Finally Beautiful Weather!

Monday: After arriving home extremely late Sunday night, I was exhausted Monday morning when I had to wake up for my early morning French class. After French class, Dana and I met up with Jose and Ansley to take Jose out to lunch for his 21^st birthday. We headed over to Place Bellecour and found this adorable little restaurant called La Mere Jean. It was such beautiful weather that we were even able to eat outside! For lunch, I had an onion tart with a salad. I have had onion tarts before but this one was something completely different. It was sort of like a quiche and sort of like a little slice of heaven. We were all honestly shocked by just how amazing this tart was. Needless to say, I will certainly be returning to this little restaurant. After lunch Dana and I walked around a little bit before I returned back to the University for my meeting with Annick (the woman who is helping me with my independent study). We spent almost 2 hours discussing my progress, my observations the previous week at the market and my future plan of attack. I felt very reassured about what I need to be doing after our meeting. After meeting with Annick, it was already close to dinner time and I headed home. I was planning on going to Monday night dinner as usual, but knowing that I had to wake up at 4:45am on Tuesday go to take photos at the market, I decided to be smart and try to make it an early night.

 

 Tuesday: Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:45am to get dressed and ready and to the market before 6:00am. As part of my photo project based on the market at La Croix Russe, I wanted to take some pictures in the pretty early morning light and to be able to see the vendors in the process of preparing their stands for the market. I arrived at the market at just a few minutes past six. Surprisingly there were only about 2 vendors there at that hour, so I headed to the nearest café overlooking the market to grab a tea and wait for some more vendors to arrive. Within the next half an hour, more vendors began arriving and I decided to venture out to the market. I began taking photos of the vendors in the midst of preparing for the market. Immediately I began receiving a flurry of questions for all the vendors asking me why I was taking photos and to promise them that I wasn’t taking photos of them (which I was, but will never admit to). A lot of them were nervous by my presence at first, fearing that I was a pesky journalist or nosy tax collector of some sort, but all fears were quenched once I explained that I was a student and what my project was about. After that, the vendors were all content to answer my multitude of questions and to put up with my while I photographed their stands. I had a fabulous time conversing with all the vendors and I learned a ton about the market. It was perfect to be at the market so early since there was almost no one else there. It was easy to take photos of the stands and it was much easier to speak with the vendors, because when it becomes busy later in the day, my questions understandably become much less important. I spent over half an hour talking to this awesome woman who owns this cured meat (ish) truck. She was so nice and I can't wait to go back and talk to her next week at the market! After spending about 3 hours at the market, I headed back home to take a nap – a well needed nap. Once I got up, I had some lunch, and headed to my history of Lyon class. After class I came back home, had dinner and then did some work on my presentation to prepare for my tutoring session on Wednesday.

Wednesday: I woke up yet again relatively early to meet up with my history tutor at the library. We worked together on my presentation I will be doing on the old hospital in Lyon. I am going to focus on the birth of the modern hospital in Lyon and the changes in function and causes of the shifts from the medieval hospital. After our tutoring session, I came back home, had a little breakfast and got ready for my tennis class. After a great day of playing tennis in the beautiful sunshine, I came back home to work more on possibilities for summer internships. I only wish I could get something figured out soon!

