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.