french overload! :3

After a lot of emails between the director of the international programs at Lyon 3, the university I’m studying at this semester, things were finally figured out! And I am officially enrolled in my orientation – a two-week crash course on French law, history of France, and France as a foreign language.

Because of some mishaps with the French administration… (I’d been warned…), I’d missed the first whole day of orientation, Monday, and most of the second day of orientation, Tuesday. After waiting in line for a very long time, I was told to go wait in the courtyard of the school until my group was called for the tour bus of Lyon. After getting on the bus with other people in the ‘droits’ (law) orientation, we went on a three-hour tour of Lyon, which was 80% what I had already seen on my other ventures into the city. But it was still pretty fun, and I met some people in my orientation from other countries.

the opera house

hôtel de ville - city hall

fountain in place terreaux outside the hôtel de ville. it's supposed to be a metaphor
 lady at the top = the republic
kids by her side = french people
four horses = four rivers of france
i guess it means the republic controls everything? at least from what i understood..

A tower inside the courtyard of a traboule

'le sud' restaurant (the south)
background! paul bocuse is the most famous chef in france, a meal at his restaurant outside of lyon costs at least 2000€ a meal, not including the wine! so, he opened four restaurants in four corners of lyon, which are called 'north,' 'south,' 'east,' and 'west' in french. these restaurants that specialize in four different areas of french cuisine and which are much more affordable than his ridiculously expensive restaurant! 

The next day was the first day I actually got to go to class! For about 2 hours, we sat through a class where we learned about French legal language, after which we had lunch. After lunch, we had two hours of French as a foreign language with a very French professor. Then, we went to a classroom where we sat for about two hours, listening to the organization of classes, how to choose them, etc. – all in French. I feel like I can understand 70-80% of all of it, but miss a lot of the important stuff... good thing I have other people around :P

lunch - salade lyonnaise 

the very french teacher hehe

In addition to this overload of French, the campus is very confusing at times too! It looks very simple and small because it’s just a rectangular campus with two buildings in the middle that separate the campus into two little outdoor squares. But so far, all of our classes have been on the very top floor of the building, which is only a ring around the campus. The very first time I went to class, I took the wrong stairs and walked all the way from one corner of the campus to the other corner. It may not sound difficult, but the numbers make it more difficult and there’s only one way to get there, following the winding corridors where the room 316 is before 301 which is before 330. Anyway, it’s just confusing…

my campus! building on the right = library - one of the two buildings in the middle of the campus

another view of part of the library with the passageway on the right leading to the other little square

this tree is in the way of my pic..

So far, there are only international students on campus for orientation. The French students won’t arrive for another two weeks or so. But I got to meet a lot of awesome people from different countries – England, Scotland, Australia, Hungary, Finland, Germany, etc. It may be a bad thing that we keep speaking English to each other, but it’s definitely nice to have a break from listening to French for hours!

new friends :)

and more friends :)

and more! :D

After classes were over, I met one of the other guys in my class who was from Taiwan. He was really nice, but very distraught. He chose to come to France because he wanted an easy year this year to travel and have fun, but didn’t realize how difficult it would be until the lady started speaking to us about the choice of classes. And because his French and his English weren’t that great, I think it was more difficult for him to meet people – good thing we had Chinese in common!

That night, we had a mixer or as they called it, an aperitif for the international students. We all went to an Irish pub right next to our school and hung out. It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with other people in our classes in a different setting and to meet new people. This is definitely shaping up to be an awesome year, or at least semester so far! :D

at the mixer!

***And just cause.. last night there was a thunderstorm, with very little rain - just lots of thunder and lightning (very, very frightening.. galileo, galileo.. *for graciepoo). These pics were taken as I was walking, hence the blurriness... just trying to take a picture of the lightning, which you can kind of see in the second picture (first, is normal; second, is lightning)

If you've read this far.. thank you ;) Time to do something...not computer related :)