I had an absolutely fabulous weekend. I had originally planned to spend some time with my host family and try to get a lot of work done. I certainly spent a lot of time with my host family, but I unfortunately got pretty much nothing done in terms of school work….
Friday: I had a leisurely morning and woke up in time to have a late breakfast/early lunch. Afterwards, I met up with Dana, Janee and a few of Janee’s friends to go see the Hunger Games. At a lot of the theaters in France they have showings of American movies in VO (version original) and VF (version Français), so we were able to see the Hunger Games in English the same day that it came out in the states. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had the chance to read the books, but Dana and Janee convinced me to join them and I am very happy that I did. I was blown away by the movie and I can’t wait to read the second and third books when I get back home this summer! I can’t believe I have been missing out on this great series for all this time. After the movie, Dana and I walked around a bit looking for some flats for her to buy. By that time, it was almost time for dinner and I headed back home. I had a fabulous meal because basically all of the Van Heeswyck family was in Lyon. I met Delphine who lives in London, who was the only family member I hadn’t met yet. After dinner we hung out for a bit before I went to bed.
Saturday: It was such a beautiful morning that I decided to wake up early and go for a short run. After taking a quick shower, I headed over to the market a la Croix-Russe. This was my first time going to the market on the weekend. Saturdays are the busiest and most important days at the market and I was really excited to get to experience it. Also, on Saturdays, at the top of the market there is a smaller organic market. It was really interesting to see the differences in the people shopping there, the vendors and the products in the organic market than the rest of the market. Also, I was surprised because I expected to see only producers at the organic market, but there were certainly a few resellers as well. I spent a good four hours in the market taking pictures, talking to vendors, and beginning to discuss to other clients in the markets. I took almost 400 pictures Saturday at the market!! While I love taking pictures and talking to the vendors, I was definitely a little bit anxious about talking to the other clients and it was certainly much harder than talking to the vendors. Also, normally I do some weekly shopping at the market when I go, but all the vendors (and even one old man doing his shopping) were so generous that I did some shopping without spending even a cent. I cam home with a huge baguette, a bag of coconut cookies and about 20 varieties of apples. Once the market starts to die down, I usually head home. However, on Saturday, I stayed to watch what happens as it closes. There are laws in France that allow anyone to come take food that is left over at the end of the market. It was really interesting to watch and take some pictures of the food that is left and the people who come to scavenge through the boxes that the vendors leave. Overall it was a really fabulous day at the market. 
I had told my host mom in the morning that I wouldn’t make it home in time for lunch, however, when I arrived home a little after 2pm, the family was just having dessert. They had saved me some of the lasagna that they had for lunch and I came to join them to have some lunch. At this point, my host family was talking about their plans for the rest of the day and they invited me to join them to go on an excursion to an abbey in Bourg-en-Bresse (about 60km north of Lyon). We all (my host mom Martine, host dad Marc, host brothers Thibaut, Francois and Edouard, and my host sisters Delphine and Aude – and her husband Gregoire) piled into 2 cars and headed out. However, after about 5 minutes of driving along the Rhone, the traffic was at a standstill. The autoroute we needed to take to head to Bourg-en-Bresse was closed, and we basically had to sit in the car waiting for the traffic to move for almost an hour. By that point, we realized that we were not going to be able to go where we were originally planning to go. So, we changed plans and headed to a lake/park called Miribel just outside Lyon. It was a beautiful sunny day and a perfect day to spend in a park. We played a game where we all put two names of well-known people in a hat and then the first round we had to get people to guess the names by explaining them. The next round we only got to say one word to get the others to guess the person, and the final round we had to mime in order to explain the person. It was a hilariously funny game. At one point I had to mime and I managed to get them to guess three names by pointing to me to mean people who came from the states and pointing to Delphine to explain Margaret Thatcher since Delphine lives in London. So ridiculous. Next we played a game where we broke into two teams and each person was assigned a number. Then we put a shoe in the middle and Gregoire (the cripple) took turns calling out numbers. The goal was to grab the shoe and run back to your side without being touched by the other team. It got pretty crazy at some points, but I won the last point of the game for my team! After that, we got back home and my host family went to Mass for half an hour while I took a shower and got ready for my party. Once they got home, we had a little champagne aperitif and then had a great dinner all together.