Thursday: As following with the trend this week, I woke up very early Thursday morning to start my first day teaching English at one of the local high schools. The first class was a group of 9^th graders. My only instructions from the teacher for the hour lesson was introduce yourself and have the students introduce themselves. After that, I was left to fend for myself and figure out what to teach. If I had known ahead of time, I would have planned something, but I totally had to fly by the seat of my pants. After the introductions, I had the students talk about what they had done this past weekend and what were some of their favorite hobbies, etc… We quickly finished these disscussions and had quite a bit of time left. After unsuccessfully trying to get the students to talk to each other in English in small groups, I felt a little lost. Trying to wrack my brain for ideas, I realized that I have never really worked with older kids. I have always loved working with younger kids, but I really have no idea what to do with older kids. Finally I realized I could do some translations with the students and that was a major success. I had students come up with sentences in French and then we worked to translate them into English. The students were really engaged and interested despite some of my difficulties in describing why certain ways of saying things were right or wrong. The next class were students who were in their first year out of high school and doing a program similar to community college. For the first part of the class, we all watched a news clip about the rise in suicides in factories in China. After that we again broke out into groups. We discussed the report, but after that it was like pulling teeth. No matter what I asked the students or how hard I tried, only 2 students were really willing to talk. It was so awkward and I decided that I much preferred the 9^th grade students! After that, I spent some time planning with the first teacher about what we will be doing for the next 2 months. Next I returned back home to have some lunch before leaving to go to my political history of health class. It was a fascinating lesson about the chronology of health reforms from the French revolution to the end of the 19^th century. After that, I returned back home to pack and finish planning my trip to Milan for the weekend. I hope it will be a great weekend in Milan and I hope the weather will stay just as nice as it’s been this week!   

A whirlwind tour of London

This weekend I had an incredible visit to London. Dana and I decided to play hooky just for this one time and skip class on Thursday so that we could have enough time for a real visit to London.

  

Thursday: We really struggled with finding a good priced flight or train to London, so we ended up taking a flight at 6:55am from Lyon to take advantage of the cheaper price. Since in Lyon you have to take a special tram to the airport, it took us a bit of time. We woke up at about 3:45am, took a taxi at 4:30am, grabbed the tram at 5 and got to the airport just before 5:30am in time to deal with all the nuisance at the airport. We flew through Amsterdam (and after having to go through customs in Amsterdam – quite surprising since France and the Netherlands are both part of the Schengen agreement….), we arrived in London. We took the metro to my friends dorm (in central London) to drop our stuff off. We thought it was going to be a quick ride on the metro to his place, but it actually ended up taking just over an hour because we had accidentally taken the slower possible route into the city. By the time we got to his place to drop off our stuff before lunch, we had already been awake for 10 hours and were already tired. After spending a little time hanging out with my friend Mike (from Penn) we left with him and found a cute little Indian restaurant for lunch where Dana’s friend Kristen met up with us. There was only one person in the restaurant and it was closing just as we were finishing up. He was trying so hard to get us to leave so that he could close up the place, which just kind of made it a little bit awkward for us, but oh well because it was delicious (I had chicken tikka masala with naan). After that, we walked over with Kristen to the British Museum. We just walked inside without paying or anything. It is really incredible because (basically) all the Museums in London are free of charge, making them really accessible to the general population. Kristen is really interested in art and museums and has visited the British Museum a few times on tours during her classes. So, she knew a ton of information and took us around as our private tour guide which was extremely interesting for us. I really enjoyed the Greek Parthenon exhibit and the grandfather clocks that we saw. After that, we headed over to Covent Garden where Dana and Kristen grabbed an ice cream in this gourmet ice cream shop. I tried the Ferrero Rocher flavor and it was really delicious. Next we popped over to a pub called the Harp (which is actually nominated for the best pub in London 2012 award) where Dana and I tried the local cider on tap. I really enjoyed the cider and the ambiance of this pub. Following the pub, we walked around for a while before heading over to Wahacca for dinner. We ended up hanging out down in the bar for about an hour and a half before dinner because of the wait, but it was fine because we weren’t that hungry when we initially arrived at the restaurant. We shared some guacamole and churros and I had a delicious steak burrito. I was surprised to find a chic restaurant like this in London, but it was certainly delicious. After dinner, we all headed back to Mike’s dorm so Dana could get her stuff since she was staying with Kristen for the night. My French phone had worked perfectly fine all day, but right as we got to the gate of Mike’s dorm, it stopped working. I couldn’t call Mike and he couldn’t call me. We couldn’t get in touch with him at all and Dana and Kristen had only 20 minutes left to grab Dana’s stuff and get back to the metro before the trains stopped running at midnight. Luckily right at that moment, after trying to call me a dozen times, Mike decided to just come down and try to find us, so fortunately, they were able to get Dana’s stuff in time to make the last train. Mike and I hung out for a while trying to get one of our 4 phones (between the two of us) to work. We even experimented with the idea of taking two cups and an incredibly long string so that we could communicate. Luckily after about an hour of playing with my phone, it started working and I was able to go to sleep after having been awake for over 23 hours!

