Last week of class

Monday: I woke up feeling pretty sick and so I only made it into French class for the second half (since there are only presentations in the mornings, it’s not really that important to be there). After class, Dana and I walked over to Hotel de Ville and had lunch at a little Italian place right near Boulangerie Kayser. After lunch we went to la tasse livre to get a nutella steamer and do some work. We ended up spending more than five hours at the café working on a bunch of stuff and just hanging out. After that I went with Dana back to her apartment so that she could change before dinner. Then we headed over to Monday night dinner. It was a great dinner and there was a ton of people there. However, Dana had a test Tuesday morning and I was pretty tired, so we ended up leaving a little bit early and heading home to go to sleep.

Tuesday: I woke up in the morning and went for a little run. After that, I came back home and spent most of the rest of the day writing for my independent study project. I had a really nice dinner with my host family and then hung out a bit at night before going to bed.

Wednesday: I woke up early Wednesday morning for my meeting with my tutor. We worked on editing part of my independent study essay that I had written and talked about a lot of French grammar rules that I tend to struggle with. After that, I headed home, grabbed some lunch, and got back to work on my independent study essay. By dinner I had almost finished and so spent a while after dinner playing cards with my host family. Francois picked a really complicated game. We played at least 10 rounds and I think it wasn’t until at least the 5^th round that I even began to understand what was going on. Ultimately it was a pretty fun time though. After that I headed back to my room and finished up the draft of my essay – I was pretty surprised that I ended up writing 20 pages!

Thursday: Thursday morning I had my last morning at Lycee St. Marc teaching English. The teachers whose classes we worked with gave Dana, Janee and I nice hand towels with our names stitched onto them. After class, I went over to campus to meet up with Annick to go over my project. We spent a few hours discussing what I had done and started editing it. She was really helpful, especially since she lives in the Croix-Rousse and could provide some good ideas about how to alter things that I had written. After our meeting, I went home to have a quick lunch before heading out for my last day of class. My teacher had said that we would be starting class at 1:45pm instead of 2:15pm, so I left the house at 1:00pm, which should have given me plenty of time to make it to class on time. Unfortunately, once I got off the metro at Grange-Blanche, I found out that the tram wasn’t working between Grange-Blanche and Portes des Alpes (the Bron Lyon 2 campus is just a few stops before portes des alpes). So, there was a huge group of students all standing around waiting for buses to come to bring everyone to campus. However, the TCL people said they had no idea when the buses were going to arrive. Everyone was freaking out because there were a lot of people who had tests on Thursday afternoon. Luckily, I found my friend Léa from class and we ended up deciding to take the metro to Gare de Venissieux and then take another bus over to campus. We walked into class right at 2:15pm. It sucked that we were late, but there was nothing that we could have done. After class (my last class – soooo crazy), I met up with Janee and Dana at the tasse livre to try to study for our SLM (our French class). However, we just ended up talking and weren’t really successful at getting anything done. After that, I did a little more work on my own and then met up with Jose, Dana and Eduardo in Vieux-Lyon to get Indian food for dinner. It was really good and we had a really funny and fabulous night!

Cote D’Azur Excursion

Friday: Friday afternoon, we all met up at Part-Dieu to take the train. Our first train ride was about two hours to Marseille. We had a bit of time in Marseille and it already looked like a beautiful place just from the train station – I’m excited to go there in a week and a half. After that, we got on another train down to les arcs de draguignan. There, we were picked up by our guide Jean and taken to where we were staying Friday night at l’hôtel le Domino. Once we dropped our stuff off in our rooms, we headed downstairs to eat at the restaurant owned by the same person who owned the little bed and breakfast we were staying in. Jean and his wife Justine joined the rest of us for dinner. As an appetizer they gave us little crackers with cheese and ham as well as sea snails, which, despite our valiant efforts, were inedible for almost all of us. After that, our first course arrived. We had a salad with hard-boiled egg, sundried tomatoes, anchovies and green beans. Normally I love salads, but I really hated this one except for the green beans. After that, we had a cod dish with a bunch of vegetables including green beans, cauliflower, purple carrots… It was delicious and I was relieved that the whole meal wasn’t a bust. Finally, for dessert, I had a carpaccio of pineapple (really, really thinly sliced pineapple) soaked in a lovely sauce and topped with vanilla ice cream. It was a wonderfully light and delicious dessert. After dessert, Dana and I hung out for a little while before going to bed.

   

   

   

   

     

   

     

   

