Maladroite: Lyon, Lion, Grrrrrr

or, "Why a spontaneous idea is ~~sometimes~~ always the best idea."

Voila! Here I am on a train again.. thus, I am writing a blog entry. Never mind the fact that I spend most of my evenings sitting alone in my room, mindlessly browsing the great void which is the internetz, I seem to only feel motivated to begin to blog once I am on a train. I suppose a lot has happened since my last blog – I left my poor readers (my sister) after my return from Germany with no hopes for the near future but to lay on the floor in my room and writhe in pain until school started up again a week later.

Luckily, that is not how my vacation ended.

It did take a couple of days lying around (on the floor), doing absolutely nothing – except walking to the post office to pick up my magical internet box – for the cruciatus curse to lift enough for me to start functioning like a some-what normal person. So Friday night I decided to be all spontaneous and spend a day – or weekend – whatever, in Lyon. I faintly remembered seeing someone post something in the facebook group for Grenoble assistants about spending time in Lyon, so I stalked it and found out that it was (yay!) someone I knew. So I messaged Mia, found out their plans, and invited myself along. I immediately booked a hostel, crossed my fingers hoping it was the same on that they were at, and found a train to Lyon the next day.

Best decision everrrrr.

I don't really know what to write about my trip to Lyon – it was a weekend pretty much full of pure awesome, thanks to the amazing people that I met up with: Mia, Cheslie, Genista, Lauren, and Christian. Chelsie is was one would call a “Trini” (from Trinidad) and she had “met” Christian, who lives in Lyon, through a facebook group for Trinis in France. This is quite a testament to how we meet people in this modern age. Christian agreed to show us around Lyon for the couple days that we were there.

Being in Lyon made me remember why I wanted to come to France in the first place. Needless to say, I am quite envious of people who get to spend their assistantships in large cities like Lyon or Paris or even Grenoble. Somewhere... interesting, lively, and very French. That's not so say that LTDP isn't French, but let's just say that it's not anywhere that someone would travel to for a fun time in France.

This blog entry is already too long, I know, to capture anyone's attention... so a list! Yay!

Fantastic happenings in Lyon, France:

Musee Beaux-Arts
- typical French museum, from what I can judge of French museums. But it also had a more modern exhibit, which I liked to call the “WTF?!?! Exhibit,” as that was the general sentiment that the pieces of “art” evoked. There was all sorts of weird things in it... my favorite had to be the life-size army of people made from whole eggshells and plastic vegetables painted in red splatters. It was symbolic of... something.
Going “out-out”
- When you go out in a big city, you have to make the decision whether you are going to go “out,” which means coming home on the last metro around 1am, or if you are going to go “out-out,” and wait until the morning metro, which usually runs sometime around 5am. We did the latter, clearly, but forgot that it was daylight savings. Normally it would be all “Hooray, and extra hour of partying, let's go crazy!” but it ended up being more like “Holy crap, we are tired... we are not making it a full hour.” So we walked home. And I taught everyone the “Alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic” song from camp.
Riding bikes through the Parc la Tete d'Or
- This was all that Genista wanted to do the entire weekend. The moment that she saw thos shiny silver and red bycicles, it was all she ever talked about. So she bribed me to come along with her while the other girls were on a paddle boat, and I was very glad that she did. The park was huge and beautiful and I wish that we could have spent more time there (and gone to the zoo!), but I guess it just gives me something to explore more when I go back.
Being a tourist
- We were able to act the tourist most of the time that we were there. So we rode the metro (and funiculaire!) around and saw churches and ancient ruins and went shopping and whatnot. We were being rather obvious Americans/English/Trinis. Sometimes it's fun :o)
Meeting new people.
- We met people at the hostel. We met people at a dinner Christian invited us to. We met people going out. A couple times we just took some time and went down by the river bank, and there were always interesting people milling about. On one side of the bank was a sort of a skate park, so people were practicing their moves, and other people were just hanging out and jamming on guitars and singing and such. We met a few of them, and they were not shy at all about sharing their life stories, sharing a song, or smoking a cigarette with us (no, I haven't taken up smoking).