Friday: Friday morning I left Mike’s room with all my stuff to go meet up with my Dad at the hotel we were going to stay at. We had this incredible place to stay right off of Trafalgar Square (the Grand at Trafalgar Square), which is right in the heart of the city. After we checked in and dropped my stuff off, we met up with Dana to go see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. We found a great spot overlooking the palace and had a great time watching the whole parades of the band, the guards, the men on horses, etc… However, we definitely didn’t realize how long it was going to last (the whole thing lasted over half an hour) – since we were expecting something closer to the changing of the guards that we had seen at Arlington National Cemetery. Next, we headed over to Westminster Abbey area to grab a bite to eat. We ate at a very traditional English Pub where we all had fish and chips with peas (luckily they weren’t the traditional mushy peas. 

After lunch, my dad and I went over to Westminster Abbey. We took an amazingly detailed and fascinating tour about the Abbey lead by one of the Vergers. The sheer quantity of dates, names, facts, etc… that we learned was a little overwhelming and hard to remember, but overall we really appreciated the details. We explored every nook and cranny of the Abbey and discovered a ton about the history of the Royal family in England. After our tour of the Abbey, we crossed the Thames and went on the London Eye. The views were simply incredible and with my interest in photography and my newly acquired camera, I certainly took advantage of the stunning scenery. After the Eye, we walked around on the boardwalk for a little bit before walking to the National Theatre to see a modern remake of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. For the show, they used the original dialogue but put the characters and the story in a modern setting. I thought the show was fantastic and after the second act, once my dad oriented himself to all the confusing misunderstandings that were occurring, he enjoyed it a lot as well. 

After that we grabbed a quick dinner at a great little self-service salad bar before meeting up with Dana to go to the Ice Bar in London created by the same people who own the Ice Hotel in Sweden. Before walking into the bar we were given parkas with gloves attached. We walked in and it was a great place. We went up to the bar and ordered great drinks that were served in ice glasses. I’m fortunate in that my hands never really get that cold, so I truly enjoyed the ice glass, but I think Dana and my Dad were struggling a bit with it because of how cold the glass was. After that we walked around the bar and took some great pictures. It was just so cool to see a whole bar made out of ice! I had a fabulous time, but I was ready to leave the cold after our 40 minutes. I don’t think I would have to stamina to make it overnight staying in the Ice Hotel, so this was perfect for me. After the bar, we stopped off at a little pret a manger to grab a quick snack because we had had a pretty small dinner. By that point, we were pretty tired out from our long day of travel and headed back to the hotel to go to sleep.