Saturday: Saturday morning we woke up and headed back down to the restaurant to have a little breakfast. We had a lite breakfast of toast and tea, but the homemade apricot jam that they had was really good. After breakfast, we all piled into the van (me, Dana, Jose, Ansley, Janee, our program director Barbara, our guide Jean and his wife Justine) and headed to this little town called Trigance. It was full of quaint architecture and we even saw this adorable little donkey. Apparently all the houses there were designed without any architects, which we were really impressed with given how cute the place was. All the houses were built very close together to try to preserve space for agricultural lands. On our way back to the car, we stopped off to use the toilets. Unluckily for us, in all the little towns that we visited, they only had Turkish Toilets (basically a nicer name for holes in the ground), which are not the easiest toilets to use! After that, we got back into the van and headed to this little boulangerie. Our guide told us that they had the most wonderful bread and pastries there. We watched a really interesting video on the bread making process including how to make the fire, how the bread is made, etc and then bought some stuff from there to eat at our picnic for lunch. Next, we drove to the nearby town of Castellane to go to a really cute little market where I bought some delicious honey and green olive spread. After spending some time exploring the market, we headed on a long winding road through the mountains to Verdon where we had a lovely picnic lunch. After lunch, we all changed into our bathing suits to go into the little river. Dana and I had left our stuff up at the van and so had to walk back over there. We had to change by the van on the side of the road and try not to flash all the passing cars. It was really a hilarious experience full of funny mishaps! The river was absolutely freezing and it was relatively windy despite the sunshine. Dana and I really struggled to get into the water. Jose and Ansley had to almost pull us in. Once we were in, they tried to get us to dunk our heads, which we refused to do, resulting in a ton of screaming. I screamed so much and so loud that I almost lost my voice. Once we were in the water, it was very nice, but we really couldn’t feel our legs and once we got out, my legs were pretty painful since they were so freezing cold (you could clearly see the line of how deep I went into the water from where I was bright red from the cold). After that, we went on some more winding roads (we were all pretty nauseous during these rides) to head to the panoramic Gorges du Verdon. This has even been described as France’s Grand Canyon and it was unbelievably beautiful! After that, we took a hike down to this very pretty bridge and to the river below. It was so incredibly blue and the contrast with the rocks made for a fabulous place. After a lovely little hike, we got back in the car and headed to the incredible medieval town of Moustiers Ste Marie  that is known for their blue earthenware products. In the town there is an awesome church up on the hill that is a pilgrimage site. It is known for the star that hangs over it to protect it that is on a wire that is connected to the two sides of the hills. We hiked up the hill to the church. Once we got up there the view was simply spectacular. It was incredibly windy, but it was certainly worth it. The church itself was dark inside and only lit by a few candles by the alter. It made for a really unique ambiance in the church. Something that I have yet to experience in all the really elaborate churches I have seen in Europe. We wandered back through the town, popping into a few of the shops before getting back into the car. Jose had left his coat at the hotel we stayed at the night before, so we had to drive back to that hotel to pick it up before heading to the hotel that we stayed at Saturday night right by the Mediterranean called Relais de Maures. Once settling into our rooms, we headed down to dinner. The restaurant there has actually won some awards in the Michelin guide, so it certainly had a lot to live up to. For the first course, I had a fabulous crab soup. The flavor was spot on and it wasn’t too rich, which was just prefect. Following that I had guinea hen in a rosemary cream sauce with a side of vegetable spring rolls. The hen was fabulously tender and perfectly moist, but the real highlight of the dish was actually the spring rolls. The filling was just so perfectly seasoned that I wished I could have had more of them! Finally, for dessert I had a pana cotta with strawberries and pistachio madeleines. The pana cotta was incredible. It was creamy, but light and the strawberries and strawberry sauce on it was just to die for. After a wonderful dinner, Dana and I headed back to our room to hang out for a bit before going to sleep. At one point, I took a shower and Dana ended up falling asleep for a bit on the bed. Once I was back in the room getting ready for bed, she sat up straight in bed and asked me if I had just taken a shower. Then she freaked out and started yelling: is it morning? Is it Monday morning? She was so out of it and I was so worried, but it was a hilarious moment.

   

Sunday: Sunday morning, we woke up and headed to breakfast at the restaurant downstairs. We had delicious, freshly baked, warm croissants and tea. The croissants were truly melt in your mouth good. After breakfast, we walked down to the Mediterranean to one of the beaches of where the Allies landed in 1944. Our guide Jean explained to us a lot of the history surrounding this and it was really quite interesting. After that, we all piled back into the van to head to this pretty little village called Bormes les Mimosas. We strolled through the town and took a ton of pictures of the beautiful place. It was truly picturesque and the amount of flowers and beautiful little buildings was incredible. I seriously wish that I could live in the town it was so great! We wandered through the little shops in the town and just took in the spectacular view of the town overlooking the Mediterranean sea. We spent a long time in the town just taking in the beauty of it. After that, we hopped back in the van and headed to the Mediterranean sea to a great little spot. We had a little picnic (we hadn’t bought enough bread for all 8 of us…) and then got our bathing suits on. The water was a little bit warmer (barely), but it was so rocky that it was a little painful to go to far into the water. Dana and I waded in for a bit and then just relaxed on the beach in the beautiful sunshine. It was a bit windy though, so I ended up having to borrow Jean’s jacket to wear on the beach. After we all got out of the water, we headed to the little café next door, right on the beach to get some drinks and relax for a bit. After that, we all changed back into our clothes, packed up all our stuff and headed back to the train station. It ended up taking us a little longer than we had expected and we were a little bit worried about missing our train, but luckily we ended up making it to the train station with a little bit of time to spare. We headed from les arcs de draguignan to Toulon, then ran to our next train that left 10 minutes after our other one got in to Avignon. In Avignon we had about 25 minutes to get off the train, find some food, wait in line, buy everything and then to get onto our train. We ran on just in time to catch our train back to Lyon Part-Dieu. Once there, I took the metro back home and relaxed a little bit before going to bed.

Overall I had an absolutely fabulous weekend. We were so fourtunate with the weather because all the predications had indicated rain and bad weather, but we ended up with beautiful sunshine (even if it was a bit cold). We had delicious food, saw some extraordinary towns and had a wonderfully relaxing weekend!