd. hahaah

woo! this one was long! but at least it included more pictures :)  i guess that's what happens when you travel.

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 :)

officially a student

i. am. in. FRANCE! ok, i realize i arrived almost three weeks ago at this point, but sometimes i still can't believe i'm really here. and i'm not wierd. some of my friends here have said the exact same thing.

but anyways, you may have been wondering what i've been up to this past week. and the answer is a lot. though not necessarily super exciting things. we had another full week of ILP (intensive language program), which still isn't my favorite, but at least we only have one more day! and then a week off. well, those of us who aren't taking classes at sciences po at least. the days have been pretty long though. most with about 6 hours of class. one with 8 hours (mannnn that was a long day!). and one with only 2 :).

but as for other productive things i've done this week:
i got my student id card! (it even comes with a nice little case). so i am officially a student here.

my bank card! and i even got some money on it and activated it - though i still need to figure out how to check the balance online, and if it's going to be possible for my mom to wire money straight in there.
i got a university email address! though i still haven't figured out how to check that...
i also learned that i will be unable to earn a french minor. i was hoping that even though it's not offered at UCSC, i might be able to get one as long as i am abroad, especially since it is offered at other UC's. but when i finally got an email from one of the french professors at my school, she basically told me if i really wanted a french minor, i would need to transfer. which isn't going to happen. so that's unfortunate.

in other news. my friends and i have found a cute little bar that offers cocktails for half price on mondays. pretty cool right? we went there this past monday (i didn't get anything because i was just getting over being sick).. but maybe another day when i also don't have class the next day? maybe? hm. still pretty exciting.
i believe it was then tuesday that i got to experience my first torrential downpour here. i'd like to say i am exaggerating, but mannn was that rain coming down hard. luckily it wasn't too cold or windy, but i was still soaked by the time i got home. other than that, its only rained a little - but i figure i will always be carrying my umbrella from now on. and now i realize i really need to buy some boots. and fast.
yesterday, i also learned that the pigeons here are VERY friendly. i already sort of new this, but yesterday they kept hopping on my legs. seriously. these pigeons have no fear. by the third time it happened, i figured a picture was necessary.

then yesterday, also, kirstin and i started trying to figure out where we might want to travel! we're thinking paris next week since we have the week off :). just need to figure out when we can leave because we still have an eap meeting next week.
then i was off to minerva's apartment in croix-rousse, where she made a couple of us a delicious vietnamese dinner, as well as good company. 
it was getting home from this amazing dinner last night though that was interesting. the public transit around here supposedly stops running around midnight. well i left her house a tiny bit after 11, and was starting to get worried that i'd have to take a cab part of the way. for me to get back to my place from hers involves 2 metros, 1 tram, and 1 bus. well i got on the first two metros just fine. and made it to the tram station where i had to wait about five minutes. at this point i was starting to get worried i wouldn't make it to the bus stop in time. plus a wierd man came up to me and tried to chat. i asked him to stop a couple times, moved, and was glad that i had earphones in the whole time so that i could at least pretend i couldn't here him (i wasn't actually listening to music at this point). well i made it to the bus station and was glad that there were a fair number of people there - i figured that if there were people, there would have to be another bus. though again i started to get a little worried when it didn't show up until about 12:05. but it came! and my walk home when i got off the bus was less than 5 minuets :) ... i'm thinking though that next time i plan on taking the bus home, i'm going to try not to cut it so close.

alright, that's all i've got for now. we'll see what the weekend has in store!

