Katie en France: A Weekend Sans Internet & Cell Phone

So I had a bit of a difficult weekend, because after going out with some friends on Friday night, I left my cell phone in our taxi. Fortunately, my friend Nicky who was still in the cab picked it up, but I didn't see him the rest of the weekend, and didn't finally get my phone back from him until last night (monday)!

My friend Kate from UCSB was here on Thursday with her mom, and we went up to Mt. Fourvière to see the church...then we had some true Lyonnais cuisine at a bouchon (a special type of restaurant that serves dishes specific to Lyon). The plan was to meet up with her in Paris on Saturday, but plans had to change when I didn't have my phone with all of her contact info in it and where we were staying. I had a little bit of a panic attack on Saturday morning because I woke up to take the train, after about 3 hours of sleep, and actually took the bus downtown with the intention to go to Perrache (the train station) and catch the TGV, but I decided against it in the end, and went home and back to sleep.

My house is pretty isolated from everything and everyone...My roommate wasn't here this weekend, she was home in Germany taking some exams and spending time with her family. The only bus line that runs around here takes about 20-25 minutes to get downtown. My landlady is very kind, offers to let me come over to her place to use her computer, and her son Guerric even made me hot chocolate the other day (which was awesome!!) but I spent a lot of the weekend alone, wandering around Bellecour by myself and searching for internet, since I don't have it at my apartment yet. Unfortunately, none of the wireless networks at any of the McDonalds worked for some reason, so I had a lot of much needed alone time! However, when I was downtown on Saturday night, I happened to run into Robert and Willie (2 UC students in my program) and Nick (Another UC student in the language & culture program) who had just gotten back from the Olympique Lyonnais game versus Nice. OL is our prized football team who I guess have won the French championship every year for some years now. So I ran into those guys and we got some kebabs, always the late night snack of choice!

I went back downtown on Sunday to search for more McDo's with WiFi, but what I got instead when I arrived in Bellecour was a giant parade! It was called the Défilé Biennale de la Danse, or "biennial parade of dance"...I am still not quite sure what it all meant, but it was really awesome. From what I gathered, it was basically about 10-15 different groups who each had their own scene that went along with the theme for this year, which was L'Avenir, or "the future". Each neighborhood of Lyon was represented by a number of exotic looking, very elaborately decorated and costumed individuals. It was pretty awesome, I wish I had known at the time exactly what was going on (I later got a little booklet explaining the scenes) because it was pretty confusing!

I went home afterward and did some last minute schedule planning (a lot of the weekend was also spent scouring my UCSB General Catalog and the Université Lyon 2 emplois du temps, or schedule of classes), because school started the next day...and that is an entire blog in itself, but for now, here are some pictures finally of my place!! I will add some pictures of the biennale once I get them uploaded!