After that, I met up with my friend Gregoire who is a medical student in Lyon to go to the Medicine Gala. It is an annual big formal party for all the medical students. Luckily he had a car so we didn’t have to worry about getting on the shuttle buses with everyone else. The Gala was about 20 kilometers outside of Lyon. So I was in charge of the GPS and giving the directions. The place for the Gala was honestly in the middle of nowhere. At one point we were driving along tiny little residential roads with no street lights. Gregoire kept asking me are you sure we’re going in the right direction, and I kept insisting that I had no idea but that is what the GPS was showing. Luckily, we eventually made it there. It was a great party. Gregoire’s friends met us there and they were all really nice. At one point, I was speaking to a friend of Gregoire’s sister and he started to try to speak to me in English. Of course I could understand him with no problem, but I actually had some difficulty responding back to him in English. I had been speaking all day in French to vendors in the market, to my host family and to other students at the party, and I just couldn’t get my mind to switch into English mode. The phrases coming out of my mouth just sounded awkward and translated and I had to embarrassingly switch back into French. Kind of exciting, but also super embarrassing and ridiculous! We had a great time dancing and listening to mostly American music (as usual). After that, another friend of his sister tried, of course unsuccessfully, to convince me to kiss him. It was hilarious how well laid out his arguments were for a rather ridiculous proposal… Then, at one point, one of Gregoire’s friends asked me if I found it annoying that I could understand all the lyrics of the songs that I listen to. I found this question so unbelievably hilarious. French kids are just so used to listening to English songs whose lyrics they don’t fully understand, that this girl couldn’t grasp why I would want to actually understand the lyrics. So funny. At about 3 in the morning, we decided we really needed to leave despite the arguments by his friends. We finally made it back to my place around 3:30am, however, due to the time change, it was actually 4:30 in the morning, so I made it to sleep around 5am.
Sunday: Since we had not been successful in our attempt to go to Bourg-en-Bresse on Saturday, we had made plans to reattempt our excursion at 9am on Sunday morning, therefore, I woke up at 8am (only 3 hours after going to sleep….). We headed out and got to the Brou Monastery at around 10:30am. We took a nice tour of the Church. We saw some cool tombs of Philbert de Beau – Duc de Savoie who had a normal death statue on top of the tomb and a naked- almost Crist-like representation underneath that would serve him well in heaven. Also, the crests that show the genealogy of Philbert de Beau and Margeurite d’Autriche were really quite interesting in terms of the history that they represent since they are original from when the church was built in the 15th century (on the site of two prior churches beginning from the 10th century). 
After that, the Monastery closed at noon for lunch, so we all headed outside for a picnic. Martine had said that we would have just a little picnic. However, it was really a rather elaborate picnic in my opinion – I mean, come on, we had at least 4 different courses. How could that be just a little picnic? After that, all the kids organized a little baseball game (I mean if you have 5 kids in the family, it’s not that hard). We played with a bat made from a stick and a ball made from the pit of an avocado. It was definitely make-shift, but it was a ton of fun. Next, we headed back inside to see the museum in the monastery. They had some beautiful 16th-18th century pieces, that were contrasted with some interesting modern pieces that were not received all that well by my host family. After that, Martine and Marc left to take Delphine to the airport, and the rest of us hung out for a while longer playing baseball and sunbathing. It was just such a gorgeous day that it was hard to leave. We eventually rounded everyone up and headed back to the house. By this time, I was so exhausted because of how little I had slept the night before that I had to take a nap before dinner. We had a nice refreshing salad with pine nuts (among other things) for dinner. After that, I did a little bit of work (for the first time all weekend) before heading to bed. 
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