Saturday: Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to get our day started. My Dad had found this great Indian place called Dishoom where we could eat an Indian breakfast. We thought the place opened at 8, but unfortunately we hadn’t looked at the weekend hours and it actually didn’t open until 10. Since it was only 8:30 at that point, we struck out in all the other places nearby that we tried to find to eat at. Eventually we found this cute little Italian eatery called Carluccios and I had a delicious breakfast with egg and mushrooms on top of a French slice of Italian bread. Following breakfast, we headed over to the Tower of London. We walked in and caught a tour lead by one of the beef eaters. There are 37 beef eaters in the castle who live there and take care of the grounds. The tour was fabulous despite the crowds of people. The tour guide was funny and I learned a lot of history. The most shocking thing we learned about was James Scott, Duke of Monmouth. He was beheaded after trying to take over the thrown from his uncle James II. Unfortunately for him, it took 5 swings of the axe to actually behead him and after he was killed the royalty realized that he had never had a royal portrait done and so they had to sew his head back on for that – just an awful fate for the guy. After the tour, we went into the Waterloo building to see the Crown Jewels which were just spectacular. All the coronation crowns were really a sight to be seen. We also saw a pure gold punch bowl that was as large as a bathtub with a ladle almost as big as a paddle. Next we walked into the White Tower, the oldest building in the complex, which was built by William the Conquerer in 1066. Over the years this tower served many purposes. For William, he built it as a symbol of power following his conquest. Later it served as royal residences for hundreds of years as well as storage for gun powder, etc… Inside we saw St. John’s Chapel which is one of the oldest Norman style churches in London. Walking back outside, we saw the Women’s house which is actually the oldest and only surviving Tudor building (all the others burnt down in the Great London Fire). After our time in the Tower of London, we left to try to find the London Bridge. On our way out, we asked a beef eater how to get to the bridge. We thought he would give us simple instructions to the beautiful bridge right next to the castle, however, instead, he told us to walk about 10 minutes in the opposite direction. Not believing him, we walked over and discovered that what we had been eyeing was actually the Tower Bridge and to our dismay, the London Bridge across the way was not so impressive. By this point, we were pretty hungry and grabbed some lunch at this adorable little place that was literally on the water right under the Tower Bridge. After that, we decided to still head over to see if maybe there was still something exciting about the London Bridge. We were seriously disappointed and decided to go around the London Bridge and find another Bridge to cross over. On our way, we happened upon the Borough Market. This was a fabulous market where we had tastes of delicious pistachio deserts, fudge and the most unbelievable curry ever. After that, we went to find the Millenium Bridge. This Bridge was originally built with inadequate dampening systems and used to sway when people walked over it. Luckily it has now been fixed! We headed over to St. Paul’s Cathedral which was incredible both inside and out. As usual, I decided I needed to try to take pictures of the place despite the restrictions on taking photos. My Dad was certain that I was committing treason and that we were going to somehow end up in British prison, but luckily I avoided that fate. Following the visit to the Cathedral, we walked back and quickly explored Covent Garden before meeting up with my friend Mike at this amazing Japanese restaurant called Misato in Leicester Square. It was very authentic and I had this delicious soba noodle soup with tempura shrimp. I have had soba before but nothing this authentic, or nearly this mouthwateringly delicious. After dinner, we headed over to the Savoy theatre to see Legally Blond. It was a really fun musical and the music was very catchy. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the show and we had a great time. After the show, we were pretty tired from having walked well over 6 miles during the day and decided to head in for the night.

Sunday: We woke up early Sunday morning and packed up our stuff before heading to lunch at a place right next to our hotel called Garfunkel’s. I had some traditional porridge with honey. It was weird eating it with honey, since I have always had oatmeal with brown sugar, but I really enjoyed it. After breakfast my Dad and I made our way to the National Gallery stopping in the Church across the street first. We were sitting in the pews since a service was about to start (we were just looking around…) and the guy standing next to us was humming to himself with his eyes closed and kept inching nearer to us. Right as he was about to bump into us (so concentrated in prayer), we decided it was time to leave and we headed over to the National Gallery. The art there was incredibly diverse and the Gallery contained some of the most famous paintings of very well known artists including Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers and Chair paintings. I was seriously impressed and we certainly didn’t have enough time to truly appreciate everything in the museum. Next we headed back to the hotel to check out. We headed over to the metro so that my Dad could head to the airport and I could head over to meet Dana and Kristen at the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum). I met up with them and we headed over to the cafeteria to grab lunch. The V&A is actually the first museum to have been designed with a cafeteria. Therefore, the rooms of the cafeteria, just like the rooms in the rest of the museum are gorgeous and works of art in their own right. I had a lovely lunch finished off by a traditional British scone. After that, we walked around the museum very briefly before heading back to the metro to go to the airport. About this time was when Dana and I realized that despite all our planning, we had somehow managed to book separate flights back to Lyon. I was heading back through Amsterdam and Dana through Paris. Luckily, the times weren’t that different so it worked out. As we were passing through security at Heathrow, somehow Dana’s passport fell out of the tray and we thought that it had been lost of stolen for a terrifying 5 minutes before it was fortunately found. After that we both headed to our respective gates. Once I arrived in Amsterdam, I thought I would have plenty of time (an hour) to get to my gate and find some food. However, by the time I passed through customs I only had time to run, grab and apple and run over to my gate. Meaning, I was pretty hungry by the time I got back to Lyon. My flight got in late so I had to wait for the tram back to Lyon for quite some time. Eventually I made it back home at about midnight and was very happy to settle into my bed.

