So my first rendezvous on Thursday was in Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon. It was a pretty nice place, and it would be with a couple other students...but I don't know that I made the best impression on my prospective roommates...It's really hard for me to be talkative and outgoing while speaking French! Weird, I know, since I never stop talking in the States when I speak English. But I was finding it very difficult to express how much I liked the apartment. So I went back to the university for the rest of our Intensive Language Program (ILP) classes, and afterward I had another rendezvous. This one was pretty far away, in a residential neighborhood that wasn't bad, but wasn't particularly nice either. I went into it not knowing any of the details, and it turned out being that I would be living with a 30-something year old woman who had a 5 year old son that she gets every other week. The woman was really nice, and the son was adorable, but it wasn't exactly the living situation that I was anticipating having!
-just a side note, on Thursday when I had those 2 rendezvous, we also had 3 classes that day...and there was ALSO a grève!! Grève = strike. one company controls the buses, metros, AND the tramways, so you can imagine what a disaster it was trying to get from meeting to meeting to class to class...-
However, Friday rolled around and, after class and an academic meeting, I headed out to meet Sabine, my landlord-to-be! I took the bus from Bellecour, the main downtown area, and it took about 20 minutes. I get there and Sabine shows me around her amazing house...she has 3 kids and theyre all college aged or older, so they don't really live at home anymore. She originally was going to rent out her son's room, but after meeting both me and another prospective tenant, she decided that it would be better for us and for her if the 2 of us lived in her guest house! It has a bedroom and a salon, or living room, which will be made into a 2nd bedroom...and it has a bathroom and kitchen as well. My colocataire, or "apartment-mate" is a German student named Eva, who speaks French fluently and also speaks a little bit of English!
I went back to Sabine's house today (which has a huge yard, a patio and a pool!) and met Eva, who turned out to be the sweetest girl ever. And we get to move in on Tuesday! I'm not sure that everything will be quite ready for us, like I think we will have to go into the house to use WiFi for the first few days, but I'm so excited to get out of this damn résidence! I'm sick of living in the semi-ghetto, where the only closeby food is the Kebab place, and we have to sneak food and drink into our rooms!
Here are some photos of the past week or so!
Birute (from Berkeley) and I at the Rhône on what felt like a 90 degree day last weekend!
Riding a moving sidewalk at the Métro station into town last night
Molly (from San Diego), me, and Sarah (also from Santa Barbara) admiring some cool street art...too bad Sarah wasn't ready for the picture! Haha
The view from the bus on the way to my future house!
Tomorrow, my plans are to go do laundry at a laundr-o-mat with Birute, then when she has a rendezvous, I think a bunch of us are going to go to the Lumiere Brothers Museum, a museum about the 2 brothers from Lyon who didn't create film, but who were pretty pivotal in the early film making process. At least now I can enjoy myself and not have to worry about scheduling rendezvous and searching for logement!
2 comments:
sounds like your having an amazing time......have fun!
haha I just rediscovered your blog. I'm super glad that the apartment search worked out for you and that you love where you're going to live! have a good week, mon amie francaise!
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