The start of exams

Sunday: Dana and I took an 8:08 train back from Belleville-sur-Saone and arrived in Lyon at 8:40am. We headed back home, unpacked, took a little rest and had a little lunch. After lunch, we met back up at the Tasse Livre in the Croix-Rousse to study a little bit more for our French test on Monday. We did a little bit of studying but ended up spending most of our time planning for our trip to the south of France from Wednesday to Sunday. We ended up hanging out and working at the café for about 5 hours. Both of our host families weren’t home, so we decided to head to Bangkok Royal, a little Thai place right nearby for dinner. I had a lovely dinner (of course not as good as the Thai food at Thai Ginger in Bellevue, but still pretty good). After dinner, I went back home to work on a few things and do a little more studying before my exam.

Monday: I had my French final Monday morning at 8am. We had to answer 2 questions out of 4 about the movie and the same for the book. It wasn’t that hard of a test, and we were able to have our book with us, so it wasn’t that bad. Our class is two 1:45 minute classes back to back with a 15 minute break in the middle. We always have to switch classrooms at the break. Our professor handed out the test at the beginning of the class at 8. At 9:45 he told us to bring all our stuff with us and to go take a 15 minute break like normal and to meet back upstairs at 10:00 to keep working on the test. All the American students were shocked that he let us walk out of the test room with our exams and questions and to talk with other students on a break in the middle of taking them exam. I finished about 5 minutes after we got back from break, but it was just super strange how different the system is here. It is so strict at Penn and particularly in the sciences that I was quite surprised. After the test, Dana and I went to run some errands while everyone was finishing up the test since we were meeting up with Alice (from England), Sabina (from Sweden) and Suzanne (from Australia for lunch). Dana and I went to the fnac to try to print my pictures for my photo project, however, they only had glossy paper (which doesn’t show the details as well as I wanted), so I struck out on that one. We met up with the other girls and decided to go to a tandoori sandwich place for lunch just off place de terreaux. The place smelled amazing, but it was small and there were no seats so we took our food out and sat at the subway tables set out on the place de terreaux. We had a really fun lunch together and I hope we’ll do it again before I leave (also I can’t believe how soon I am leaving, just writing this kind of freaked me out!). After lunch, Dana and I went back to my place to pick up the wine she bought this weekend to send home. However, after waiting in line for over half an hour at the post office, they told us that it was prohibited to send wine to the United States. Let’s just say, Dana was pretty pissed about that. Stupid U.S. with all the unnecessary rules! After that, we found another photo place in near Bellecour that was able to print my pictures for me, but I had to crop some to get them to fit the size of paper that they had in matte finish. After that, we tried to run some errands, but it was simply raining to hard and we were soaking wet so I just went back to pick up my pictures and went home. I did a little work and then called Dr. Allison who is a pathologist at the University of Washington to discuss a possible summer internship. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to skype so I ended up having to pay 14 euros to call the states for 17 minutes. Simply crazy. However, it sounds like I might have found an internship, so I’m pretty excited about that. After that, I headed out to go to Monday night dinner. While rushing to get onto the metro, someone shoved me and the cheese that I was carrying to bring to dinner fell out of my hands and landed on the tracks. Such a sad moment, but at least it wasn’t me who fell. I made it to dinner and we had a lovely night. A lot of the people who come to the dinner were at a friends’ birthday party, so there wasn’t that many people at dinner. It was really nice to have a quieter more intimate dinner than normal and I was really excited because there were a ton of vegetables at dinner! After dinner I came home, did a little more work and went to sleep.

Tuesday: I slept in on Tuesday morning. I got up and started working on plans for Dana and I’s trip to the South and started studying for my political history of health final. I had a lovely, long, relaxing lunch with my host family (of duck, which was deliciously succulent!) and then kept plugging away on all the stuff I have to get done. I spent most of the day working on stuff. Then, I had a great dinner with my host family and was really excited because we had a fabulous salad followed by a great dessert of pears and ice cream. After dinner I packed up my stuff and printed out some final things before heading to bed.