Last days in Lyon

Yes, I realize I've been a bad blog owner and kept you waiting. I've been trying to work on this for a while but I keep getting verklempt and I've only just attained the emotional stability to look at these pictures again. Maybe. Let's see if I can get through this without crying.

The morning of July 18th. The nearest wall is that of my university, Université Lumière Lyon II. Kinda gives an overall feeling of the day.

 That day, all our classes had various presentations to give, so we all gathered in a big auditorium for some of those, and then others were on display in classrooms. The atmosphere was both jubilant and wistful. Like we'd all accomplished something great and were joyful to have met so many great people from across the globe, but we were all sad we had to part ways.

Me and Ross. I give him a lot of credit in helping me survive Lyon. People thought we were a pair of loons, but we are so much alike we really didn't care what people thought. I can't reiterate enough what an outstanding person Ross is.

There was a class that, from my understanding, played a lot of games in French, and at the end they sat out and explained to us how to play them. I got to play Taboo in French, which was even more fun than the original because it's more challenging to try to explain something in a language that isn't your mother tongue.

From the left: Marta from Barcelona, Clara from Madrid, Hilary from the States, and Diane from Lyon (She was a TA). The theater class put on some pretty hysterical skits. This one was a bunch of people in a doctor's office with different stuff wrong with them. Diane was really funny. She was supposed to be this old lady and her facial expressions were perfect and she kept talking about being able to "faire pipi" which made everybody laugh every time she said it. Which was about 37 times. Just proof that bathroom jokes really are funny even after kindergarten.

Same skit. The girl standing is Maha from Iraq (I didn't get to meet the other one as I wasn't in this class). Maha was in one of my other classes and she is absolutely brilliant. She's a gynecologist and she's only been taking French for about five months, but her French is amazing. She helped me out a lot in L'animal dans la ville, our class about the status and significance of animals in Lyon. We had to come up with decent questions to ask a veterinarian about the animals in the zoo, and she busted out some serious medical knowledge.

The protest. Another class actually arranged a protest as part of their presentation. Right after the skits, we started hearing banging and shouts of "Manifestation!" (Protest!) from outside, and we all just ran outside to see what was going on. They'd made all manner of signs and stuff and they'd written up a really long chant about all the stuff they were protesting. It was mostly about the fact that half the University closed down a few weeks into the program (including the cafeteria and most of the restrooms). Nous voulons manger! Nous voulons pisser! Nous voulons boire un café!

Another hot issue was the dormitory I happened to be unlucky enough to live in for a month, la Résidence Jussieu. Oh boy. They overcharged us for substandard housing (we had to share a bathroom including puddle-ridden, non-working showers with a bunch of guys! And we had no fridges!) and then moved us to another building in the complex for seemingly no reason. Then they demanded we pay them 56 more euro for moving. And even then, the internet barely worked, the power went out a lot, and my fridge was non-functional, and it was in a bad area about half an hour away from school so it was kind of a hassle, especially if you wanted any kind of food. Ever. A pox upon Jussieu.

Annie, one of the girls from Arizona. Complete and total sweetheart. Always had a kind word to say to everyone. She was homeschooled too so we had something to yack about. The Arizona kids kind of took me in and took care of me, especially over the 4th of July when I was a total emotional wreck and I really appreciate them. Good, good people.

 After the presentations, we all had lunch together inside this massive hall because it was raining. And everybody just sort of went crazy. We were trying so hard to pretend this wasn't goodbye, I guess. But we were all laughing and hugging and crying and picking each other up and stuff. It was really emotional.

From the left: Ashley from Arizona and Ariana from Arkansas (Well, actually she's from Georgia but she goes to school in Arkansas). Ashley is a vegetarian, plays the clarinet and has about a million different pirate shirts and has some serious hair-doing talents. Ariana is really brave and speaks her mind and wears whatever the heck she wants in spite of whatever anyone says. She also went straight to India from France for another study abroad program. I have a lot of respect for her.

More Ashley and Ariana. I think this picture captures at least part of the feeling of the day.

After Ashley and Ariana picked me up, Ross felt left out so he had to pick me up too.

My Jussieu buddies, Elena from Italy (she's doing a Ph.D in art history so of course we get along) and the ever-gorgeous Marta.

See what I mean about Ashley's hair? She has talents.

Marta and Valen. I absolutely love these two.

After all the fanfare and to-do, we all stood around waiting for our certificates, and I was very disappointed in my final grade (15.8 out of 20). That is, until someone informed me that between 13 and 14 out of 20 is really good, and by French standards, this grade would receive high honors as the professor would only make a 17, and God himself would only make a 19. I'm satisfied.

