Well, the internet's broken in the accommodation AGAIN, the other day it took me 15 mins to get to one page, then the connection broke, I had to connect again, and then waited another 15 mins to get to another page. GOD! So I'm sitting in McDo, writing this over a big orange juice, bacon and egg mcmuffin (nothing like proper bacon!) and a 20cl 'big' coffee. Black, because I forgot to ask for cafe au lait. How do the french go into a cafe and nurse an espresso for half an hour? Oh, I guess they smoke too... We've decided that's why they're all so thin, they smoke their hunger away, now that people are smoking a bit less, appetite surpressors and diet pills are taking up large sections in the pharmacies. There are loads of 'wiggas' here aswell, a word I've only just learned. If you know of Tim Westwood, he's the worst, a white guy who thinks he's a black 'gangsta' It's cringeworthy!
I finally had my first medieval history lesson on wednesday, and me and Louise had to leave halfway through it! The lecturer was incomprehensible, it was as bad as if we'd had a drunk scotsman who'd smoked 20 a day since he was 12 and was in the process of falling asleep in a lecture in england! I don't think even the french could understand him, but too bad for them, they can't change! Me and Louise are doing English translation now. Apparently really difficult, but it should really improve my French. I'm not sure much else I'm doing will be as good for me! We're going to be in the same class so we can help each other out. We're meeting today to figure out our timetables.
I've been aching ever since I did the stupid fame dancing the other day, but luckily it's stopped so I'm going to active dance later on, which I'll hopefully enjoy. I'm going to try 'tir' (shooting) next week, which is apparently both with pistols and bows and arrows. I couldn't be happier about it! I got really lucky with my FLE (francais langue etranger) teacher, she's fabulous! Slightly eccentric, with glasses right on the tip of her nose, saying "attention, mademoiselles" after nearly every sentence when there is a tricky grammatical thing.
Me and Louise met a really cool girl the other day who works in bar de la republique, which is apparently mostly populated by the erasmus students of Lyon. I'm so glad I didn't go to paris, everyone here (or at least everyone who isn't a menopausal french woman!) is really friendly! We talked to her for ages, and she was saying how se learned english and loved how easy it was compared to french (half the tenses are missing, there are exceptions to the rule but they always have easy ways to remember, i before e except after c...) she said that if she wasn't french, she would never have learned it!
Went out on tuesday and wednesday, tues we went to the aussie bar called l'ayers rock, or 'layers rock', a cause for much amusement for anglophones! Great fun, but music was a bit rubbish. Cocktails were 4 euros cos it was student night, and we could tell who was english in the bar by seeing who had the pints! Claire got herself a pint, while her housemate had a half, it was really funny. If you ever see an australian bar in france, though, its really fun and well worth a look inside. They know how to chuck around the bottles in an impressive way and I've never seen anything like that in England (oh no, health and safety!) Everywhere seems to have a pretty relaxed vibe here, too. Maybe it's the weather, yesterday it was 24 degrees and apparently will be the same this afternoon. I'm hoping to find a nice swimming pool or sporting activity to do on a sunday, maybe the ice rink will be open, hopefully the climbing wall will be open, even if I have to pay for it. There's a pool just up the road, but according to Cordula its quite expensive, 2,50 euros or something. How cheap is everything in Germany? 148 euros is expensive for accomodation and a smaller room according to her! Maybe I learned the wrong language...no. The 90's grunge look is very much 'in' over there and I couldn't handle the precision and order! I'm not a stepford wife! Plus they don't have the cote d'azur, decent wine (I got a not bad bottle of rose for 1,95 euros the other day), the carmargue, tha alps...yeah, I'm glad I'm learning french! I had one of those wierd almost out-of-the-body moments of clarity yesterday, I was talking to cordula, just a basic normal conversation, when it dawned on me that a lot of people wouldn't understand what we were saying. If Jess or Jen was there, they might catch the odd word, but they wouldn't understand the conversation. I realised how lucky I was to get to this level and was very pleased with myself. As a by-note, lots of french students are having mcflurrys. At 10 in the morning. Respect! Have to do that myself next time!
I'm trying to finish the Niel Gaiman book I got the other day, it's a kids book, but you can do that in a foreign language! If you read, I don't know...just any kids book in english, you're a bit wierd or slow or something, but in FRENCH! You're amazing, you can read whole books in a foreign language! Instant genius! I want to get onto a different book though, it turns out me and Chris bought exactly the same book for basically the same reasons (it had a nice cover and is very slim!) and I want to read that, it's a lot smaller than the Gaiman book and so I can pop it in my bag without being weighted down and take it to the park or something.
There's either a strike or repairs on the whole transportation system here (so I think it's strikes) which was yesterday and today, and god knows how much longer. It's very annoying, I wanted to go exploring yesterday but was aching too much to walk too far, and couldn't go many places cos nearly everything had stopped running by the afternoon!
We've got a french culture class which we'll probably just spend on strike (just participating in french culture, strikes are what france was built on!...Which is probably why nothing works that well and is so disorganised.) Hopefully the internet will 'work' (as well as it ever does) in my residnece so I won't have to lug my laptop around everywhere! There's a restaurant with wifi opposite, but it's kind of expensive, so I'll just be going to mac do till it works in my room again!