La saison de Noel

So just like in the States it is a month ebfore Christmas and everywhere has begun their decorations and stores begin their attempts to get you to buy buy buy. But I revel in the splendor of it all because I love Christmas lights and decorations, I just wish it didn't make me feel liek Christmas is closer than it is.

Basketball and a Thanksgiving Dinner

Well this weekend I planned on just relaxing but then plans sprung up out of nowhere. I went to a basketball game on Friday because Lauren is friends with a few of the players who are American. It was interesting seeing the differences between games here and in the US. For being a stadium for the city it was hard to find, small, and only 5euros. Then at halftime they gave out free Beaujolais wine and as if they stereotype couldn't get worse there was a man playing an accordeon into speakers! I also got an autograph from one of teh soccer players and Kirsty and Heather were way excited not only because it was their first bball game but they got to wave flags to distract the opposing team during free throws, which they believed was unfair.
Then Saturday and Sunday I went to the Biennale Internationale du Design, which was an amazing design festival held in the now vacant arms factory. There was everythign from fashion shows to cars to crazy furniture. My favorite was "Batiment i" which made you think about how you want your world to be as far as genetically modified foods and video surveillance. I really love my city as far as having things to do and the fact that such a diverse randge of people would come out to this Biennale.
Saturday night was a Thanksgiving dinner with the American assistants, their boyfriends, and Roisin, so about 13 people total. It was wonderful to relax and talk and eat exactly what I would have ate with my family on Thanksgiving (instead of the panini I had here). So overall it was a great weekend, ending on an even higher note when I went with my Italian and German friends to Ferminy to watch a fireworks show and parade for the opening of this modern Catholic church which looks like a boat.

Exhausted

I started coming down with a cold or something the day after Amy got to Lyon, on Thursday, and the eventful weekend just worsened my sickness to where now I can barely breathe and I stopped at least ten times on my walk home to take a break. It may be part asthma but my inhaler doesn't help and I can't sleep at night because I hear my wheezing and then cough incessantly. But the weekend was still a good time, walking around Lyon with Amy to the Louis Vuitton store and then eating salads at a café, then going to my medical visit for my green card. Then Thursday she came to my classes and saw how its like pulling teeth to get them to talk, then we ate at the cafeteria and then saw my city before going to the Beaujolias Nouveau wine party at the Chantier. It turns out among the ten of us we split twelve bottles of wine while eating the meat and cheese that cam with it, needless to say I didn't feel well the next morning and Amy slept instead of coming to class with me. That night we went to the movies to see "Indigenes," a movie about the Senegalese and Moroccan people who fought against the Nazis for France in WWII. I just whispered a translation every once in a while to Amy, and it was a really good movie. Then we went to my friends Anne and Gilla's house who lived right there and they cooked us tartiflette and they drank so much that when we went to some random punk concert after they were falling all over me to where it was annoying. The next morning we took the train with John to Lyon and walked around the old part of the city and watched a 500yr old clock chime and then had lunch specific to the region (Lyon supposedly has the best food in all of France) and then we took a ski lift thingy up to the church on the hill called Fourvière and it was the most inticate church I've ever seen. After that it was off to where John lives in Bourg-en-Bresse, 45min North of Lyon where I went out with the assistants there to a club called Le Cap Horn and danced to the weirdest compilation of music until 3 am. It was alot of fun but random old ladies were going on the stage wanting to strip. So you can see now why I am exhausted.

Oh la l'aventure!

I decided to go on the trip with Les Barricades to meet with les Sans-Noms, the choir of Nancy to sing in a concert knowing that it would lead me to an adventure...I mean how often do you get to go on a coach bus with a revolutionary choir to stay with members of another revolutionary choir. So I dragged Heather along with me so that I wasn't the only one wondering how to say "random" in French. We had a great time but it was interesting being with adults who party more than I do, drinking the whole bus ride to Nancy (les cadeaux!) and tehn arriving at 2am and still wanting to go out to the pub! The pub was packed even after 3am and it was so smoky it was like walking into a cloud, one with blaring music where you can't talk to the person next to you or tell the creepy man who says you need a necklace to go away. The next morning was our concert and to Heather and I's relief we were able to use the lyrics, but I still got nervous when I noticed the French radio reporter's microphone being held next to me as I sang! And then she asked to interview me after the concert. I advised her to ask other more informed members. I then found a love for hot red wine (they add cinnamon and sugar) and then it was off to the train station where it turns out was a manifestation against nuclear energy, because a train with nuclear waste was going to be coming through the station. So we stood there for a while watching a man in a nucelar energy outfit and scream mask put on a show for the news cameras, and then we went with the others for a potluck lunch...and it turns out the French think I'm a gourmande, I can't help that the food is so good here. After going through some of the songs while people raised fists and for some reason one lady started putting up her middle finger, we went to a café across the street from the cathedral with our new French friends where we exchanged tongue twisters and played babyfoot (foosball). By the time we left Chloé, Gilla, and Anne were bourrées (wasted) and they still wanted to drink before the second concert so we met up with someone named Barbara and shared a bottle of wine before singing again under the beautiful archway of the Place Stanislas and having more hot wine. I then was asked a million questions about American politics, its odd realizing you are the only way these people hear these ideas since their reporting only shows that everyone sides with Bush. And then it was to the MJC (a community center) for some chili, more wine, Mirabelle which is extremely stong liquor of the region and made everyone keep repeating oh la la to me- a joke that still didn't cease to end the next morning, and then some dancing. The bus ride home was still even more adventure as we got locked out of the bus for a while since the driver went to load bags underneath and the door shut on him with the bus running! So after someone clinbed through a hole in the side of the bus, more like was pushed through the tiny hole, we were able to get in and then the Nancy choir sang and danced their goodbyes...literally. And then I thought it would be a nice calm ride home since everyone was exhausted, but they kept getting on the mic and talking and singing, even while a movie was on. So in the end when I got home a bit after 9 I was ready for bed and put off lesson planning till the next day.