skip to main |
skip to sidebar
So I've been talking a lot about what I've been doing here in France, but not a lot about what I've been seeing, hearing, and noticing. So here's a list I've kind of been going through in my head for a while:
-People walking on the street aren't particularly polite to each other (if you bump into someone, you don't have to say "sorry". It isn't impolite, it's just how things are) but you always have to say "bonjour" and "bonne journée" (hello and have a good day) when entering and leaving shops!
-Fashion isn't much different than in the states. However, despite the 80-85˚ temperature, girls tend not to wear shorts or tank tops. We have, however, seen a couple of topless sunbathers at this public pool next to the Rhône! Also, a lot of men wear cropped pants, or "capris", which is kind of strange. And flip flops are a little more common than I expected, probably because of the heat. Since we're in such a big city, when we go to the centre-ville, or downtown, there's a wide array of styles of dress.
-Not everyone speaks English. But those who do usually do one of two things: they will either automatically speak English because they know we'll understand it better, and they don't want to deal with our broken French; or they will correct us and help us form the correct sentence, or pronounce the words correctly. The man at the front desk of our résidence (we have to leave our key there whenever we leave) always helps us pronounce our room numbers, or tells us the correct way to ask for change.
-Public transportation rules!!! Throughout the entire city, there are bus routes, the Métro, Trams, and to travel outside Lyon, there are 2 major train stations. We all bought monthly student passes that get us free access to all of the public transportation and it only cost 30€...not bad, considering that we were spending like 4€ per day on bus and Métro tickets before we got the pass! Once we get our bank cards, we can also use the Vélov system, which is the public bike system that was created in Lyon! There are stations all over the city where you can pick up a bike, and as long as you return it to another station in less than 30 minutes, you don't have to pay une cintième!
-KINDER BUENOS ARE THE MOST AMAZING CHOCOLATEY HAZELNUTTY CANDY BAR EVER TO BE INVENTED! Before I leave this place, I am going to send like 100 boxes home. Soo good!
For the past few days, we wake up each morning, go to breakfast at 8:30, then get ready and take the bus to our Study Center, where there is free WiFi and access to apartment listings, or "annonces". Then we spend hours scouring our e-mails from Christine (the Study Center director) and appartager.com and other "colocation" (or "roommate") websites to see if we can make meetings with proprietaires or roommates. So far I've found one place that could be pretty good...It's a 15 minute bus+tram ride away from school up on the beautiful hill, and its a very cute furnished apartment. Downsides would include the fact that it's on the 6th floor, I'd have to find my own French roommate, and the rent is a little expensive. I'm also going to meet with a French student my age on Monday who has a cheaper apartment in probably not as cute of a part of the city, but she seems really nice and is open to living with a Californian, which is always good.
I'm going to go find a café to eat lunch at now, wish me luck again with the apartment search!
I finally have some pictures!!! And I'm also going to add some pics to that last entry about Paris, so check it out. I've actually been buying internet at the résidence, since we've all been frantically searching websites for apartments, so I had some time to upload pictures :) Enjoy!
So our voyage à Paris was unfortunately pretty short lived, as we had to leave on Sunday for Lyon. We had to be at our résidence by 5:30 for orientation and dinner, so we bought tickets for the TGV (the high-speed train, which gets to Lyon in approximately 2 hours) for Sunday at noon. After a quick brunch at the only place open on a Sunday, a cute little bakery where we bought pain au chocolat, which is basically a chocolate croissant, we got a taxi to take us and our massive amount of luggage to Gare de Lyon, the train station in Paris. We got there, and failed miserably at trying to retrieve our tickets from a machine because it didn’t accept American bank cards. At this point, it was like 11:30 and our train left at 11:55, so time was running out. We finally realized that we could just get in line and do it in person, so once we did that we had less than 10 minutes before the train left! So we ran to our train’s track and tried to find car #8…to no avail. I didn’t find out until later how to identify which car was which, so as soon as there was some kind of announcement, we assumed that it meant the train was about to leave, and jumped in the closest car. I went to the end of the car to see if we could move from car to car, and there was a wall at the end, so I got nervous and asked someone which car we were in. #6, they said. So I stupidly suggested that we get out and run to car #8…we jump out of the train and run toward what we thought was car #8, and boom. The doors to the train closed.
