Monday Night: I went to dinner at Marie-José’s apartment for dinner. Every single Monday night for the past 17 years she has been organizing dinners where students come and each bring something to share for dinner so that they can meet other students who live in Lyon who come from all over the world. This was my first time going to her apartment and it was really great. There were about 15 students and we all had a great evening. For dessert one girl brought a galette des rois with marzipan inside. There is a whole tradition around eating these. There is a little ceramic thing inside the galette and whoever finds it in their piece wins the kings crown. So, the youngest person has to go under the table and decide who gets each piece so that no one can treat. As someone who is always unlucky and never wins anything, I figured I didn’t even have a chance. But somehow I won – I found the little ceramic fish in my piece. I got to wear the crown for the night as well as the guy sitting next to me who was my king for the night. Overall, it was a great night and at the end we all exchanged numbers. It was great to meet so many new people.
Tuesday: I had a bunch of different classes to try. The first one was at 8am at the far campus, so I had to leave my apartment at 6:45am. I got there and once the professor showed up (15 minutes late), the class got started. There were too many people in the class so he tried convincing people to leave. He asked me why I wanted to be there and I awkwardly just replied: because I want to be here. However, after about 15 of him talking about sociology, he started discussing media. I had thought that this class had something to do with medicine, but apparently when I read the title I thought it referred to medicine and it actually referred to media….major fail! The next class I had was back across town at the other campus. I got to class on time and after waiting in the classroom for 45 minutes, all the students got up and left – apparently the professor just decided not to show up. Finally my last class of the day on the history of Lyon was great! It was really funny though because when the prof walked in and everyone was there on time he made the comment that he was shocked that he was there on time and that all the students were there on time. It’s just so funny to me that he would even need to remark that – especially on the first day of class! That evening there was a party for exchange students. It was another great event where I was able to meet a bunch of new people.
Wednesday: The past few days had been really hectic, so it was nice to only have to go to tennis on Wednesday. It was great to be able to play, but a little bit weird because for the first half of class, we played with these squishy balls. I thought the goal was just to get us started, but it seems weird to me because this was the upper level class. Oh well, it was really nice to be able to play and I’m excited to play tennis on a more regular basis.
Thursday: I showed up to my first class today which was kind of like a recitation for my other class later in the day. As usual I sat outside the class waiting and no one else was there. After about 10 minutes I saw another girl who looked like she was waiting for the class and asked her if she knew why the prof wasn’t there yet. 20 minutes after the class should have started, the professor showed up and said that since there were no other students there that it was cancelled…such a crazy system. Then we had the lecture for that class (political history of health), which was really good. I was so excited to finally find a course that can count towards HSOC! That night my program director Barbara threw us and our host families a little party to get to know each other. It was really nice to meet all the other host families as well as Barbara’s cats that she is always talking about.
Friday: I made an effort here to not have classes on Fridays and it was successful – which I am very excited about! I met up with Dana, Janee, Jose and Rachel and we had lunch in a Bouchon in Lyon. It was a great meal and I had quenelles, which are a DELICIOUS Lyonnais specialty. Then we went to the Gallo-Roman museum up on Fourviere which was very interesting and I learned a lot more about the beginnings of Lyon. After that, Dana decided to try out a Temple in Lyon. We went to a Sephardic one right near my apartment. Unfortunately it was super religious and there were only 2 other women in the entire place, so we probably won’t be going back there. After that we tried to meet up with some people to go out, except I unfortunately forgot to bring my ID….whoops.
Saturday: Dana and I decided to try again to find a temple. We knew of two on the presque’ile and decided we would try one of those. We had looked up the addresses and directions, however, we couldn’t find either of them. After walking around for hours, we decided we had failed and retrned home to have lunch. Later in the evening we met up with Janee to go to the Beaux Arts Museum in the place de terreaux. It was a gorgeous museum with incredible works of art and I really enjoyed it! After that we went to get a hot chocolate at Chacun a sa Tasse in la Croix Russe. It is this adorable little café, that is always packed, but worth the wait. I had this great hazelnut hot chocolate that was very different than any thing that I have had before, but really good. That night Dana and I went out to this great bar/club in la place de terreaux called Le Boston. It was really surprising to us how sober everyone was there and how polite everyone was while we were dancing. We were dancing just us two and all the guys were so polite. It was nothing like the crazy American clubs were girls are constantly bombarded by guys trying to dance with them. It was quite refreshing for us.
Sunday: I had a relaxing day catching up on dozens of emails I needed to send, planning classes for the week and working on some more internship applications.
Monday: This was the start of my second week of classes. I was determined to figure everything out. After my French language class in the morning, I went with Dana to get these amazing sandwiches at Boulangerie Keyser near the Opera house. It is this great bakery that sells these sandwiches for incredibly cheap. Unfortunatly, there is no place to sit in the bakery, so we had to go sit in the starbucks to eat our sandwiches… After that I went to go try another class on the psychpathology of adolescents. I had hopes that this might work for my major. I got to class, and as usual the prof was late. Once we got into class, he asked where he had finished last class. The students read to him the last sentence that he had said. He pulled out pages of notes that looked about 20 years old and just started reading. The students began writing as fast as they could while he read as fast as he could without stopping. It literally sounded like he was reading from a French textbook. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying and I slowly put my stuff back in my bag, got up and headed towards the door. He finally stopped reading and said to me, oh, are you in the wrong classroom. I squeaked out a yes and ran out the door. It was literally the worst class I have ever had in my entire life! That afternoon I met up with my French penpal Maud in a café. It was so amazing to see her and we had a great time catching up. We have stayed in contact, but it has been 6 years since I last saw her, so it was really nice. Then, her best friend Marion came to join us. She is a pharmacy student here in Lyon and was super nice. Sadly, Maud is headed to India for the semester to do an internship, so I won’t get to see her again, but it was nice at least to see her for a little bit. That evening I had my Monday night dinner again, but beforehand, Marie Jose had organized for us to go have a tour of theatre des celestins. It was a great tour of a beautiful theatre (built in the Italian style) an I really enjoyed the visit. After that we had a more low key dinner and it was really enjoyable.
Tuesday: It finally began to get really cold in Lyon. We had a relatively mild winter up until this point, but Tuesday was when it became unbearably cold. Unfortuantely, this was the day that I had a tour with my history of Lyon class of Fourviere. It was really interesting since it was done by an archeologist and physical geophraphist of the history of Lyon since 20,000bc. However, it was snowing and we were all so cold that it was hard to even pay attention, let alone, to actually take notes. That afternoon, I met again with Barbara to figure out my mess of classes. I received an email from the director of my major and he said that he would approve my history of Lyon class for my major as long as I did my presentation on a topic related to health!!
Wednesday: I had tennis once again, despite it being about 26 degrees outside. It was certainly not the most fun I have had recently, but I did it at least. Then I spent a while planning my trip to Paris and packing for the weekend.
Thursday morning: I decided to try another tennis class because ideally I would take 2 tennis classes per week. It was with a different prof and it was awful. It was unbearably cold and he stopped us every 5 minutes to tell us another thing that was the most important thing to focus on while playing. He was unbelievably irritating and an awful prof….and we had to play with the stupid soft balls for almost the entire class. I’m just amazed I didn’t end up with frostbite. Then, during my political history of health, I met a great girl who is going to send me notes from the class, which will really help because even though I understand everything the prof is saying, it is really hard to get it all down quick enough in French.
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