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So a whole bunch has happened since the last time I posted. Namely, lots of snow, and the Fête des Lumières!
The Fête des Lumières (festival of lights) probably deserves its own entry at a later date (when I'm not too lazy to post all the AMAZING pictures!) but it was AWESOME! There were light shows all over the city and little exhibits and things. Super cool.
Also, on Wednesday, a bunch of friends and I went to an Olympique Lyonnais soccer match! It was a big deal because it was the last game of the Champions League and we were hardly ahead of our opponents, Bayern Munich, in the standings. Unfortunately, we lost, but the 2nd half was really exciting because OL almost came back from a 0-3 deficit at the half! The final score was 2-3.
Unfortunately, I decided to do all my finals (except for one) before Christmas break, which means 3 finals and a presentation this week, all before Thursday morning! But it will be really good to get it out of the way, because then I get a weekend to spend with everyone before the Semester students return back to the States and everyone starts to leave for vacation! THEN, I get an entire MONTH off for Christmas!!
Also, it snowed for like 2 days straight up here in my neighborhood, rendering the snow in that last entry pretty pathetic. I would say that there was a good 3 inches! It has stopped now but it's still cold enough that the snow is sticking around.
I had the best day ever on Thursday. It was the last day of my Hollywood cinema class, so we watched It's a Wonderful Life, which got me warm and fuzzy inside...then, my friend Valerie came over and we baked cookies and played in the snow. How pictoresque!
And on that note:
Happy holidays from my pathetic little 10 inch snowman!!
Ok, so I know that I said it snowed in Lyon, but this time I REALLY MEAN IT! Last time, the snow never hit the ground and it was just little flakes. Today, for like 20 minutes, there were globs of snow falling all over the place!
It was awesome. And FREEZING. Luckily, it's looking to warm up for the weekend, which is good because this weekend is Lyon's annual Fête des Lumières, or Festival of Lights. It's going to be a huge deal! Apparently it's the only time that the snooty Parisiens ever venture out of their city to see another part of France. Haha. For the pretty light shows and public art displays. Also, all public transportation hours around the downtown area are going to be extended, and its just going to be a blaaast! I'm super excited!
Hello all...Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, and that if you decided to participate in Black Friday, your fate was a little better than the fellow who got trampled in a Walmart on Friday morning...Oh, America. That's one piece of US current events that I don't think I will be sharing with my French friends ;)
Thanksgiving was pretty sad this year since I wasn't home for the meal and for my dad's birthday the next day, but I wasn't the only one in that boat, so it wasn't too bad. I'm at least glad that I'll be spending Christmas with my landlady and her family, so I'm hoping that being with a family will make up for the fact that it's not my own!
So on the actual day of Thanksgiving, I had 5 hours of classes. After class, Robert and I decided that we wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner. Since his roommates already had dinner guests planned, we decided that it would be an American-only affair at my place (with the exception of my roommate Eva). Robert's friend Brian from California, who's in the middle of a 6 month long trip through Europe, came along too. I tried my darndest to make a Thanksgiving meal, but as I've learned time and time again with our attempts at American cuisine (Mexican food, hamburgers, etc) we couldn't expect to find much at my neighborhood French supermarket, Leader Price.
I don't think we did too badly! They obviously didn't have whole turkeys, so I made turkey breasts with bread crumbs (...which I made by toasting bread and crumbling it.) which was kind of like turkey and stuffing...Green beans, rolls, and mashed 'taters!
It was nice, and I think it was fun for Eva too, because while it was all of our first Thanksgivings away from home, it was her first Thanksgiving ever...and she got to practice her English! (Brian doesn't speak French...or German, for that matter, haha)
The next night, we went to Grenoble, a little city in the French Alps an hour south of Lyon. There is another EAP program there as well, with about 20 other University of California students. We went to a restaurant on their campus for "Thanksgiving Dinner". I put this in quotes because, well, although they tried, it was definitely not a normal Thanksgiving meal.
We received a bunch of appetizers that were pretty French...ravioli and mussels, bread, wine, salad, etc...Then came the main dish:
They tried. They really did...they had sweet potatoes, a little bit of cranberry sauce, and pumpkin gratin...But that's not even turkey! haha! Also, as much as I have begun to notice the pejorative nature of this aspect of American culture, Thanksgiving is one time that an overabundance of food is OK. This meager helping...not OK.
However, even if the meal wasn't very Thanksgiving, it was still delicious. And another plus of the dinner:
IT WAS SNOWING IN GRENOBLE!
It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...and I mean real, snowy Christmas!
Happy holidays from my pathetic little 10 inch snowman!!