There we were, 5 hours before our program starts, and we missed our train! We were inside the doors and because I second guessed myself, we missed it! Fortunately, a very nice French woman helped us change our tickets, and she told us that you can get in the train on any car, as long as you move to your right seats during the ride. Wish we had known that before, huh? Well, the story gets even better...We wait about 45 minutes for the next train, and while I’m punching our ticket, Ora says that she is going to go ahead and find our car. I look up 30 seconds later after I punch our ticket, and she’s gone. I look around for a minute, and decide that she probably just headed toward our car (#18 this time) so I start walking toward car #18. I get there, find our seats, and Ora isn’t there. A nice man helped me load our huge luggage, and I sat down, assuming Ora would find me. She never did. It wasn't until after we arrived in Lyon at Part Dieu (the train station), after I called our study center director and told her what happened, and decided to catch a taxi, that I finally spotted Ora outside the station. So all in all, there were some bumps, but we had finally made it!
As you can see, the train ride was absolutely beautiful. Basically, it was two hours of French countryside. It all reminded me of the village from Beauty and the Beast!
For the first few weeks of the program, we are staying at basically a dorm (not just for students though!) called Centre International de Séjour. It is a really nice new building, but it's in a not so nice part of town. We get free breakfast every morning which consists of bread and cereal, but we have to eat out for the rest of our meals. Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of pizza and sandwiches/paninis. There is a supermarché right next door that we've been buying fruit, cheese, and these amazing chocolate bars (called Kinder Bueno) from and smuggling into the Centre, because we aren't allowed to have food in our rooms. We ride the bus to our meetings at the Study Center (where we have learned about classes, opened our bank accounts, and learned about apartment hunting), which is at the Université, which is right on the Rhône river, then walk across the river to Bellecour, which is like the center of town.
Here is one of the buildings that makes up our university. I absolutely love all the architecture here - everything is so old and beautiful! All the buildings are like 3 times as old as America itself! And especially in California, our universities look so modern...It's pretty neat to walk into that building every day.
Last but not least, I'll leave you (my internet runs out in 15 minutes, and I'm going to add a few pictures from Paris to that last entry!) with a picture of Lyon that I took from one of the highest points in the city on our walking tour yesterday.
Bonne journée for those of you in America, and bonne soirée for those of you who, like me, are ready for bed! Wish me luck in my apartment search!
I made it to Charles de Gaulle!
So it looks like I’ll have to make a habit of these “write a blog on Microsoft Word, then post it when I actually have internet” blogs, because I’m at our résidence in Lyon, and we have no (free) internet! So that kind of sucks, but on the bright side, I’m finally at our résidence in Lyon!!! The trip from Paris to Lyon is a story in itself, but first I’ll share about my time in Paris.
The day we got to Paris, we slept much longer than originally planned, and woke up just in time for our night to begin. I had been talking to my coworker, Scott, who was in Paris with his mom at the same time as us, and we planned to meet up. So the 3 of us took the Métro to the Champs Elysées, which is basically a huge street that leads from the Louvre all the way to the L’Arc de Triomphe. We spent about 30-45 minutes walking, past tons of shops, movie theatres, and a surprisingly large number of luxury car show rooms, toward L’arc, and finally got there…it was such a sight to see at nighttime! And it was from there that we got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, which had an awesome light show going on. After a little while of taking pictures (Ora took most of the pictures in Paris, otherwise I would post them here) we headed back home on the Métro, where we were serenaded by two very drunk French girls singing probably the only American songs they knew, “Singing in the Rain” and Phantom Planet’s “California”, and dancing around the hand rails on the train.
Ora and I had all day Saturday to explore…we were a little slow moving so we didn’t leave our hôtel to eat brunch/lunch until like noon. But we headed out, got on the Métro, and headed to the Musée du Louvre. The Louvre was pretty much amazing. First thing off the Métro, we walk through a huge passageway where, on either side of the walkway, you can see into the courtyards inside the Louvre, which are filled with classical Greek sculptures. We walked 200 yards further, and found ourselves face to face with the famous Pyramid, which is the entrance to the museum. For the next 3-4 hours, we tried to see everything we possibly could, and I’m pretty sure we succeeded…Highlights include the Vénus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace (I forget its French name), and of course, La Jaconde, or the Mona Lisa. My favorite pieces were definitely the sculptures, especially the ones depicting Greek gods and goddesses, since I recently took both Greek Mythology and an Art History class about the era at UCSB. Knowing the stories behind the statues (and being able to read the title/name/info things, which were all in French) made them a lot more meaningful.
the Vénus de Milo!
