La Vie Quotidienne

So I thought I'd take a bit of time to update you on my "daily life" here in Lyon. Now that class has officially started, I'm feeling very settled in, and I've fallen into a groove that is much more reassuring than the ever trying first couple of weeks of my stay. Not only do I feel much more comfortable with the city, my French has improved ten-fold, and all those little conversations and actions which seemed like such a struggle before have now thankfully blended back into the thoughtless rhythm of daily life. I have begun my courses at a language institute that I'll refer to as the "CIEF" which is housed within the structure of Université Lumière Lyon 2 (the official name of my school). My classes, of which I have roughly 20 hours a week consist of 6 mandatory intensive French courses (2 writing, 2 speaking, 1 culture, 1 grammar) and 4 "elective" courses. The electives I've chosen are Political Science, Art History, Linguistic Reinforcement, and English Translation. Everything is taught strictly in French --including English Translation. So far, nothing has been extremely challenging ...but being in an environment where I have been forced if anything to actively listen to someone speaking French for a significant chunk of my week has improved my language skills tenfold. (the picture above is a very beautiful view of the city from the Colline de Fourvière two weekends ago...you can see in the upper right hand corner Cathédral St. Jean -which is right across from my apartment)

My CIEF classmates come from a variety of nations, and are all participating in the program at the institute at different stages in their life. In my level, the following nationalities are represented: American (2), Japanese (3), Chinese (4), Taiwanese (1), Venezuelan (1), Mexican (1), Korean (1), Papa New Guinean (1), Brazilian (1), Portuguese (1), Russian (1), and Polish (1). Many of them are finished with their country's version of an undergraduate program and learning French in hopes of working in France or using the language elsewhere. I am the only student who is still officially enrolled in a undergrad program, or what most of the world calls "license," although I am not the youngest. We range in age from 19 to 40. The best (and worst) part about meeting all of these great people from all over the world is that our common language when we are together (though many speak english) is French! So it forces us to practice what we have learned every time we spend time together outside of class. We also have perfected "une mélange" or a mixture of many different languages. For example, our discussions are always peppered with english, and when I speak with Mariano from Mexico, and Adriana from Venezuela, we speak a very interesting mix of French, English, and Spanish.

After two weeks of classes, and spending a lot of time with these people, I've started to make some great friendships! The two pictures above and one below showcase some of my classmates and I goofing around at the Roman Ruins in Vieux Lyon. Of course, instead of having class in the classroom, my Art History class took a field trip to the "Musée Gallo-Romain" to examine artifacts etc of the Roman settlement in Lyon -which at the time of the empire was the capital of "La Gaule" (the name of France at the period). What remains in Lyon are countless artifacts, and two 2000 year old amphitheaters. These pictures are of us after our tour of the museum (led by our incredible professor) exploring the ruins of the theaters. You know.. just a normal Thursday afternoon of class.. wandering around 2000 year old ruins.

I am extremely glad that I have chosen to spend a lot of time staying in Lyon the past couple of weekends. Apart from my trip to the country with my host family, and my recent trip to Paris --I haven't really done a lot of traveling. Lyon as a city is incredibly rich, with tons to offer. Here is what I did on a normal weekend "at home" in Lyon.

Had a picnic! We sat on a dock on the east side of the Rhône and had a picnic in the beautiful 70 degree cloudless sky weather. This part of the Rhône is riddled with boats that are all clubs, bars, and restaurants. To those of you who might still think the French are "rude and snobby" while we were sitting eating, normal people (not creepy men) walked by and would smile at us and wish us "bon appetit!" When we were done with our meal and just sitting finishing up our wine the people walking by wished us "bon apéro!" ("good before dinner drink!").

That night, we congregated at our favorite pub in Lyon, the Smoking Dog located in Vieux Lyon, which is also home to one of my favorite weekly rituals: bi-lingual Quiz night. Yes a trivia night to boot with cash prizes and drink give-aways! Highlight of September = having the best guess to a ridiculously hard bonus question and winning FREE SHOTS for our team!! (Go team America!) This night, after our time at the Dog we traveled across the Presqu'île to go dancing on one of the "club" yachts along the Rhône. The DJ played AWESOME American oldies all night like, "get down on it", "I'm coming out", and "Brown Eyed Girl." Just a normal Friday night.

One of my favorite things we've done so far during my time here in France, we did yesterday afternoon! The Colline de Fourvière is home to many attractions for tourists and locals alike- as we discovered when we signed up to go on a Zip-lining, high ropes course through the forest on the west side of the mountain!!!! Not only did I get to go with friends, my two adorable host sisters came as well to swing through the trees like Tarzan and Jane! (here we are in our gloves and harnesses!) The ropes course was devised in 4 different levels. After a quick briefing (in French...hmm) and a practice course we were ready to go! Because of the girl's height and age they were only allowed to do the first two courses, while the rest of the "big girls" went on to the hard stuff! I stayed with the girls and did the "blue - intermediate" course first, and then since it was easy enough we convinced the workers to let the girls do the "red - difficult" course.. it surely was difficult! Included in this course that took us a little over an hour to complete were passages where you seriously had to rope swing across like tarzan, zip lines, wobbly rope bridges, and a 10 foot rock wall...(suspended 25 feet into the air of course!) The girls finished the course like champs! I couldn't believe they did it, it was really hard, even for me!

The girls on one of the platforms

Lara scaling the rock wall... notice the ground.. all the way down there....

When we finished we were spit out onto this gorgeous grassy hill with a beautiful view of the city just to the west of Lyon (technically the suburbs). We had some incredible weather this weekend!

Casey walking back from our adventure in the trees...

Our view from the hill after the course.. amazing.

Walking back to take the metro home... Fourvière looming in the distance

Lara taking a picture of Fourvière (out of the picture to the right).. just look at the sky, beautiful!

On our way home we stopped for about 20 minutes in Place St Jean to watch these street performers do amazing dance and acrobatics. They are performing about 50 paces from my bedroom window. Just another normal Saturday in Lyon! Today some friends from Oregon and I had signed up to run a 4K in the city's most beautiful park. Unfortunately the metro is on strike.. another one of those lovely daily life things, so we couldn't find the registration tents and ended up missing the race. Not to worry, we invented our own path and ran 4 km on our own! Afterward we did yoga and stretching in the shady grass on the banks of the lake in the park. When we were done we had a delicious lunch, topped off with mcflurry's and sundaes from McDonalds (they call it "Mac-do" here) which we ate in Europe's biggest square, Place Bellecour. I'm not sure if it gets any better than that! It was an incredibly fun weekend, and it was all in Lyon! ..Yep.. I think I'm adjusting just fine!

Gros Bisous!