Deodorant

What is the single greatest thing about American bars?

They don't smell like French bars. Like the no-shaving thing, I'm really unclear on the no-deodorant theme as well. It makes you just a teeeeeny bit more claustrophobic than usual on the dance floor.

I checked out les soldes yesterday and bought some sweet French clothing. Ability to be a snob when people ask me, "Where did you get that skirt?" by answering, "Oh, in France": check! Afterward, much to my chagrin, I went back to the hotel, tried to read for class, and fell asleep for two hours. Maybe it's being in France, but for some reason I was much less angry than I normally am after I nap. Good nap juju here.

Mark and I are going to Paris this weekend - and hopefully (cross your fingers and toes) Michelle will be coming down from Oxford to join before she goes home to the States next week. The first and only other time I've been to Paris was with Michelle, so I'm really hoping she'll be able to join us. I also hope that this time neither of us will be extremely ill with colds and Michelle will not practically hallucinate from the strange French cold medicine the pharmacist gives her. Also, a word to the wise: don't plan a trip to Paris in the middle of the summer only three days before you're planning on leaving. We had a hell of a time trying to find a "reasonably-priced" (read: nothing is reasonably-priced in Paris) hotel last night. But who cares? Cause I'll be in Paris this time in two days!

It's dreary here today, so I'm going to go to class and then work on a project with my friend Karen. I think they have some couscous dinner planned for us tonight (either the French or the Lyonnais love couscous, because there is a lot of it here), and I'm hoping it happens because I neither feel like making pasta again nor like paying for dinner. Of course the couscous dinner comes out of our program fees, therefore it's not exactly free...so thanks, Mom and Dad!

I guess I understand why people get tired of blogging

        I'm not necessarily sick of my blog yet, but I've realized that it's difficult to be witty every entry. Particularly when you're just so tired from hiking up the stupid hill to the hotel everyday. You'd think that the hill would get easier the longer you've been here, but that's wrong. It gets worse. Particularly when you're lugging groceries and wine with you.
        One of my classes went to the American Consulate today to talk about cultural differences between the French and the Americans. It was actually pretty interesting. Then my history professor gave me a ton of book titles that I can use for my thesis; it's amazing how excited I am by this fact. That's probably a good sign considering how much time I have to devote to my thesis next year. And sorry if I've been bringing this up too much. Obviously it's on my mind, plus I can't get over how great this professor his. He's hilarious. Today when we wouldn't define the word "marivaudage" (flirting) for him he told us he was going to make us go out in the streets and witness marivaudage first-hand.
        In random news, while not everyone here dresses well, there are four-year-olds here who dress better than I do. It's disheartening. Though I will give every girl on this trip points for their shaved legs, because a really gorgeous and chic girl sat across from us on the train on the way to Arles...but her legs were definitely not shaved. But then all the boys on this trip get points for normal-length pants. Because you just can't say much about French men when they're wearing those strange capris.
        Cross your fingers that something interesting happens in the next day so I can write you an amusing story next time!