Next, we walked out in the Jardins de Tuillieries, which we didn’t really spend too much time enjoying, because we began to head towards Notre Dame. It was about a 25 minute walk to Saint Michel, which is kind of the biggest landmark right before Notre Dame, and we stopped to eat our first French crèpes! Mine was du fromage et oeuf, or cheese and egg…heavy on the cheese. So we grabbed those and headed towards the cathedral, which was pretty breathtaking. That Art History class came rushing back to me…portals, flying buttresses, rib vaults…once again, I think I enjoyed Notre Dame a lot more because I understood the architecture and history behind it. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go inside.
After that, I wanted to go see the stained glass at Sainte-Chappelle before sunset, and Ora wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. But I had kind of dragged her to Notre Dame, so I decided to settle on going to see the Eiffel Tower. The only problem there was that la Tour Eiffel was on the other side of town. So after 2 different Métro rides, we finally made it to la Tour Eiffel right before sunset and checked it out. We were so tired that we decided not to go up to the top, but we took a few pictures.
That night, we met up with Scott again at an Irish pub by our hotel (that is Ora and I at the pub in the picture above this), had a couple of drinks, and hung out the rest of the night. The next day was our voyage to Lyon, which is another story in itself. But now I'm at a MacDo (McDonalds) because it's the most convienient place that has free WiFi with 5-7 other EAP students, and we're about to head back to the résidence. I'll try to update more often, as a lot has happened since we arrived in Lyon yesterday afternoon!
So Ora and I made it to Paris alive. It was surprisingly painless landing at Charles de Gaulle, the hard part came when we were trying to find the most trivial of things, like convenience stores and toilettes at the airport. Our plane arrived shortly after 8am local time, but we weren't checking into our hotel until at least noon, so we had a lot of time to kill.
Not nearly as many people speak English here as I thought, or at least not unless it's a mix between French and English. Ora is a lot more willing to speak French with the locals than I am, as I usually revert to some kind of Franglais. However, the only impressions I've gotten of the city so far are of the airport. Our hotel is in the 12th arondissement, which it appears from our Paris map is just a metro ride away from the Louvre and all those great sites, which we will hopefully get to see tomorrow! The hotel (Hôtel Agate) is very compact, but its also extremely cute. Right now, it is only 12:45pm here in Paris, but it feels like nearly 4am to us, which means that i have been awake for almost 23 hours.
And now, after a short hiatus, Ora and I accidentally fell asleep for 6 hours longer than we expected to! haha. Crap. Well, here's to being jetlagged in Paris!
So here I am, about one hour into my flight to Philadelphia, which will later connect to Paris. I’m planning on copy and pasting this into Blogspot when we land in Philly...The past few days have been a whirlwind! Besides eating as much Mexican food and In-N-Out as I could, I kept pretty busy with preparations and goodbyes. After finishing work and our end of the summer festivities on Saturday, I volunteered to spend a few hours making Thank You posters for Orientation and delivering them all over campus (In a golf cart!! So fun!) on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday, I went and bought all of my Travelers Cheques, along with some Euros, which was pretty exciting! Too bad it cost $154 to buy €100!!
Yesterday, I began my day by cleaning up the leftovers of my last night in Isla Vista, which was a really fun night. After I got a haircut and fed all the food in my fridge/cabinets to Chip, Joe, and Fei, my parents arrived at my apartment and we began to pack up my life. After a few hours, we headed out, and stopped at Goleta Beach on our way to the 101. There, I started thinking about how it was the last time I’d be at the Pacific Ocean for 10 months, and I completely lost it. We got back in the car and I cried all the way to Ventura.
We made our way to Los Angeles last night, and woke up early this morning to make it to the airport by 6, where we met my travel buddy, Ora, from UCSD, who will be studying with me in Lyon. Although it was very hard to leave my friends and my home in Santa Barbara, and my parents this morning at LAX, I’m really excited to be in Paris in about 12 hours!
OK, scratch that. It’s now about 4:10am Paris time (7:10pm Cali time), and we’re somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. My flight is scheduled to arrive at 8:00am (it left at about 12:30am Paris time), so I’d say we’re about halfway through. I couldn’t get a hold of any wireless internet in Philadelphia, so by the time I post this blog and you all read it, I will be in Paris! Being in the international terminal in Philly was strange, as half of our flight is French speaking, so each announcement made in the airport and on the plane is in both French and English. I’m trying to get used to hearing French again, but apparently 2 months of speaking and hearing nothing but English – and a lot of it! – has made me a little rusty.
I’ve spent both flights watching episodes of The Office, reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower (which I just finished) and reading my guide to French culture and etiquette book. But what I really need to do is sleep, since when we land in 3 and ½ hours, the day will have just begun!
