Lyon!!!!!

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This past weekend, I mad a little trip to Lyon, the third largest city in France, and the place where I had stayed in France three years ago and inspired me to go back for a whole semester. For those of you who don’t know, my high school has an exchange program with a high school in Lyon every other year, and my sophomore year I hosted a French student, Karol for three weeks, and my senior year I went to France and stayed with Marie-Ange for three weeks, and then she came and stayed with me for three weeks. I’ve kept in touch with both of them and my stay with Marie-Ange’s family was so fabulous when I left I decided that I wanted to come back and stay in France for a little longer. Ever since I’ve been in France we’ve all been really excited to see each other!

I was a little nervous to make the journey alone and to meet up with people I hadn’t seen in such a long time, but in the end it was fabulous. When I got off the train, the station was a lot bigger than I had remembered, probably because I was by myself. I sent Marie-Ange a text, saying where I was and after a few phone calls we found each other—her brother, Alexandre (who’s two years older than us) drove us from the gare to Genas, the suburb where her parents live. (I found out on the drive that the day before Marie-Ange had just taken her driver’s test for the third time and had to wait until Monday for the results, which it turns out she passed!)

I was surprised by how much of the drive seemed familiar to me. The French countryside during the 20 minute drive from downtown Lyon to Genas all seemed familiar, and I started to recognize the street signs and such. Three years really isn’t that long as far as roadways go…The conversation was a little forced in the car, but it was great to see them—Alex just tended to mumble, or speak really fast or something, but I could understand Marie-Ange pretty well.

I was welcomed chez Marie-Ange with open arms and smiles and bisous everywhere. We sat down for a late lunch and everything felt comfortable and familiar. They told me my French was a lot better! (The Dad even said that now my French was at least as good as his English.) I’m also happy to say that I could actually follow and participate in all the lunch time conversation, which was a change from the last time I had been there! After lunch we thought about going into downtown Lyon, but it had started snowing, so we decided it would be too cold and just stayed around the kitchen table having afternoon coffee chatting.

We talked about shopping, one of Marie Ange’s favorite pastimes (especially in America where everything seems to be cheaper) but discussed the few things that were cheaper in France, like Chanel and Longchamp bags. (Although still expensive, just not quite as much.)

That night was a surprise birthday party for one of Marie-Ange’s best friends, John, who I had met before but couldn’t actually picture him (but when I saw him later that night I remembered hanging out with him before). As we got ready to head off to his party, her parents left to run some errands and when they came back they had bought a Longchamp bag for me with the Eiffel Tower on it! I didn’t know what to say it was such a nice present! They thanked me for being so nice to Marie-Ange when she had stayed with me three years earlier, but I still can’t believe their generosity! I couldn’t speak in French or English but gave them hugs and tried to thank them profusely.

We chatted in front of the TV for a while, and then one of Marie-Ange’s friends came to drive us to John’s party, which Marie-Ange was one of the main surprise organizers. When we got there I met some of her other friends informed her that he would be arriving 15 minutes earlier than planned, which stressed them all out and provoked chain smoking like you wouldn’t believe, which was rather unpleasant for me, but all of her friends were really nice and asked me about random American things and songs. Once girl asked me about Elvis Presley, but her accent was so strong I had no idea what she was saying for about five minutes!

When John arrived, he was surprised and everyone was relieved—I actually recognized him and a few other people at the party from when I was there before! John’s outfit made me laugh though—all the French guys here have a very different style from Americans. He looked like a spitting image from some sort of French magazine, wearing a button up shirt with a V-neck sweater over the top, and when he took the sweater off, he tied it around his neck. Everyone else seemed to think it was normal, but every time I looked at him a smile couldn’t help but appear on my mouth.

Everyone at the party was really nice and asked me how to pronounce things in English and taught me how to pronounce things in French. It was a good time with Marie Ange and her friends.