It doesn't matter how good you are at French

        Because there are some words that you will never be able to pronounce. Such as "Arles," the name of the city where Mark and I went this weekend. For those of you that speak (or at least pronounce) French, it doesn't look too bad, but believe me, you're saying it wrong. There's a crazy emphasis on the L, so it comes out sounding more like "ar-luh" rather than what you would expect, which is a one syllable word. However it may be impossible to say correctly if not a native speaker.
        But I'm getting ahead of myself. We don't have classes on Fridays (and I don't have classes on Thursdays - yay!) so I went up and explored the basilica that overlooks the city, one of the old cathedrals, and the general area of Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon, and that means really old). Minus the hike up the small mountain, it was pretty cool. There's a great view of Lyon from the basilica - and a great view of the eyesore that is the Radison smack dab in the middle of the newer part of town - and you can see for miles. Vieux Lyon is really great, too. We're in the Croix-Rousse neighborhood which was where all the silk makers lived in the 1800s and the buildings are fairly plain. Vieux Lyon is really the old Middle Ages area, with tiny streets and old buildings and the whole aura of "traditional Europe." Way more interesting than silk makers' houses, believe me.
        Friday evening we tried to go to the boat bars (all the big barges on the river are anchored and have been turned into bars and restaurants) which didn't work out so well. We found one that we got into right away - and promptly discovered we were the only people there...though it did fill up a decent amount with our group of 15. We bailed on that and considered the Australian bar, but apparently it is The Coolest Place in Lyon, judging by the line at the door, so we went home earlier than usual. But almost all bars in Lyon close at 1am anyway, which is strange if you think about it. The French don't eat until 8 often, and yet their bars close a whole lot earlier than American ones do. Either the French are better at partying cause it only takes them two hours to do it...or they just get sleepy from all the wine.
        Mark and I went to Arles from Saturday to Sunday. Arles is a town in the south of France that is full of Roman ruins, winding and confusing Medieval-era streets, and tourists. We heard more English (and Italian and German and Dutch) in Arles than we have in Lyon to date. We checked out the ruins - it was like a mini Rome - saw a garden that Van Gogh used to chill in, and wandered around a lot. We also saw what we think was a Gypsy wedding and made friends with our Polish/French waitress - random, I know. It was a neat little town, but also very quiet. All in all, a fun experience. The trip back to Lyon was not a fun experience: the train was super hot, we got on the wrong metro in Lyon and then when we got off at a station to go to the other platform there was no way to get across so we had to continue in the wrong direction and switch at the next station (seriously, France?), and then everyone was eating cheese when we got back and it was all gone. And I love cheese. But Ar-luh was fun!
        Tonight I'm reconciling myself to doing homework, something which is extremely tough in a foreign country during the summer. Luckily the reading I'm doing for one class is putting me ahead in my research for my thesis next semester. And I'm taking breaks by writing this and putting pictures on Facebook. Megan: 1. Homework: 0.

P.S. Since it's driving me crazy that there are [sometimes] giant spaces in between paragraphs (what the heck, blogspot, stop doing that!) I'm switching to good old paragraphs.
P.P.S. There are giant mutant flies in Lyon.

Necessary vocabulary for being a translator

I just received an e-mail from my professor that said: "Film La Haine : la projection (obligatoire) est ce soir à 19h20 à Villemanzy (nous aurons des pizzas!!! miam miam)"


Translation: "The movie La Haine: the mandatory showing of the movie is tonight at 7:20 at Villemanzy (we will have pizza!!! nom nom)"

Heated towel racks double as dryers!

The rain in Lyon is a bit like regime change in French history. Neither can makes up its mind. Perhaps the French, after that whole Revolution thing, thought they'd stick as close to tradition as they could - at least in some way, since revolution kind of requires a "bite me, tradition!" attitude. What I mean by this is that the French took a look at the weather, and decided they would behave like the rain. One minute it's pouring, then it's not, then it's pouring, then drizzling, then the sun is coming out, then it's pouring again. So the French people went with monarchy, republic, empire, monarchy, monarchy, republic, empire, etc, etc.

This is what the weather has been doing most of day and what it did last night (during the outdoor music festival - zut!). We had our longest walk yet from the IEP (l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques - the Intitute of Political Sciences Studies at the University where we have our classes) today. It's two miles, and usually takes about 45ish minutes when you factor in the hills and crossing the river. Today it took well over an hour on account of the rain and the fact that there were eight of us and only four umbrellas. Needless to say, we were soaked by the time we got back to Hotel Villemanzy. We should probably figure out how to use the metro system.

Otherwise, there has not been a whole lot that has happened between now and my last post. There was an outdoor music festival last night which occurs all over France. There are musicians and groups in the streets and tons of people wandering, dancing, singing, etc. There probably would have been a lot more people had the weather not been intermittently pouring and not-pouring on us. We saw one group that took refuge in a metro station, just at the bottom of the stairs. This probably would not have flown in DC...but then again, the amount of PDA that occurs here wouldn't fly in DC either. You haven't seen PDA until you've seen it in France, which I'd forgotten - or at least repressed - since the last time I was here. C'est la vie, to use a very applicable cliche. To shelter from the rain for awhile (well, plus we were hungry) Mark and I got dinner at a pizza place. This was the first time on this trip that I actually felt like, oh crud, maybe I don't know French. We ordered a pizza that said it had chicken and beef on it, plus some veggies, and the word "merguez." We got a pizza with the veggies, a fried egg (yes, an egg), and some questionable-looking sausage on it. The questionable-looking sausage was also questionable-tasting, as it didn't taste like pork, but it definitely didn't taste like beef - and it didn't taste bad, just, well, questionable. I learned this morning that it was questionable-tasting because it was beef stuffed into lamb intestines. That's what "merguez" means. Yum.