My favorite corner in Lyon. From here, you can see the river and the University and the Gaulish chickens on the bridge and it's walking distance from pretty much anything you could ever want.

After leaving the University, some of the Jussieu girls randomly decided to cross the river and get some ice cream in Vieux Lyon.

I just had to get a picture of this menu (they had an English menu and a French one) to give y'all an idea of why people call Lyon the food capital of the world. They even had a tomato basil flavored ice cream.

This is only half of what they had. I ended up getting a white peach gelato, which just reminded me of Texas for some reason. It tasted like home.

Lyon is known for something they call "traboules." A traboule, (derived from the latin transambulare, or "to cross") is a passageway, first built probably in the 4th century in Lyon with the purpose of letting people easily get to the Saône river from their homes, and later for the silk merchants on the Croix-Rousse hill to get to the textile markets at the foot of the hill. In more recent times, the Lyonnais traboules have been credited with helping prevent the Germans from completely occupying the area during World War II by acting as secret passageways.

A plaza at the opening of a traboule. Many traboules also serve as entrances to residential buildings so many Lyonnais use them every day just to get home.

A sign outside a coffee shop in Vieux Lyon that I couldn't resist photographing.

The metro station in Vieux Lyon. It's very, very, very deep underground.

Guillotière. Probably the reason why I sound like I have schizophrenia when I talk about Lyon. See, I love Lyon. Absolutely love it. However, I hate Guillotière. It is full of the vilest, most evil and perverted men you could dream up. I stayed in a hotel there my first night in Lyon, and was harassed very terribly that day along with any other day I was unlucky enough to be there, which was every day because my tramway went through there just to get to school. There was also a metro station that I had to use a lot there.

Lyon is wonderful, but Guillotière is a sheltered bubble of pure evil, a negaverse full of nasty, often drunken perverts that hit on you for breathing and grope you with absolutely no provocation. I have gotten into three fistfights there because of such disgusting behavior, and I am proud to say I won them all.

That night, a bunch of us decided we couldn't stand to not see each other again so we met up at an Irish pub. But before we Jussieu folk left for Vieux Lyon, Marta knocked on my door with a bunch of makeup in hand and said "I'm gonna paint you" before essentially pinning me down and giving me a makeover. Now if you know me, you're probably aware that the last time I really wore makeup was at my wedding three years ago and I did that pretty grudgingly at the behest of my bridesmaids. So I felt super weird. But people seemed to like it, so it was okay.

Ashley and I at the Irish pub. We ordered in French and the bartender actually got annoyed with us because it's apparently a faux pas to speak anything but English in an Irish pub in France. But it all went nicely after that, lubricated with much Guinness and good conversation.

My room in Jussieu the next morning after I'd packed everything up.

The most uncomfortable chair in the whole world! I mostly used it to hold my laptop when I was shooting video updates.

My sweaty, nasty, rock-hard old bed!

A view of my building, Bâtiment D. Don't be fooled by the pretty trees. This place is ghetto.

More of Jussieu being misleadingly innocuous-looking.

One of the last things I did in Lyon was take Ross to the Rhônexpress, the tram that takes you to the airport. Then, not gonna lie, I totally cried a little in the train station.

Then it was time for my own sad departure. But where? I still hadn't bought a ticket. I needed to get to Paris by the evening of the 20th, but until then I was free to move about the country as I wished. So I whipped out my laptop in the train station and tried to choose. It was between Strasbourg and Caen, but Caen took less time and was a tad cheaper, so to Caen I went.

At Gare de la Part-Dieu in Lyon, waiting for the TGV. Did I ever tell you that they smoke like chimneys in Lyon? Like, I'd be sitting there, obviously not smoking because I don't smoke, and someone would try to bum a cigarette off me. Seriously? Does it look like I'm smoking? It doesn't bug me when other people smoke around me, but isn't it just polite to only try to bum a cigarette off of someone who is already smoking? Gosh. Jeez.

Yeah, all those little yellow dots are cigarettes.

Little preview of the next leg of my adventure, which I shall be posting soon.

Thanks for waiting so patiently for this. I just couldn't bring myself to post it, mainly because I just miss those people so much. There was a lot of survival-based interdependence on this trip which led to very deep-rooted and heartfelt friendships, so I hope you can understand. I don't usually make friends easily back home, so the unconditional loving kindness I experienced at the hands of many of these folk was something I found profoundly jarring and is probably what changed me most of all. I am stronger because of all the hell I've been through, but because of all the selflessness of the people around me, I am warmer and I have a whole lot more love in my heart. CIEF folk, if any of you are reading this, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Your compassion has helped me in ways I didn't even know it could.