Further adventures and blog-related demands

Arg. Another day, another pastry. I'm legitimately getting fat. And yet, almost all the French people I've met are not only not fat, but skinnier than the average person. It's a mystery to me. (And I'm not the only one.) This Wikipedia article claims, however, that "Americans [tend] to lose weight while visiting [France]." Um, WRONG. I guess this is why you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

At any rate, in the title of this post I promised adventures. And here they are:

On Saturday, I unfortunately slept in until noon (...thirty) because I'd been up until 3:30 in the morning doing absolutely nothing after having returned around 1:45 from a girls' night with Kelly and Amanda at Amanda's apartment, which consisted of us eating, scrambling to complete various time-sensitive tasks, and watching Pride and Prejudice. Anyway, after a slightly sketchy walk home (a guy drove slowly alongside me with his window open for about a block...I pretended not to see him whilst maintaining a death grip on the whistle Maria and Cynthia gave me as a going-away present for "scaring off the gypsies"), I made it back to the apartment and really just killed time while continually telling myself to get some sleep. I finally listened to me, but I was too late, thus the waste of a beautiful Saturday morning.

This story gets happier, though, I swear! I met up with Kelly, Amanda, and Laura, and we walked around the city in search of a bio-restaurant Kelly had heard about. We finally found it but discovered that they didn't do take-out for lunch, so we resolved to come back some other time and instead headed off for le Parc de la Tête d'Or, since it was a perfect day for relaxing outside:

Kelly, Laura, and Amanda (and me, haha) at the park.

We spent a couple hours at the park lying out in the sun (I have the faint beginnings of a tan!) and watching the antics of some nearby children before strolling back toward Place Bellecour, taking in all the sights of this gorgeous afternoon.

Bridge across the Rhône to the Presqu'île around 5 pm.

I had thought about going out Saturday night with my friends (not anything big...just a movie or something), but since mes parents were away for the weekend and mon frère was out for the evening, I decided to stay home and take advantage of the empty house to Skype with Jessalyn. (I feel bad Skyping when ma famille is here because, due to the time difference, Skyping always has to happen rather late at night, and everyone else here goes to bed fairly early. I don't want to disturb them.) Anyway, it was nice to spend a nice quiet evening at the apartment, although I still stayed up too late. Oh, well.

On Sunday, we (the group) had planned a picnic for lunch. The idea was to meet in Place Bellecour with everyone bringing something to contribute to the meal, and then walk either to the river or the park to eat. However, we ended up hanging around Place Bellecour for quite awhile waiting for everyone to arrive.

While we were waiting, we watched a group of students walk up to the statue in Place Bellecour, singing songs. We remarked on its being a little out of the ordinary and watched them with amusement for a little while. A few minutes later, we were talking about something else when a couple of guys from the group came over and explained that they were doing a scavenger hunt for the program they were traveling with and they needed a picture with some Lyon girls (I guess we qualified). Would we help them out? they wanted to know. "Sure," we said. The next thing I knew, one of the guys had taken my arm and steered me over toward the other guy, and was like, "Oh yeah, you guys have to kiss so we can get 100 points."

And I was like, "WHAT NOW?!" Because kissing strangers on the street is not one of my top five pastimes. It's like number seven. Eight, maybe.

I jest, of course. But still, I was pretty surprised. It was not how I had expected to spend my afternoon.

But still, they were pretty nice and the guy was pretty easy on the eyes and I mean, it would get them a whole 100 points. So I did it. I'm proud of myself. I think you'll agree it's an excellent story (unless I told it wrong).

After this brief detour from my usual character, we decided to accept the group's invitation for us to join them as they went sight-seeing and completed their tour around Lyon. (But first, Kelly sang "I Will Survive" with them in front of the statue.) It was pretty cool to meet other students (they were all, I guess, engineering students involved in a travel program on their spring break) from all over Europe. I spent a good chunk of time talking to a girl from Belgium, and there were people from Russia, Portugal, France, Germany, and other countries.

We walked around the city completing tasks (such as doing some kind of weird line-dance thing in the middle of a pedestrian street), and we visited the Cathédrale St-Jean in Vieux Lyon. (I still haven't gotten to see the 700-year-old clock do its thing. I did, however, get a couple of good pictures.)