a laid back weekend

this weekend started out a little rough, to say the least. i had planned to stay in friday night because i went out thursday night and wanted to go out saturday night. i figured three nights in a row would be a little much for me, and so i was going to give myself a little break. good thing i had already made that decision, or this story could have been a lot worst. my host family ordered pizza for dinner friday night. it was delicious, but apparently i ate too much considering apparently my stomach is not fully accustomed to their pizza. to make a long story short, i spent half my night sleeping on the bathroom floor because it just made sense. though when my host brother came home and realized i was sick and woke up my host mom, she gave me some medicine as well as a blanket to sleep on the bathroom floor with, and another so i wouldn't be cold. not gonna lie, most comfortable night spent on a bathroom floor possible (well as comfortable as you can be when your sick, that is). haha. anyways. my host mom had already told me she was like a mother hen, which my had host brother confirmed, and she did an excellent job proving this to me. she and my host dad were leaving saturday morning for a wedding, but she made me a bunch of rice to eat while they were gone, as well as some powder stuff to put in water which would help me feel better.
saturday i decided to take it easy. rather than hanging out with people all day, i rested most of the day and just went out to hang out with suzanne (for those of you who are reading and don't know, i first met her in '05 when she came and stayed with my family) and her friends for a couple hours before returning home fairly early and making sure i got lots of sleep.

then today, i hung out with friends again, and we went back up to forviere (where there is the amazing view). though this time i took the funiculaire (the tram that goes up the hill) up because i figured i'd rather not be super tired from the walk since i still wasn't feeling one hundred percent.

(this is a picture from at the bottom of the hill, while on the funiculaire)

(a couple of my new friends, kirstin and minerva sitting at forviere)








i am feeling much better now though, and enjoyed a lovely dinner with my host family. though they had something that looked mighty good that i was told i should wait to try until another time because my host mom wanted to make sure i didn't get sick again.
so most of the weekend was actually fairly enjoyable, though more relaxing than originally anticipated - but nothing wrong with that. these past two weeks have been so busy its probably a good thing.

but woah! as of tomorrow, i will have been here for two weeks! part of me feels like i've been here forever! though another part of me can't believe its already been two weeks. nonetheless i love it here and couldn't imagine leaving any time soon. i'm just getting started.

but enough about my weekend. what have you been up to? leave a comment and tell me what's up! :)

education time

the past three days have been very busy. to begin, we had to show up to la fac (our campus) to take a placement test to determine what level we would be in the for the next week at 9 in the morning.

because i live far enough away, this meant waking up at about 7:30.. not entirely my idea of fun. we got to the test and found we were going to be taking it at the same time as study abroad students from other countries. i really did not enjoy taking this test, and not surprisingly, didn't end up doing very well. for one, obviously it was in french. for another, i swear it was like a mini SAT test, and it's not like i was all that good at taking the SAT's in english.. hence another reason i didn't do all that well. but hey, at least i have a friend in my class. let me tell you though, so far, not so excited about it. the first day the professor spent half the class explaining punctuation and how to use it. i hated it. i may not be all that good at french, but other than " actually being << in french, they use it the exact same way, so i kinda felt like she was wasting our time. plus i figure if we screw up punctuation at this point, correct us on our papers, but don't spend an hour teaching it to us. today's class wasn't quite so useless, but i'm still not a big fan. plus the fact that for the past two days my class has had to start at 8am. which for me means leaving the house at about 7:15 (and waking up to the sunrise).

this isn't all that much fun when i stayed up until midnight one night for reasons unknown, and didn't go to bed until 2am the following night because i was out bonding with my host brothers, their friends, and one of my friends. i've officially reminded myself why i don't stay out late when i have an early morning the next day (although i did have a lot of fun). if you think it's hard to pay attention to a class in your own language when you're tired.. you miss a lot more when it's in a language you are trying to learn. but i'll know better for next week. so this boring class we have for about 4 hours a day (with a 15 minute break). and then we have another class, which we actually got to have some say in and i find more interesting, for another 2 hours. i am taking les sciences humains. and we are learning about rituals. though, because i've been tired, i think i should reread all my notes and the articles to actually figure out what's going on. whoops.

other than classes which have taken up most of my time for the past couple days, i have continued to explore lyon with my friends getting to know this city i am growing to love.