Wednesday, February 20, 2008

les vacances!

So this week has been an interesting mix of fun and not fun. I've been sick (no worries, people, I'll live!), so I haven't been feeling so well and i've been resting at home. I actually got it from Theophane, Victorine and Jacques, and at any given time in the house you can hear one of us coughing...At the dinner table they jokingly separate "les malades des pas malades" or "the sick from the not sick"--it's funny cause it's 4 and 4 right now. so that's the not-so-fun part, but on the other hand, the kids have off from school so they've been home a lot more than usual. This means many things...first, everyone is a little more light-hearted. Dinner-time is especially fun because the kids don't have to go to bed early for school, so we take our time discussing things and joking, and for the past few nights we've all stayed up watching movies. The first night we watched un film qui etait tellement beau that was called "Les Choristes," which was a somewhat well-known French movie about this all boys school where a choir was started to help them shape up...sort of. The next night we watched Jurassic Park, then Shrek 2, (all in french--interesting) and tonight we watch the Lyon vs. Manchester United football match that's actually here in Lyon tonight, and it's a big deal because Lyon is the best team in France and ManU is a really good team as well...

Anyways, yesterday I went to this really cool Salon de The or tea room with my friend Frank called Arabesque that's a flower shop with the tea room up top. They have all these teas and drinks with flower flavors like mimosa and even geranium, and they served everything with rose petals. It was really schnaz. I'm trying to find more interesting things to do outside now that it seems to be getting warmer....of course, when I leave this weekend it's goign to be in the 60's here! I can't wait for spring! Well I must go to sleep now. Bonne nuit!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

what's new?

j'ai de la chance, let's just say that.

where we ate lunch

mmm karen and i with squished sandwiches!

taking a break on a blue

this is where we took the break...imagine falling down that...
I guess I haven't given a general overview lately...My old Mexican roommate, Pilar, moved out, and a girl named Cristin moved in about 2 weeks ago, and she goes to Westpoint. Another girl from Westpoint moved into the house across the street, along with a British girl, who is really fun. It's nice to have a tiny population of study-abroaders here in our little suburb of Tassin...


I finally got all of my classes figured out, and I will now being taking an Avant-garde art history, an International Finance (both in English), a geographie of the EU in french, a French as a Foreign Language class, and a translation class. I think my favorites are my EU class and the translation class. I'm meeting people from all over the US and mainly the UK, New Zealand and Australia.


Anyways, I'm nearly done planning my upcoming one-week long trip to Ireland, London, and Paris! I'm flying into Dublin next Saturday and staying there until for 4 nights in the Brewery Hostel (evidently it's right next to the Guiness storehouse) and then flying to London for 2 nights (staying with the cousin of a friend), then going to Paris for the weekend to meet my friend Josh from home (staying in an apartment that a friend's family rented out). I'm SO excited to be going back to (one) of my homeland(s)! Not really sure what all we'll be doing, but i think it'll be great!


As for this past weekend, what the pictures are from, me and 6 others went skiing in the alps! We skied at Les Carroz, which appears to be right on the Italian border. For only 35 euro we were able to take a bus which gave us a ski pass and skied all day. Unfortunately we had to get up at 4 to be there on time, and now I've never been so tired and sore in my life, but I don't regret it at all! The scenery was breathtaking, and I've never felt more like I was in a dream than then...I ended up improving a bit and went on some blues by the end of the day. All in all we had a great time though! Now just 6 days till Ireland....

Monday, February 11, 2008

si beau, si cher

view of lake geneva from the cathedral. and, of course, the jet d'eau.

rachel, cristina and me in front of lake geneva...beautiful day!

cathedrale saint-pierre

zee alps...notice the difference in the roofs of the old city right in front and the rest of the city farther away?

Broken Chair statue in front of the UN (photo credit: marni)

snowwww!! on top of the mountain. (photo credit: marni)
amazing view of geneva from the telecharger on the way down the mountain...i'm sure you can see the jet d'eau if you look closely.... (photo credit: rachel)