I also tasted foie gras one day when we had a picnic. I thought I might as well take the "when in Rome" attitude and try something obscenely French. It tasted precisely like the jar that you keep grease in smells. So if I'm offered something like escargot, I might just go with my instincts and turn down the icky-food-turned-fancy-and-French next time.

Facts.

Things the French do right:
Wine - We've begun to whine (pun intended) when we have to pay more than three euro for a bottle of wine. And this doesn't taste like Barefoot. One day I'll splurge and buy a super nice bottle and spend all of ten euro. Additionally the Lyonnais have a joke that there are three rivers in Lyon: le Rhône (real river), la Saône (real river), et le Beaujolais (not real river). Le Beaujolais is the main type of wine here, and the Lyonnais joke that they drink so much that it's a river.
Markets - We went to a great outdoor market yesterday and I bought a TON of food that was delicious and fresh for barely anything. I bought an enormous head of lettuce (which I would show you, but for some reason I can't upload pictures to this blog right now) for 70 cents. Plus there was a man at a cheese stand selling me fromage who told me, "Joli accent!" (translation: "Hey, nice accent!") As if selling cheese doesn't make you enough of a hero in my book...he's an example of how I haven't had a single bad experience with the French yet.
My professors - I have two classes. One, a cultural class about what the French national identity, is with Pierre Dairon. All of the girls have already fallen in love with him; he's probably 30 and very charming and good-looking, etc, etc. And I can gush all I want about him since Mark has his own hot French professor to talk about. Win, win! My other professor is Laurent Douzou who is teaching my class about France during WWII. It's basically prepping me for the thesis I'm writing next year. And I pity everyone who isn't in his class. It was absolutely amazing today, and he was fantastique. He's a well-known scholar on WWII France, and he was so animated and so funny. Plus we barely have to do any work for him.
The French language - For some reason they're all really good at it. Go figure.


Things the French do wrong:
Showers - Ever wonder why there's that stereotype about French women not shaving? Because it sucks to shave when there is neither a door nor a curtain and you have to adjust the shower head so you're hopefully standing under it and not spraying the entire bathroom. It just doesn't seem worth it by the time you're done with one leg.
Showers - Seriously. Appreciate your curtains and non-detachable shower heads.
Showers - Plus the word for shower in French is "douche." Yikes.


Everything else is going well. My room is pretty nice; it's small, but has a loft which is where my bed and closet are. All the rooms are different because the hotel used to be a convent/multiple buildings, so no two rooms are exactly alike. Some people have nice views of the city and the river, but I look into a bush.


You have to walk ages to get to class, but it's a very nice walk around the river, and I can't complain. I can complain about the massive hill we have to walk up to get to the hotel (think San Francisco), but I won't! And it's really not so bad, just tiring when you're lugging groceries up it.


It's actually strange to sit down and write in English. I don't speak English at all during the day; I've only been speaking it at night when I'm with the other students - for instance when we went to a bar last night. Even when we're not with the professors, we speak in French. It's great, I actually feel like my French is improving. I never feel very confident in my speaking abilities, but I haven't felt too bad about them so far!


I don't have any funny and/or witty stories this afternoon, so I'm off to do the homework that I've already been assigned. Woo!

I'm in Lyon, but...

...read this first.

So I’m writing this on the TGV train from Paris to Lyon, and I’ll post it once I have internet service.  The flights from DC to Charlotte and Charlotte to Paris all went well.  We got to Paris by 6:50, and once we got through customs and found our baggage (the fastest I think anyone has ever found their baggage in the history of airports and suitcases and their long relationship together) and down to the train station it was only about 7:45. We spent 3.5 long hours sitting in the station listening to an unbelievably annoying alert noise whenever an announcement was made – so roughly every three to five minutes.

