"Did you just pousser on that door?"

A fair warning that this blog will probably dip into Franglais de temps en temps (from time to time). Sorry 'bout it. That's just how I live these days so:

I think this is possibly one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Sorry if its gross. Seriously, I giggle every time I look at it. Like right now.

 So its about 6:40am Lyon time and I can't sleep anymore. Damn you, UVA-like environment for resetting my sleeping pattern so that I only sleep like 6 hours a night. I mean I'm not tired, just annoyed that I'm awake over an hour earlier than I need to be. But whatevs, I'm waking up to Lyon, so I'm really not that bothered.

So yesterday was day 2 in Lyon and I'm growing more and more enamored with the place. We had a 10:30 meeting time, so naturally ParanoiAbena woke up at 6 because she doesn't have an alarm clock (neither phone works yet...#simcardproblems) and couldn't figure out how to set up the wake up call on the room phone (Abena quite enjoys talking about herself and her alter-ego in third person), so that was her body's natural response. The first thing I did was take a shower, french style. Which is really not taking a shower at all, but sitting in the tub and holding the shower head above you as you try not to splash water everywhere because there is no shower curtain or anything. We discussed how this is probably why the French don't shave their legs. Its too much of a mess in the bathroom.  But after morning preparations, we headed out to the marché (market) to buy food for our picnic and stuff for ourselves. The marché literally never ended it was so long, basically stretching down like three or four streets. But it was awesome. Its basically like the Farmer's Market, only french and open every day except for Mondays. It was my duty to get les tomates cerises (cherry tomatoes), which I did pretty quickly. So I just indulges in the free samples afterwards. It was fantastique. We headed down later for our pique-nique, and I felt tres elegante et francaise because I had like four different kinds of cheese, a baguette, some cuts of meat, couscous (on dit taboulé), and les tomates cerises on my plate. Much better than the expensive McDonald's that I'd had two days before. I sat at the table with most of the professors, which was pretty legit because we had a constant stream of conversation. Pierre (loml...guess what thats short for. Anyone who's been around me for more than an hour, when all the weird comes out, will probably know haha) was teaching us french tongue twisters, which was funny. The best thing about French life though is that no one is in a hurry. We ate, and then just kinda sat and hung out for a while. There was no pressure to go somewhere or do something right away, which was just great. So after lunch we had a bit of time before our orientation of sorts, so I decided to be productive and work on the papers that I have for my poetry class. However, productivity isn't really the way I roll, so the work was frequently interrupted by sitting in my window sill with the ukulele and straight up dancing by my self in my room. Robyn would have been so proud:

But I got a page down out of two, so I'm getting there lol. I'll do it this afternoon I'm pretty sure (I'm a pressure thinker, lol). So then we got to the orientation, which was boring as ever, but necessary. After that we went to dinner at this fancy lyonnais restaurant where I sat at the best table. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones who spoke french (or franglais) for the majority of the dinner but it was cool.

sweet sweet sweet

I dont even want to think about how much it probably costs, because it was GRATUIT (free), donc je ne care pas.This was the first thing with all the 6 week people too, so I got to see some familiar faces. After dinner some of us really wanted to go out, despite the fact that we were doing to have class in the morning. It was like our first non-jetlaggy type of night and we just wanted to know what to expect I guess. So a bunch of us met in Amanda's room to chill for a bit and then headed up to Mark and Paul's room before going out. Of course the first place we go is closed, which is a bummer. I was really trying to get my dance on (but fear not, friends, I'm going to bust a bouge (move) very soon), so we went to the Irish Pub, Flanagan's, affectionately known as Shenanigans since...umm, yesterday, pre-departure haha. Shenanigan's is basically like a sports-bar, so on a normal night I guess it would be right up my alley. They had cricket and golf on the telly, which was awesome. It wasn't a big night since it was sunday, but I think it was alright because we were there with good company. I left with the early group and called it a night.

And now I'm just sitting here playing my wake up mix and getting ready for my first day of class (...class, what?). As soon as I get a disposable camera/steal other people's pictures off facebook, I'll add them on here!

Cheers, 

Abena