Back in Lyon

Sunday: I got home to Lyon after a quick and easy flight back from London. I got back early in the morning and had a relaxing day just unpacking and catching up on a few things. My family got home from a day of skiing in time for dinner. We had a really lovely dinner. We spent a really long time at the table just talking and laughing, and it was actually one of the best meals that I have spent with my family!

Monday: As usual I had to be up bright and early for my French class. I got back some assignments and did pretty well, which lessened some of the stress about how grades would be turning out this semester. After class, Dana and I met up with Jose to grab lunch at a little place where I had a really delicious Panini. After that we tried to go to the café we love in la Croix-Russe to do some trip planning, but forgot that it is always closed on Mondays (we’ve made this mistake too many times now!). Instead, we went to the Kayser Boulangerie where I got this amazing caramel, pear, croissant thing and then went to sit in Starbucks to work on our trip stuff since it was the only place we could find with free Wi-Fi. After that, I headed over to Gare Part-Dieu. I had booked my train ticket for Mulhouse, but I had not yet received it in the mail. It took a while to refund it and rebook it so they could print out the ticket for me at the station, but eventually I got it all figured out. Next I headed to Carrefour. A really big supermarket/store for everything else. It is actually on the top floor of the mall next to the train station, so it ended up taking me forever to even find the store. Once I had found the store, I walked in and all I could find was clothes and house products, etc… I could not find food anywhere, but there was no way that I was going to be the stupid American who had to ask where they stored all the food… Eventually I found this ramp/escalator that led up to an entire other floor full of food. I thought I had finally successded, but little did I know the next problem awaiting me. I did all my shopping and headed up to the cash register to pay. I put all my stuff on the belt and all of a sudden the cashier started just yelling at me. I honestly could not make out a single word she was saying. Finally I thought I heard her say something about weighing something. I just kept saying yes, you can weigh the stuff and then I will pay for it. Once she finally calmed down and spoke in normal French, I understood that apparently I had to weigh the fruits and vegetables on scales in the grocery section and bring the ticket up so that I could pay for them. This wasn’t so hard once I finally understood what to do, but I had never been to a supermarket like this before since this is only the case in certain supermarkets. Let’s just say it was a pretty funny encounter. I brought my food home and began to prepare the hummus and carrots that I was making to bring with me to my Monday night dinner. It was really nice because I was in the kitchen preparing my food at the same time as my host mom was starting to prep for dinner and my host brother was eating a snack. I had a great time with them and really enjoyed their company. It was also fun because my host family had never heard of hummus before so I got to teach them about it as I was making it. After that, I headed over to meet up with some people at Place Bellecour to walk over to Monday night dinner. It was the largest dinner I have ever been at with 22 people in the small living room of Marie-Jose, but it was a really enjoyable night.

Tuesday: I had the first meeting with my tutor scheduled for 9am. I got up early and got over to where he had arranged for us to meet. As always, I was early so I waited for him. After he was about 15 minutes late, I tried to call him but I think he was confused on the phone and ended up hanging up on me. Apparently he had had an emergency meeting and forgot his agenda and totally forgot about our meeting. Unfortunately by the time I had found this out, I had wasted quite a bit of time, but oh well. Next I had a meeting with Annick (the women who gave us tours of La Croix-Russe and Fourviere during our orientation week). She is going to be helping me with my independent study photography project. We spent our time together discussing possible topics and ideas for my project. I think I am going to do an observational photo project on food and French people’s interactions with food in public spaces (particularly market places). I am pretty excited about this project! Next I headed over to my Lyon history class. After that and after dinner, I met up with Dana, Eduardo, Rachel and some of Eduardo’s friends at a bar. It was a pretty relaxed place and I enjoyed it, but we were all pretty tired, so we headed back pretty early.

Wednesday: The sun was out and it was an absolutely gorgeous day!! I had my tennis class on Wednesday and was able to play outside wearing a normal tennis outfit (not many layers of clothing) in beautiful sunshine. I really enjoyed myself and actually played pretty well, which just made everything even better. Wednesday, my other host brother, Francois had returned since it was his week of school break and so we had nice dinner together.

Thursday: I had another meeting set up Thursday morning with my tutor, and fortunately, he showed up (very apologetically) this time. It seems like he is going to be really helpful to me with my presentation and projects. He helped me find and check out a bunch of big books, which means I guess I’ve gotta start reading! After that, I headed over to my political history of health class. Following class, I took a little walk around my neighborhood to enjoy how beautiful and sunny the day was. It was a high of 66 degrees!!!

Friday: I woke up and packed for my trip to Mulhouse this weekend. After that I worked on some miscellaneous things that I had to catch up on before heading over to take my train for the weekend trip with Dana to see her penpal who lives in Mulhouse.