so, i just got back from geneva yesterday, and it was a really nice trip! All 9 of us left at 13h on Friday from the Lyon train station. As you can imagine, going on a trip with 9 girls is a bit difficult, but imagine when that group of 9 girls does not get on the correct train--rather, the correct CAR of the correct train...evidently our car separated and left us behind at some point. Anyways, around the time we were supposed to be arriving in Geneva (according to our tickets), we began texting each other (since we couldn't sit together) a bit concerned if we were actually on the right train as our station stop was not announced...so I finally got an urgent text to get off at the next stop, and so all 9 of us followed this nice French lady who was also going to Geneva. Turns out we were in a town called Annemasse on the border, so we took a bus, walked over the French-Suisse border and then took a tram into the city. This killed our afternoon, but I think we were just happy to be where we were supposed to be. Our hostel wasn't fancy, but it definitely wasn't bad, and it included breakfast so that was AMAZING! No more wandering the streets in search of cheap food like we did in Paris...
Speaking of wandering the streets in search of cheap food, that's exactly what we did Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and lemme tell you--we did not succeed. Rather, we found food that was cheap by Switzerland's standards. I was able to get a plate of fried rice for 11 swiss francs (CHF), which is about 10 USD, and that was a miracle. The norm it seemed for a modest (in size and taste) meal was about 20 CHF---about 18 dollars. Otherwise a nicer meal was getting into the 40's...
Besides that initial shock though, Geneva was beautiful. On Saturday we woke up pretty early and walked around lake Geneva. It was so blue, and just beautiful with the mountains in the background. They have this fountain that's called le jet d'eau that's basically a giant man-made geyser, and it sounds pretty unimpressive, be we realized after going to the tops of mountains, cathedrals, and different parts of Geneva that you can really see it from anywhere! Anyways, we made our way into the old part of Geneva to go to the Cathedrale Saint-Pierre, and it was nice, but what was even better was the view from the tower. Town, lake, mountains, trees...you could see everything! After that we went to a restaurant that supposedly had the best vin chaud (hot wine) in all of switzerland. Vin Chaud is popular around here and basically it's hot, spiced wine. We ended up eating there, too, because we saw a sign for "Sandwiches---3.50" which was an absolute miracle to find food for that cheap, and just when we were relieved to finally be getting a deal of food they brought us out our sandwiches which were literally little circles about 3-4 inches in diameter. Incroyable. Anyways after that we made our way to the UN (where the league of nations was supposed to be) and then we went to the museum of the Red Cross, which was really, really interesting. Later on we went to dinner (some had swiss fondue) and then saw an Aussie Irish rock band play at a pub near our hostel. They were...interesting. What was really interesting was that we mets some Croats there, and one of the guys used to live in Texas City near Houston!
Speaking of Texas...the next morning I met a girl in the bathroom of our hostel who was from Brenham, Texas, which is roughly an hour away from College Station, not to mention that she was friends with a guy who is working in the Domican Republic with the organization that Dominican Joe benefits! It's a small, small world. Anyways, to finish off our day we took a bus to the French-Swiss border to a small town of Veyrier and took a telecharger (a gondola?) up to the top of this mountain about a kilometer in the air....it was beautiful!!! You could see all of Geneva and the Rhone valley....It was kind of by chance, too, because we just decided to take this bus to wherever it stopped randomly not knowing where it went...
Needless to say, it was a great trip, and all of us enjoyed the pretty scenery, which was a nice break from the grey skies, bare trees and concrete of Lyon. Hope everyone who's reading this is doing well, too! Enjoy the pics!

Monday, February 4, 2008

C'est Paris!!!

perfection.
FONDUE! me, cristina, and emma
the infamous baby bottles (photo provided by: kim)

market right next to the bastille! lots of people...

Churros from the market! (photo provided by: cristina)

me on top of the arc de triomphe. beautiful (but windy, cold) day!

impressionistic picture of the louvre?


4,20 euro coffee at Les Deux Magots

chairs in Saint-Germaine-des-Pres

I'll let you take a guess what this is
so, paris was great. i went with 2 other americans--cristina and kim--and an australienne--emma. we got in on friday afternoon at about 2 and went straight to Mary's Hotel on Rue de Malte...couldn't tell you exactly where it was, but it was pretty nice for only 20 euros a night. from there we walked all along the seine to l'isle de la cite where notre dame is, and by about 16h the rain/clouds has cleared out and it was blue skies and sunshine! we walked around some more with cristina's friend that is studying in paris, then walked around le louvre and had some dinner. by that point we were really tired and went back to the hotel and watched star academie--the french american idol. loveeee that show. and mathieu, my fav, got to stay on.


the next day we got up really early to grab some "breakfast" at les deux magots, a famous cafe where 20th century surreal artists like satre and picasso used to hang out...it was ridiculously expensive, but the only reason we went there was because emma and cristina are doing a project for a class on famous french bistros and cafes. from there we went to Saint-Germaine-des-pres, the oldest church in paris, and then went to a market to search for food for a picnic in front of the eiffel tower...after a lot of waiting and walking along the seine we got there and ate our selection of cheeses, bread, meat and wine...c'etait superbe! we then went to la coupole, another famous cafe where other artists used to hang out...brancusi evidently painted some of the columns...the coffee there felt amazingggg after walking around in 30/40 degree weather all day, and we snuck some of our cookies from our picnic in. after that we headed to montmartre to see the sacre coeur, which was lovely at night. there were lots of people, and maybe i didn't go to the right places, but it was pretty touristy. still fun though.

after that was my favorite part of the trip...we went to this tiny, tiny restaurant called refuge des fondus where we ate sooo much fondue (with gruyere cheese i might add!!), meat, and other random appetizers that i felt sick afterward....the most interesting thing about the place though was that they served the wine in baby bottles. it was really bizarre, but the atmosphere was so fun as everyone was crammed next to each other (no private tables) and had to climb over tables to sit down! after that we wandered over to the latin quarter and then went hope because we were EXHAUSTED!!! we had been out for over 12 hours sans repos!!

the next day we slept in a bit and went to a market that was near the bastille to catch some breakfast/lunch. the market was huge, and newspapers were everywhereeeeee with the announcement of sarkozy and carla bruni, the model turned singer turn first lady of france...i don't like her so much anymore. anyways, i got some paella, bread, and a pastry, and we set off (in the MISERABLE WINDY COLD i might add) to the arc de triomphe and the champs elysees. there were lots of people about, but not too much since it was sunday and really cold. left that area and some people went to the musee de branly while me and some others went back to la coupole for some hot drinks...i just couldn't handle the cold anymore. had some dinner after that and then took the 22h train back home!


final thoughts: i've never walked that much in my life. i have legs of steel right now. also, paris is SO expensive, but i also couldn't get over the amazing amount of things to do. also, i can't believe how incredibly lucky we were for the weather we had. anyways, enjoy the pics and i'll talk to you soon!