Mars Attacks! was hilarious! I took some pictures and you should be able to see them in the links I attach at the end of my post. Let's see... what else have I been up to? One day between classes, we went across the bridge and walked around before getting some amazing chocolate. Then on Friday I had my Art, Ville, et Patrimoine class and we walked around the city some more and found out why the French are all so skinny.
All of the buildings in the Croix-Rousse are considered historical to a certain extent, so they aren't allowed to build elevators on the outsides of the buildings at all. Our teacher showed us her building and let us in to look up at the staircase - she walks up six flights of stairs just to get to her apartment! It's insane! And just walking around the city can be difficult because there are a lot of stairs and inclines all over the place. I can't even imagine living there if you had trouble walking long distances or had asthma or something. It was a tough walk.
When we were walking, we went by this elementary school and our teacher, Annick, knew two little kids that we sitting outside the school and she was asking them a bunch of questions, like what they were doing for summer vacation, if they were happy that it was finally the last day of school, etc. And to every question they just said, "Oui." They were so cute - it made me miss the kids at work. I love seeing the kids around here with their parents. The other day in the market, a little girl was giving herself an orange mustache with a lollipop and another day when I was getting ready to go out, I heard a kid squeeling outside of my window.
It was a really windy day and I looked out from the fourth floor and saw a little boy, probably about 4 years old, pushing a stroller ahead of him, running back behind it, and letting the wind push the stroller back to him while his dad looked on, laughing. It was the cutest thing because the dad tried to take control of the stroller to make sure the little boy didn't get hurt, but the little boy would shout, "Non, non!" in his French accent every time he came near the stroller. I was laughing so hard.
Anyway, I haven't been meeting many French people aside from my professors and this one girl that someone met before they came to the residence. Her name is Carole and she came down for the weekend to hang out because she lives in Northern France and took a placement exam here a couple weeks ago and was getting the results of it. She was nice and she spoke English really well. It was interesting though because when we were in big groups of people, she definitely had a harder time understanding the conversation. For one thing, it's harder to hear and also, people tend to use a lot more clichés and idioms when they aren't thinking about the fact that not everyone is a native English speaker.
One great thing about Lyon is this blue van that makes delicious, fresh pizzas down the street. It is literally the best pizza that I've ever had - no joke. We got two amazing pizzas yesterday. One of them had chèvre, tomatoes, and just a little bit of honey and it was incredible. The other was called the sucrée and it had sugar, cream, and nutella. AMAZING.
Yesterday I went to mass at the church I saw on our initial tour of Lyon. It was absolutely beautiful and mass wasn't too difficult to understand. It's nice that Catholic mass is the same format wherever you go - otherwise I would've been pretty lost. I could usually understand what the priest was saying, but the echo made it difficult. We took lots of pictures though and afterward, we went outside and from the top of the hill you can see the whole city of Lyon. It was breathtaking.
Today is the Fête Nationale, so we have off from school. I tried to sleep in really late today so that I wouldn't be too tired for dancing and fireworks tonight. I'm really excited! Then we only have about 6 days of school left Next weekend I'll be going to Avignon and Arles for a film festival, so that'll be fun. Other than that, I'll just be finishing classes, buying my ticket to meet Tyler and Dave in Barcelona, and trying to finish off all of the food I've bought so far, haha.
I love and miss everyone so much. Mom's been sending me youtube videos of the house, the backyard, the dogs, Mimi and Grandpa, Brett. It's been so nice to hear voices and see faces. Now I know more than ever how much I love my family and how much they love me. Here are two links for a few more pictures. I added photos to one of the albums, so some of the pictures should look familiar already.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000660&l=c21d1&id=1017060006
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000668&l=05d9e&id=1017060006
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