I had a fabulous trip and really enjoyed London and seeing my friend Mike and my DAD! I know that it’s a city I would love to come back to since I know that there is a ton more for me to explore there someday.

Short Week

This week has felt so short since I only had three real days… I guess that means I’ll have a bunch of stuff to do next week to catch up. But at least I’m having a fabulous time in Lyon and traveling!

Sunday Night: I returned home in the late afternoon. After unpacking a bit, I went to watch a little bit of the new with my host family before dinner. At dinner, I met the new girl that is staying with us for two weeks. Her name is Jessica and she is originally German but she now comes from Zurich, Switzerland. She speaks German, English and Spanish, but her French is really not very good, which is why she is here improving her French. We had a really hilarious dinner filled with translations and misunderstandings. It was really lighthearted and I enjoyed having so many people in the house (Francois was still on break – so we had 6 people including me). After dinner I did a little homework for SLM and uploaded all my pics from the weekend.

Monday: Unfortunately, for the first time today, I had a problem and did not wake up to my alarm. It wasn’t until 8:54am that I awoke suddenly and realized that I was already 54 minutes late to class. I left the house with all my stuff (and having brushed my teeth!) in under 3 minutes and headed as quickly as possible to class. Luckily this is the class that is pretty close to where I live and lasts for 4 hours, so all I missed was the student presentations and arrived just as we were beginning to discuss the book and the movie. After class, I went with Jose and Dana to get lunch at the Bistrot de Tartines (just off rue Merciere) where I had been before when I had lunch with the French medical students. After a delicious 3 cheese tartine with pears, I headed over to meet up with Barbara to discuss my independent study with her. We ended up talking about that and a bunch of other things for over two and a half hours…. Next I headed to Part-Dieu to go to Carrefour to buy food to make for Monday Night Dinner. I returned home and began making my Israeli couscous with roasted vegetables dish (which was a big hit at dinner!). I had a little time to relax before heading to Place Bellecour to meet up with everyone to go to dinner. We had a really lovely dinner where I talked to this really nice Chinese girl and Dana and I laughed a ton as usual. At the end, another girl named Julie pulled out her guitar to play for everyone. It was really nice, but I was pretty tired at this point, so I was excited to leave and head home to go to bed.

  

Tuesday: I was planning to wake up at 5am to go to the Market at la Croix-Russe. I was hoping to be there when it opened and to see the sun rise. However, when I woke up, I could tell it was way too cloudy for any sort of sunrise (let alone to really see any sun), so I decided that I will try to go next week at this time. I still went (about 3 hours later) to take some pictures and really start my project. I have a TON I need to learn about photography, but it was a good start to at least go and look at the market and get a sense of the sights and sounds around me. After that, I came home and failed to accomplish the work that I had set out for myself to do, and instead ended up taking a nap before class. After class I did a bit of reading before dinner. I had a really lovely dinner with my family and Jessica. We joked around a bunch and after dinner. Martine finished the plastic wrap at Marc to throw out. This resulted in a family game where Martine and Marc was playing catch with the plastic wrap holder and Thibaut and I were playing catch with a bunch of clementines and Jessica was just a bit freaked out and trying not to get hit. It was a great night – I love when I get to see this side of my host family!

Wednesday: Wednesday I had an early morning meeting with my tutor for my presentation on the old hospital in Lyon. I now have a much clearer picture of what I need to do for it, which is quite nice. After that I spent a hours reading the manual for my camera and experimenting with all the different settings to really get a sense of what is possible with my camera. I’m excited to head back out to take some more pictures with my new knowledge. After that I packed and had a quick dinner before getting everything ready for Thursday and going to sleep super early!