Statue, undoubtedly of a saint or someone with better morals than I, in Cathédrale St-Jean.

After the Cathédrale I returned home to do some work, although this meant that I apparently missed the crowd-surfing that happened immediately thereafter. (Kelly told me about it and I saw pictures.) I went back home, cleaned my room, and then spent a lot of time putting off doing my reading by thinking of other "constructive" things to do. Finally I could avoid it no longer, and I spent the rest of the night reading. Haha, that's a lie. I did do some reading, but it was broken up by checking facebook, checking blitz (Dartmouth's email system), checking my email, eating another delicious dinner avec ma famille, watching two segments of a French TV show with Corinne, and chatting with four people at once. (Don't ever say I can't multitask.)

Monday was pretty ho-hum. Mondays are long in terms of class time (but not as long as Tuesdays...I'm exhausted). I did some errands after school and then went avec mes parents to the Welcome Dinner (which was actually aperitifs and hors d'oeuvres), which was fun. It was cool seeing all the parents and students together, and it was also interesting to see the profs outside of school, especially our two Lyonnais professors: Mme. Villard is adorable and M. Bonivard is kind of a goofball. They're awesome.

I do feel a little bad, though, because when we introduced our host parents a lot of people used adjectives to say how great their families were. Of course, no one told me beforehand that we'd have to introduce our parents, or I would have thought of something nice to say, too, because Corinne and Philippe are wonderful and super-nice, but my lack of confidence in speaking French combined with a touch of natural shyness meant that I was just like, "My name is Renée. I live with Corinne and Philippe. I'm from Massachusetts." The end. I hope they know that it's not for lack of sentiment that I wasn't gushier, but lack of vocabulary.

At any rate, I stayed up until almost 1 in the morning finishing the reading I'd put off (and cursing Past Me for having done so). This morning I woke up at 8, started class at 9:15, and apart from an hour-long lunch break at 11 (during which I schlepped all the way over to Place Bellecour to take care of spring break travel stuff at SNCF), didn't leave the university until 15:45. That's a loooooong day, let me tell you. Luckily, Tuesdays are the longest day of the week, so it's all easier from here on out. And then on Saturday morning I'm flying with Rachelle to ROME for SPRING BREAK!

Our original plans had been to take the train to Milan on Saturday, but fate had to mess with things: there was no cheap (or even remotely inexpensive) lodging available in Milan that night, and traveling on to another town was out of the question since our train would arrive in the evening anyway. We finally decided to fly to Rome instead. We booked the flight this weekend and exchanged our tickets today for tickets back from Milan (to Chambery, where we'll spend Saturday night before traveling back to Lyon on Sunday). Our travel plans are subject to change, but right now we're looking at this: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in Rome (our flight leaves Lyon around 7 am and gets to Rome around 8, so we have pretty much an entire day there), Tuesday maybe at a beach (it's supposed to rain on Tuesday, OF COURSE. So these plans are, as I said, changeable.) Wednesday, heading up to Florence. Taking a side trip to Venice at some point, and probably seeing the Lakes District before getting to Milan on Saturday for the train back. It's a lot of stuff and we probably won't have time to do it all, but I guess I'd rather have lots of things to choose from than travel to a boring place. (Although, is there really such a thing in Europe?)

I am a little bummed that I won't be making it to Santorini while I'm in Europe, though. The prices of flights after this week skyrocket, so money-wise I just don't think it's doable. =( I'll see Santorini someday, though. I WILL.

In other travel news, Laura has proposed and researched a trip to Bordeaux at the end of May. It sounds like a lot of fun, and it will be easy on the wallet, too - the round-trip flight, accommodations, and wine tour only total about 160 € (just under $220 US). I mean, that's really not bad at all.

I still need to figure out what to do for the four-day weekend in May (yay, Ascension!). Anyone have ideas/suggestions/requests that I visit a specific place as you attempt to live vicariously through me?

Which brings me to the blog-related demand of the title. Comment! One of the main reasons I keep this blog is to keep in touch with everyone, and it's no use keeping in touch with you guys if I don't even know you're reading it. It's like writing letters and never sending them.

So, yeah. Start sending! =)

Time to eat the chocolate rabbit Mareike gave me for Easter. It's been staring at me all afternoon.

Man, I'm gonna get FAAATTTTTT...