Sunday evening: I returned home after my trip to find about 20 people in the living room in my apartment. After a few minutes I found out that it was my one of my host sisters and her husband. I was a little overwhelmed and out of sorts so I went to my room to unpack. Later in the evening I had dinner with them and my host brother since my host parents hadn’t gotten back from visiting some friends for the weekend. It was a good dinner and quite amusing because my host sisters husband spent the whole time trying to educate me about all the famous and important people who come from Lyon and was very disappointed that my host brother had not yet informed me about such important things.
Monday: Unfortunately I woke up at 6am on Monday for my French language course and felt really sick. So I texted Dana to tell our prof and went back to bed for another 5 hours. Later in the day I caught up on emails and finished unpacking and cleaning my room. After that I decided to try to venture out to see if I could get myself into the photography course that I really wanted to take. I got to the University and I looked on the course list and saw that the class was in room BS06. I went to the B building an saw on a sign that BS was in the basement but accessible from the first level (I entered on the ground floor). I spent 45 minutes walking back and forth across the bulding, looking and asking for help to find the course. Eventually I found room BS01, and after waiting there for a while, I found out that BS06 was in BS01. At Penn there is a building called DRL that I thought was the least logically arranged building ever. Nope, it has certainly been surpassed. It was beyond frustrating and I was almost in tears. Once I found the room, I looked on the door at the schedule for classes in that room. Someone had crossed out the class I was going to take. I went to the office to ask for help and they sent me to an office in another building. Once I got there, they informed me that the person I needed to talk to was actually at the other campus. UGH, SUCH A FRUSTRATING SYSTEM!!! But, its certainly a cultural learning experience!!
Tuesday: The past few days I had been feeling like I was coming down with something. Unfortunately, I was sick in Lyon and couldn’t do that much besides just going to my one class on Tuesday. After class, I took the metro back and stopped off at the pharmacy across the street from my apartment. I went in just looking to pick up something over the counter and learned that in France, that doesn’t really exist. In order to get medications at the pharmacy, you have to take a number and wait your turn. Then you go up to the counter and explain your symptoms to the pharmacist. From there, the pharmacist will decide what they think is likely wrong with you and what medicine to give you. For me, as expected, the pharmacist suspected something my sinuses and gave me something to help it.
Wednesday: Since I was still in the process of figuring out what my final class would be, I went to go try out another class about food production, agriculture, the environment, etc… The topic of the day was food disparities in Africa. While it actually sounded like a topic I would be very interested in and the professor seemed really nice, the class was pretty awful. He literally spent the whole class period reading off statistics. At one point he was reading off statistics on calorie consumption in every individual country in Africa. Honestly, I have never listened to so much information and learned so little. The rest of the day was spent catching up on work and trying to recover from being sick. During dinner on Wednesday, something my host mother did really amused me. During every meal, Thibeaut gets yelled at by Martine about something. He is always eating too big bites, eating too fast, eating too much, playing with his food, etc… and Martine is always critiquing him on it. On Wednesday we had pasta for dinner and there was a little bowl of gruyere to put on top of it. Once everyone had finished eating and was just sitting around the table talking, Martine just reached into the bowl and grabbed a pinch of cheese with her hands to eat. I just found it so amusing because she would have absolutely yelled at Thibeaut for doing the exact same thing.
Thursday: Today I slept in and headed to my class on political history of health. For this class there is both a CM (lecture) and TD (recitation), but I only need to take the CM. The CM was supposed to be at 12:00pm and the TD at 2:00pm. I sat through the class from 12-1:45pm and it was horrible. It was just two presentations by these two guys that talked so fast that the French student sitting next to me could barely understand them (doesn’t bode well for me then…). The worst part was that at the end of their presentations, the prof spent the next 15 minutes or so critiquing every single aspect of their presentations. I was truly shocked and asked my French friend Lea sitting next to me. Apparently that is super normal and an expected part of giving an oral presentation in France. Luckily I don’t have to give a presentation in this class, but, let’s just say that I am now terrified for my presentation in one of my other classes. Unfortunately after sitting through all of this, I found out that the times of the TD and CM had been switched and now I had to stay and sit through another whole class. MAJOR FAIL!! After class ended, I headed to the tram with my two friends in the class. Once we got there, we found out that the tram would only take us halfway to where we needed to go to change to the metro to get back to where I live. We took the tram and then waited an hour in the freezing cold, with total chaos for a bus to come to take us to the metro stop. Apparently there was a problem with the tram at the opposite end of the line and for some reason that screwed up everything else. I was so cold that I could barely feel my toes, but it was certainly an experience! After I got home, for dinner, Martine made a lasagna. Thibeaut has been begging her to make a lasagna ever since I got to France. He was so excited and was very pleased that I couldn’t eat very much (because I never eat that much), which left more for him. It was really good, but had a really different taste than any lasagna that I’ve ever had before. I couldn’t quite place the exact taste, but I think there was a much less strong tomato and oregano flavor…
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| Water frozen on the side of a building and all down the street in La Croix Russe |
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| It's so cold here that all the water in the fountain in La Place de Terreaux froze |
Friday: I met up with Jose, Dana and Janee for lunch today. We went to this place that Jose was raving about called the croq and roll. I had a really delicious sandwich with melted emmental cheese on top. After that, Dana and I went to this adorable little café to work on a presenation for our French class. For dinner Martine and Thibeaut were gone in Paris, so I had dinner with Marc. We had a great conversation. Then Stefan (Danish student living with us for a month) joined us since it is the last night that I will be here before he leaves. He gave me a French beer to try because I was unaware that France made beer (let alone good beer) and we talked all about different types of alcohol, how much we hat the passé simple tense and had a really great time! I’m so excited now for my trip to Burgundy this weekend with my program!
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