There's been lots of excitement since my last post! My classes have been good and I still haven't been getting a lot of homework which I'm loving. I also decided to move to a lower level in French, and I'm really happy I did because I'm understanding it so much more now.
The Thursday after Annecy, I went to an Italian restaurant with Kirsten called Pizza Pino. (This was the same restaurant that we had gone to with Virginia once after drinking a LOT of wine and acting kind of crazy!) When we got there, it wasn't crowded and there were a ton of open tables downstairs, but the waiter led us to an upstairs table where we were the only ones! It was pretty funny and we thought they had blacklisted us after the last time we were there! (Either that or maybe we just looked too American.) The next night, one of the guys in my program from Idaho had a bunch of people over to his apartment and we all hung out until the landlord kicked us out for being too loud. We planned to go to the stairs and continue the party there, but somehow we all got separated and I ended up walking around a random part of Vieux Lyon with some others for about an hour. It actually ended up being pretty fun seeing a new part of the city and being with friends!
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| Hanging out on the stairs Thursday night |
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On the stairs Thursday night
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| wandering around Vieux Lyon on Friday |
After my day trip to Annecy, I told people all about it and a group decided to go the following Saturday... and convinced me to go again! So early on Saturday morning about 20 of us got our train to Annecy. On the train ride, I decided to try a Kinder Bueno candy bar, and ever since then I have been completely addicted! It's definitely my new favourite kind of candy and I'm going to miss them when I have to go back to the US in December. The only bad part of this day trip was that it rained for most of the morning. When we got there at 10:30, we were all starving but no restaurants opened until noon! So we just waited and kept out of the rain until about 11:30 and then found a little outdoor restaurant where we got hot chocolate/coffee and kebabs. It was so good!! After that, we walked around and explored a little. It stopped raining around 1, so the rest of the day ended up being really fun! We went back to the castle that I had seen on Tuesday and had fun seeing some of the weird modern art. Then we walked around the lake for a while and got some ice cream. We also decided to stop for a little snack around 4. We got some pizza and I tried a drink called a "kir" which ended up being pretty good! When we were on our way to the train station, we saw a carousel, so some of us decided to go for a ride on it! The train ride back to Lyon ended up being pretty fun! Some of the guys taught me how to play poker and we played for the whole 2-hour train ride. I wasn't very good, but I won a few hands! It ended up being a really fun day and I was glad I decided to go to Annecy a second time!
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| riding the carousel! (I think we were the only ones over the age of 5 on it. Notice the little toddler sitting between me and Kristina) |
The next day, I decided to try my hand at cooking chicken for the first time. I found a recipe online that looked easy enough, but when I started making the chicken, I struggled a lot. Luckily, there was a French girl in the kitchen who helped me out. And while I was cooking a huge group of about 15 Asian kids came down to cook a big elaborate meal, and they laughed at me as I struggled (especially when I almost set off the fire alarm and one of the guys had to run around the kitchen opening all the windows! It was actually kind of hilarious.) At least it ended up tasting ok! That night, a big group went to the Lyon vs. Bordeaux football match! It was really fun and the game had a lot of action, but unfortunately Lyon lost this one.
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| getting ready to go into the football match! |
The next day was Monday, which I actually look forward to in Lyon!! There is a really fun bar called Cosmo that has €1 beers on Monday, so it's always really crowded. A ton of people from IBP were there and I had so much fun hanging out with everyone. Me and a couple of my friends even initiated dancing on top of the bar! (There's not much standing room around the bar, so when everyone wants to start dancing, we have to get up on it!) After leaving Cosmo, a group of us weren't ready to go home yet so we tried going to the bar next door and a couple others nearby. Somewhere along the way, we picked up two random French guys who started walking with our group. Even weirder was when an old drunk woman who was probably about 80 started walking with us and tried talking to us in French haha. It was so crazy! A few of the girls in the group live in my dorm, so we walked back together.
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| with Virginia, Rodolfo, and Paris at Cosmo |
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| dancing on the bar with Paris, Rodolfo, and Tess! |
The next day, I went with Virginia to finally open up our French bank accounts. In France, housing insurance is really important to have and you need to have a French bank account for that. The woman that helped us didn't really speak English and we were kind of struggling from the late night the night before, but it ended up going pretty well and I think I'll only need to pay €1 for my housing insurance!
On Wednesday, there was a little party in my dorm around dinner time. A lot of people had just moved into the dorm because their programs started later than mine, so I met some new people. After the party, a group of us from IBP and one of the new girls we had just met from Wales went to the stairs to hang out before going to a big animal-themed party. The party ended up being so much fun and the music at that club was really good! We left around 4AM, but the metro doesn't start until 5, so three of us who live in Maison St. Bernard started the trek back to our dorm. We found out that it would take over an hour to walk back, so instead we rented bikes and drunkenly rode along the Saône river back to our dorm! It was the first time I had rode a bike in probably five years, so I was a little rusty and crashed into a few things, but in the end I made it back in one piece!
On Thursday, I met up with a few other girls to plan out our trip to Paris the weekend of the 20th! We will be leaving Lyon early on Saturday the 20th and staying overnight at a really trendy-looking hostel in Montmartre which is pretty central to everything. We want to see all of the cool touristy things like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tuileries gardens, and if we have time, Disneyland! We come back to Lyon on Sunday's last train of the night. I am soo excited!! Later on in the day, I got all packed, because the next morning I was leaving for Oktoberfest! After getting packed, I went to a birthday party for one of the guys in my program where we all hung out and ate homemade chocolate crepes. It was really fun! Then I went back to my dorm to rest up before my really early flight to Munich the next morning. I will tell you all about Oktoberfest in my next post... :)
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