But the main reason that this blog post couldn’t wait is because Emily and I spent a good ten minutes giggling (perhaps more than necessary given the 22 hours we’ve been awake at this point) after a certain string of incidents occurred as we tried to board the train. First there was a good deal of confusion figuring out which coach was ours involving a French train attendant laughing at us and a panicked Asian lady frantically demanding (about half a dozen times) if we knew where she was supposed to go.  But the laughing French man finally dragged us onto the train and up to the second floor of the TGV.  We thought we were set.  But we were not.  Barreling down the train corridor into the compartment for luggage (where Emily and I were trying to heave our bags as another woman and her daughter tried the same) came an Australian family.  There was nowhere for them to go, but this did not stop Mummy from shoving her stroller through the automatic sliding glass door into our corridor – which is clearly blocked by four women with enormous suitcases.  Apparently sliding glass doors are not fans of strollers – or perhaps babies – and the door continuously began shutting on Baby Australia.  No one was fazed by this (Mummy simply kept shoving the doors back open every time they almost squished Baby), and the whole crew kept marching forward, into us where they promptly got stuck, because French train corridors seem not to be built to fit both strollers and Giant Emily Suitcases.  Meanwhile, Toddler Australia is being told to get behind his “Mummy” and Daddy Australia is huffing and puffing at everyone and the stroller is stuck and Mummy is telling Daddy, “I can’t move forward! The stroller is stuck on this bag!”

For some reason, our English with American accents was too much for Family Australia to handle because our repeated attempts to offer suggestions, such as, “Please back up and we will move our bags and we can all be merrily on our way” fell on deaf ears.  Their solution was to keep pushing, but in the meanwhile, stand directly in front of the only shelf where Emily and I needed to put our luggage so this whole situation could be ameliorated.  Remember that Simpsons episode when Marge is in Australia and orders a coffee over and over and the Australian bartender only hears her say “beer”? Well apparently when you say, “Please back up,” Australians hear, “KEEP COMING AT FULL SPEED AND WE WILL SOMEHOW ALL FIT IN THIS TINY SPACE AND THE SLIDING DOORS WILL ACTUALLY NOT SQUISH YOUR BABY AND PLEASE, PLACE YOUR TODDLER DIRECTLY UNDER MY 50lb SUITCASE AS I SWING IT UP ONTO THE SHELF ABOVE HIS HEAD.”

Also, the guy in front of us is reading a porn magazine.

Dearest Abena, you missed a lot when you stayed down on the first floor of Coach 5.

A formal apology

You don't realize until you're packing to leave the country for five-and-a-half weeks how many products are required to simply be female. I mean, honestly. If I were a guy, I could probably get away with a backpack and a tote bag for this whole trip. Then again, if I were a guy I wouldn't be using the words "tote bag," let alone the object itself. Either way, this is my chance to offer Jeff (one of my future roommates with whom I'm sharing a bathroom next year, in case you don't know) a formal apology. I am now realizing how much stuff I actually use - and need - everyday to maintain this whole girl thing. Sorry that I will be jeopardizing 90% of our bathroom storage.

Emily got here today, and we've spent much of the evening weighing our suitcases and unpacking and repacking them (she suffers from this same extreme-amount-of-product-and-clothing affliction that I do). We pretty much have everything in order at this point, and we've moved on to being relatively (or extremely) uneasy about tomorrow since we both hate flying. Cross your fingers for a smooth flight for us! We'll be crossing ours - and perhaps partaking in glasses of wine in an airport or on the plane.

For now I'll keep the blog posts short. Life is pretty uninteresting (though highly stressful) the day before you travel.

P.S. I bought my Tums.

The blogwagon

Is it bad that I've jumped on the blogwagon before I've left the country? Is it bad that I've jumped on the blogwagon (blagon?) at all?

And is four weeks really too short of a time period to write a blog? ...regardless of the fact that I am technically studying abroad - and therefore being a trendy college student and writing quirky posts about all things foreign? I've been told that by week four of your blog you're tired of updating it anyway (and I believe you, Patrick, considering your posts became mighty scarce as the semester wore on), so maybe I'm ahead of the crowd and have actually created the Perfect Storm of blogs: The Four Week Blog To Which the Blogger Is Fully Committed.

Either way, I'm headed to Lyon, France (also known as Not Paris, France) from June 17 to July 16, and then I'm off to travel for another week and a half! Here's to hoping my French improves, to drugging myself to sleep on the airplane with some Dramamine, and to finishing my packing in the next 36 hours.

...and to not forgetting anything vital. Like Tums.