Aaaah okay, I had too much going on for the past couple of days that I didn’t get to update, but that I can do now before I make myself some tortellini for dinner (so fancyyyyy). Okay, so on Monday, I actually had to start the “study” part of study abroad, which is kinda wack, but honestly, it could be like sixty-eight times worse. So Pierre walked us to class that morning, because we had never been to IEP (which is the SciencePo building in Lyon) before. I was in the front with Pierre because we were having exclusive chats about life, love, and baguettes…not really. But we did talk a lot about my thesis and the fact that he was there at Colloquium at UVA when I gave that presentation on Victor Hugo and exile. Basically we are both in love with my advisor Marva Barnett (because she is awesome) and he’s going to be my BFFL when it comes to this thesis. I’m going to get a heck of a lot of unwanted but necessary exercise because our school is about 40 minutes away walking at a leisurely pass, 2 miles each way. This is great because knowing myself I wouldn’t walk or run for the heck of it. I would only go anywhere if I really had to (as in mandatory) or there was a crepe stand or creperie involved somehow. Anyway Pierre’s class is gonna be legit. Why?
1. He’s like the French Ari Blatt, which is parfait parce que Ari is pretty great
2. We are basically studying a key component of my thesis (French identity and how it’s going to relate to immigration and SOCCER and such…huzzah)
3. Did I mention he’s really great?
On the way back home we went to a little café and had some quiches for lunch. I had a quiche jambon which was bomb-ass. It’s kind of annoying because I know that I’m doing more inadvertent exercise now than I ever did all this year (True Life: I lived in Clemons library…and I took the bus there), but the food here is so rich that even if I’m not eating the same amount as I usually do, I’m still probably going to gain about 16 pounds cette été. C’est nul, cela. But anyway we decided to go out later that night because it was a Monday night….wait what? I basically became one of those mythical UVA creatures who does that. But we didn’t have class til 2 the next day, so we weren’t bothered haha. So a big group of us 4 week people (it would have been more if we had known the room numbers of the others…that has thus been recified) went to meet a group of the 6 week people to hang out before sortir-ing. The destination? Cosmopolitan. Cosmo is apparently very popular amongst americans, probs because they play great cheesy American music. Needless to say it was a good night. There wasn’t much designated dance floor space, but we made it work (basically colonized a corner and started bouger-ing). There was an overenthusiastic Frenchman who felt the name to take his shirt off. Though I laughed, this was how I really felt .
But we repped UVA well haha.
 |
| Emily and I at Cosmo |
Tuesday was my other class. My teacher, Karen James is such a sweetheart. Though I’m not a literature buff, I really like poetry, so I think I’m going to like this class. It funny because we are reading Middle French, which reminded me of Mr.Timlin’s Brit Lit class senior year where we basically had to learn Middle English to read the Canterbury tales. But Madame James brought us little snacks to tithe us through the 2.5 hour class (seriously, when has it ever been a good idea to keep college students cramped up for that long?? I have the attention span of a squirrel). Butter biscuits, mini tartelettes framboises (raspberry tarts) and chocolat…A woman truly after my own heart. Later that night was the fete de la musique, a huge music festival that happens all around France. Unfortunately, it was raining like a putain, so we basically didn’t get to see that much as a group because we were basically just trying to get out of the rain. But later on I had my big reunion with Kate Meeker and it was one of those things where my life just didn’t feel real haha. We were in Lyon, France together for the first time since like December. So weird. But anyways, shenanigans. I met up with a couple of her American friends who all viennent de Californie for whatever reason, but they were super cool. Invitation to rage in California? Check. Her giant (in height, obvi) French friend was there was well. He was quite blunt, which was fine, because I rather like people to be real to my face and not fake, but I felt like such a noob when it came to speaking French. That like rarely happens anymore, you know? Not that I’m like a beast at French or anything, but I can usually hold my own. I guess it was because he was actually French and not like American speaking French. He was really nice, and I’m sure if I had been better at French it would have been a better conversation, but honestly, I couldn’t really be bothered at that point, I just wanted to dance (we stopped by this spot on the Rue de la Republique where a dj was playing electro music…daaaaank) haha. So we parle-d un peu and then Kate and I headed off to meet her friend Elizabeth and her boyfriend and all his French friends. Needless to say, super chouette. It was just such a French night, you know? Instead of heading straight to Kate’s place for fêter un peu plus, we were just walking around rue de la republique for like an hour juste listening to musique. Also, people’s PDA was out of control, but I guess its just as normal here as it was in England, if not more. When we finally all got to Kate’s, we just hung out and the French guys showed me some awesome French musique. My friend Kelly Chung always says that there is “that time of the night”, you know where everything gets a bit wonky, or at acapella mixers, where everybody is arm in arm and singing harmonies and the backgrounds at the top of our lungs to the music playing (basically, where the night gets kind of surreal). That occurred this night, when we were all dancing in the kitchen to “suave mente” and weirdly enough, “I’ve had the time of my life” while cooking popcorn on the stove….like….what?
But so awesome. Then les autres left or went to bed, and I stayed with Kate for the night so that we could catch up…til like 4am haha. I’ll stop there for now haha, and then talk about the next two days in another post!
Cheers,
Abena
No comments:
Post a Comment