I've had a few very hectic past couple of days, and I have finally just had a chance to sit down and reflect on my week thus far.
As I mentioned in my last post, I arrived in Lyon on Tuesday by train. Monday morning, my parents and I went to visit the house where I will be living during my stay here. To clarify, I'm not doing a "homestay", which is the type of housing in which you eat meals with a French family. Instead, I chose to look for my own housing and cook my own food. I sent out some emails to people EAP recommended, and I found an ideal situation living in a single room in a woman's house. Madame Aulen's house might be a little farther out from the main city center, but it's easily accessible by metro and tram, and it will be a nice, quiet change from the dorms at UCLA and from the temporary housing I am living in right now in Lyon.
I took a gamble in choosing to live at this house, since I had not seen pictures of the room or the neighborhood. I couldn't find out much about the place except for what I could glean off of (inaccurate) Google Maps. So I really am lucky that the house is enormous, well-kept, and that my room is pretty spacious for a single. Did I mention it's a single? I've been living in doubles for the past two years of college, so I'm pretty excited to have my own room.
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| The house in which I will be living this semester |
We met Madame Aulen, who was very patient with my French. Leaving her with two of my suitcases (I brought the third one to the temporary EAP housing), we went to explore la Ville de Lyon.
Our objective:Find les Halles de Lyon, one of the finest gastronomic gatherings in France, an inside market with gourmet restaurants and upscale delis and boulangeries.
Our plan of attack: Take the metro to Gare Part-Dieu and fine les Halles using a map.
I'm not sure where this plan went wrong. All I know is that we ended up circling the block of the Tower housing the Radisson hotel- for an hour. Finally, after asking 3 different people for directions, using directionally-challenged me as a sketchy translation guide, we discovered that les Halles was on the next block over. Exhausted and famished, we found the promised land.
We were well rewarded for our determination, with a delicious North African lunch. I had couscous and tagine chicken.
After lunch, we headed to the Textile and Decorative Arts Museums, to see some cool exhibits on the history of Textiles and clothing. Lyon used to be the silk capital of the world, weaving textiles from silk brought all the way from China on the Silk Road. It was pretty cool to see the extraordinarily intricate designs that weavers of different nations and cultures made with looms without using electricity. There was also a cool exhibit on the Textile Portrait and how weaving color textiles based on black and white photographs actually served as a form of color photography before color photography existed.
That night, we dined at an excellent Lyonnais restaurant , Chez M'man. What's great in France is that nearly all of the restaurants have the option of "the menu," which is a fixed price meal. (Weirdly enough, even though in American restaurants we use the French term "prix fixe", they do not call it that). My favorite part of the meal was definitely the dessert. I had a Praline Tart, which is a famous Lyonnais dessert. It's sweet, nutty, and extremely delicious.
Yesterday, before my parents dropped me off at the EAP Orientation, we walked around Lyon some more. We saw the University Lyon 2's main campus, where I may be having some of my classes this semester, Place Carnot, and Place Bellecour. While we were walking back to the hotel, a sudden rainstorm decided to besiege us. I had actually packed my umbrella in one of the suitcases I left with Madame Aulen, which was unfortunate. I don't move into her house until Saturday, so I have to cope until then.
My parents dropped me off at CISL, Centre Internationale de Séjour a Lyon, where the EAP Orientation is being held. I said goodbye to them, and began a new adventure.
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| Swans along the Rhône River |
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