Sunday morning I got to sleep in, which was fabulous. I got up a little after 11 and went downstairs to have some coffee, brioche, and freshly made apple tarte. We visited for a while, then I helped Alex with his English/law homework (He’s studying to be a lawyer and has to analyze some cases in English—the documents he had to read and write about were really hard! I had to help explain to him it was talking about foreign workers and strikes and such, something I know pretty much nothing about and would be a difficult assignment for me…)

Afterwards, he showed me some videos on the nimportequi.fr website where a French man goes around France doing crazy things. For example, on a Sunday afternoon he found just a normal person taking a leisurely bike ride, and sneak-attacked them with a Tour-de-France type finish. He had a bunch of people in the middle of the road the unsuspecting person was riding on, with a finish line and horns and bells and foam fingers. When the biker reached that point in the road, the crowd of people started cheering and celebrating for them. In another video he had set up a disco party in a random elevator, so whenever someone would push the elevator button they would be greeted by a flashback to the 50s, with disco balls and crazy flashing lights. I suppose the French do have a sense of humor after all.

That afternoon, we were going to go walk around town a bit, but it was snowing like crazy so Marie-Ange, Alex, and I decided to see a movie, and it turned into kind of a big deal figuring out which movie to see (the theaters here show some movies in their “original format” which means in English with French subtitles, so were we going to see a movie in French or English? A comedy or a thriller? Etc, etc.) They kept asking me what I wanted to do, which I didn’t really care at all, but in the end I sided with the movie Marie-Ange wanted to see, Le Mac, a French comedy. It was pretty good, and while I didn’t understand every detail, I was surprised by how well I followed the plot. And both Marie-Ange and Alex really liked it, so that was all good.

We then returned home for dinner where Karol joined us and it was great to see her again too! We had dinner, then one of Alex’s friends came over and the five of us (Alex, his friend, me, Marie Ange, and Karol) sat around thee table drinking coffee (and the rest of them smoking) and chatting like old friends (me listening more than talking, but I was following the conversations!) Karol and Marie-Ange both talked a bit about when they had stayed with me and it was fun to hear how they both had such great memories of Oregon!

I went home with Karol and got to see her house for the first time which was also nice. She as a 9 month old Boxer puppy named Kenzo, who was so cute and so excited to meet me! It was great to be around a real dog again! (In Tours, I’m pretty sure there are only little toy dogs.) Her house was very modern and at the very end of being renovated, so the living room was open and empty, but the next day new white leather chairs and a couch arrived which completely the room! (And were really comfortable.)

Sadly, Monday is a pretty tough day classes-wise for Karol, but I went with her to check out the university in Lyon (and real French University classes since I’m only taking classes with Bucknell students). She’s a psych major, (and wants to work in a prison—cool!) so she had psych statistics where the professor basically just said numbers the whole class although I understood the tables he was making, a cognitive psych class, which was really interesting and I actually followed a fair amount of it, and an adolescent psych lecture class, which was the most difficult hour and 45 minutes I’ve ever experienced in my life.

Let me paint the picture for you: a big, old lecture hall, and a professor sitting at a desk down in front of everyone with a microphone, talking, for the entire hour 45 minutes. Monotone, droning, French, pausing after every half sentence allowing for all the students to write down his every word. Karol is diligently sitting next to me, typing the monotone words that come out of the professor’s mount, as I’m writing things in my notebook to later type in this blog. It was sooooo unpleasant; I can’t imagine having that class twice a week for an entire semester.

After class, Karol and I hung out in her house with her parents, which was nice. I think I mentioned they were re-doing their living room, so new couches came and a TV was installed which was really exciting for them! They were trying to figure out how to arrange everything and where the best place was to put which vase, which was cute. For dinner we met up with Marie-Ange and some of her friends again (I had a traditional salad from Lyon) and then I met Karol’s boyfriend (she was really excited for me to meet him which was cute) and we went up to the highest point in Lyon, by the Cathedral and took some pictures of “Lyon By Night.”

The next day was bittersweet, I wasn’t ready to leave Lyon yet but I had a fun morning/early afternoon with Karol and her mom. We had lunch together and then Karol and I went shopping (and she bought me earrings with the Eiffel Tower on them! So cute!) It was so fun just hanging out with Karol again; we had such a good time together! It was really sad when it came time from my train to leave, and Marie Ange came again to say goodbye at the platform, which was really nice of her. I waved goodbye to them, promising that I wanted to come back soon!

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Comments

[Mom]

Old friends
What a great time you had with your friends from France! They were great hostesses! Hearing your stories makes me miss Karol and Marie-Ange too! They look great in the photos. You say that Tours is not style-savvy, but Marie-Ange always knows the latest styles. Whatever Marie-Ange was wearing, we'll be seeing in Oregon in about three years! So start shopping!