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Published: November 6th 2010
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Time for and update:
Life here has been great I have been very fortunate with the people I meet and the places I have been.
My french family is awesome I can not say this enough. They invited me to there home in Provence for the weekend and it was a blast. I took my camera for the journey but forgot to charge the battery, go figure I only managed to take a picture of the room I stayed in.
Their home is in Charols a small town about 1.5 hours south of Lyon. It is a perfect get away from the city.
It is on bit of land with lavender bushes in front of the house and an outdoor full size pool a few meters from the house.
It is very cool and typically french. My host father is an architect and has renovated the house from a small one level farm home to a multilevel haven. There are about three bedrooms on the second floor including the master room which has a very spa like feeling. Since I'm not good at explaining I will have to take pictures of it next time. The top level is huge with
lots of space and beds for guest. Very cool indeed!
The family was celebrating the grandfathers' birthday and had a massive feast on Saturday and Sunday. I really do not know how the french can eat so much. I have no idea where they put it either. I thought Americans were the ones with the reputation of eating large meals. Not so, here there meals are at least three courses and there is always some form of desert be it cheese, yogurt, or un gateau (cake). To top it all off they eat very late as well, and the food is so good I am having a hard time saying no. Will have to keep very active to maintain myself.
On Sunday evening on our way home from the country I was treated yet again by the family to a rugby game.
This was my first rugby match ever and we had VIP status so we got to sit in the box seats have horsdoeuvres, champagne, cakes, the works. I'll say it I have been spoiled!! The match was cool Lyon vs Grenoble.
Lyon won, woohoo.
The rest of the time I have been settling in getting
used to being a student again and getting to know Lyon more.
There is a very cool park Par de la Tete d'Ore which I go running at. Just beautiful, I really enjoy going there to unwind. I am slowly making friends as well, which is great.
This week I have been on vacation from school so I decided to take a little trip to a town Annecy two hours from Lyon. One of the girls from my class, Yu-Chen, graciously joined me and our adventure began. On Tuesday we went to the "Gare" train station to purchase our tickets. What a mad house, because of all the strikes, trains and buses have been canceled creating mayhem everywhere. We were in line for 1 hour before we got our tickets. The poor guy in front of us had a real hard time. He didn't speak french and when he asked the lady for a ticket in English she went off on him in English saying he is in France he should ask if she could speak english and blah blah blah. Clearly she could speak english very well but was trying to make a point. She was of African
descent and really loud and rude. I felt so bad for the guy he was only in France for an hour connecting somewhere else and just wanted his ticket. After awhile she refused to help him and called the next person in line when the guy persisted on getting help she got up to talk to a manager. Poor thing, our ticket guy offered to help him while the lady went to go get a manager. It was an experience at the station to say the least, loads of very unhappy people.
This strike thing is a nuisance, I mean at this point I think it is doing more harm than good. It is causing a lot of problems.
Annecy was beautiful!! It is built similar to Venice with its many canals. Very picturesque an ideal setting with the snow capped mountains in the background, a clear lake, and cobblestone streets. So pretty, worth the 4 hours it took us to get there. Due to the strike our original bus was overbooked and we had to run to catch a train to Chambery were we didn't know if there was going to be a connection to Annecy. We ended
up getting to the town around 13h or tickets back to Lyon were for 19h so that didn't give us a lot of time. But we ended up making the most of it and hit all the sites we wanted. The Pont des Amours, don't blink or you will walk right over it like we did. The Palais de L'ile, (old Prison) which sits on a small island in between the canals. Next was the Musee Chateau, not quite what I expected. The building itself is gorgeous I can imagine what it was like to live there in the old days. Today it houses some weird exhibits, a bit of everything old to modern art. Very eclectic and not much to my liking. We left shortly after to go on a long hike up the mountain and around the hill to get to the Monastere et Basilique de la Visitation. Apparently we needed the exercise because walked right passed the main road to get there and went completely around through the woods. What an adventure!
Yu-Chen and I decided to head back to the center of town and try to catch an earlier train back to Lyon just in
Chez moi
View from my house, not to shabby =) case we had problems getting back. Well wouldn't you know it, we get there 1.5 hours earlier only to find out that there are no more trains to Lyon. Because of the "Greve" they had canceled a lot of trains and couches. Why they didn't tell us this when we bought our tickets or in the morning when we got on the bus is unbeknown to me. We missed the last transport out to Lyon by half an hour. I was so upset the guy at the train station was really helpful and tried to help us out. Mr. Blue eyes as we called him was super nice and with intense blue eyes made the ordeal less painful. He also told us if we could find a way to Chambery 30km away we could manage to get a train there to Lyon. He probably saw I was ready to cry and want as far as inquiring about a hotel for us and tried to get us a taxi to Chambery. The hotel was a bit pricey for us students and so we tried to find a cab. Yu-Chen found a cab and asked the driver if he could take us
to Chambery. At a whopping 110 euros I asked why it was so expensive in french mind you and he had the gal to tell me it was because of my "japonaise" friend who had money and went of to say we could find a hotel instead. Bastard, that was the second time on this trip that I experienced racism/prejudice in one form or another. First off she is not japonaise, she is chinoise idiot.
To make the long story short we ended walking up another mountain to get to the Auberge de Jeunesse where after a few glasses of wine life got better. =)
The Auberge is great, one of the biggest, cleanest, friendliest, one I have been at thus far. Highly recommend it.
It felt good to be able to get back to Lyon in the morning almost felt like home, almost.
More of my adventures to follow...
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