Alsace – the adorable towns of Mulhouse, Colmar and Riquewihr

I had a really great and relaxing weekend! Perfect amount of sightseeing and relaxation!

 

Friday afternoon: I left to head over to the train station at about 5pm for our 6:04pm train. I figure it always makes to give my self plenty of time to deal with the French transportation system. I got there and met up with Dana and we stood waiting for the platform to be announced for our train. Exactly 10 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart, the monitor switched from showing that the train was going to leave on time, to that it was cancelled. Honestly I think maybe Dana and I shouldn’t take French trains together, we just have such bad luck with them… We headed over to the ticket office and after complaining to the ticket agent for a while, we got booked on a train that departed an hour later than our original train and went directly to Mulhouse, so we were only about 45 minutes late. We arrived in Mulhouse and Dana’s penpal Jessica and her mom Veronique picked us up at the train station. We headed back to their house and had a nice dinner (since we missed dealing with dinner during all the scrambling to figure out train stuff). I had a delicious polenta, salad and chicken and Dana had an Alsatian specialty (but it had bacon on it, so I didn’t try it). We spent some time talking to Jessica and Veronique before we happy went to sleep.

 

Saturday: Saturday morning was great because we were able to sleep in until about 10am, which we never do on the weekends here. We had a nice relaxing breakfast and then headed out with Jessica to pick up her friend Marie and go explore a little bit of Alsace. The first town that we visited was Colmar. It is this adorable little town north of Mulhouse (about 1/3 of the way to Strasbourg). It has the beautifully colored houses that were spared by the destructions of the French Revolution and many other wars. Throughout the village there are numerous canals and it is called la Petite Venise. We walked through the town and as it turned out, Marie was pretty knowledgeable about the town. The bright colors of the houses were originally used to denote what type of store could be found there. Blue meant it was a fish store, red, a butchery, etc… Also, the little x’s that can be found all over the buildings have meaning has well – the more x’s under the windows of the house, the more children there are in that house. Further, as we looked along the canals, Marie pointed out to us the indoor town marked that was accessed by the canals (goods were brought to market along the canals) as well as a building who had a little rectangular potion protruding from the building, hanging right over the canal, that served as the toilets and emptied directly into the canal. After exploring a bit, we sat down for lunch in the main area of the village. I had a delicious Alsatian specialty called Bouchée à la reine made with flaky pastry, very tender chicken, mushrooms, other vegetables and a fabulous sauce. After we finished lunch, we headed back to the car and ran into a little children’s parade for carnival. It was so cute with all the little kids all dressed in their costumes and reminded by so much of Purim parades in Israel (fitting timing since Purim is Thursday the 8^th). We headed over to the next little town called Riquewihr, just a little bit north of Colmar. This was a much smaller town but adorable and well-known for their famous Christmas shop that we visited. It really was just like a little Christmas wonderland inside. Next, we drove back to Mulhouse and met up with some of Jessica’s friends for a little bit. Unfortunately, while we were parking our car, Jessica and another guy ended up scraping their cars against each others and so we decided to head back after just a little bit of wandering around and shopping in Mulhouse. We stopped to wash the car in the hopes that it would help the situation. We actually used an old-school car wash where you pay and then you use the hoses and brushes to clean your own car. It was certainly different than what I am used to! We headed back to the house and hung out for a bit until dinner. For dinner we had veal and a delicious salad followed my a really great chocolate éclair. After dinner we all watched wipeout together in French which was quite amusing.

Sunday: Sunday morning we also slept in a little bit and then had another simple, but enjoyable breakfast. We spent the day relaxing, watching both French and American shows and just talking. After that, had had a fantastic lunch. We had spaetzle with veal and mushrooms in a fantastic sauce as well as a salad, followed by a delicious chocolate cake (almost more like a pumpkin or banana bread, but chocolate). By that point, it was time for us to pack up our stuff and head over to the train station. We had a surprisingly easy trip back to Lyon. It was sad ending such a great weekend staying with such generous and truly nice people!