Warning: this is a long one, sorry! It has been a while.
My first couple of weeks in Lyon passed in a crazy blur of administration: enrolment and orientation at Lyon 2 Lumière uni, working out subjects, moving into my uni residence, opening a bank account, getting no less than three different sorts of insurance, getting a public transport card and setting myself up for living out of home. Mum left after a couple of days here helping me settle in, to connect with her flight back to Oz.
I’ve now had 6 weeks of class, a week of hols, and another 3 weeks of class. We’ve got 3 weeks of class left, one week of assessment, one of hols and then I’m home! It’s not long now, which is exciting and scary.
My French is improving dramatically, especially having to speak it at home. I’m living at a uni residence called Andre Allix, in a Unité de Vie. 6 of us share an apartment, with communal toilets and showers and a kitchen, and each of us has our own bedroom. Better than sharing kitchen etc with an entire floor, and better than living on my own. We have a lovely Romanian girl called Cristina, a French guy Fares, a French girl Laure and an American girl Katie. We get on quite well and it’s interesting (in two senses) to have multiple cultures and languages. Having my own independence has been liberating and a great learning experience, as well as a bit tiring. My uni subjects have been great: French language, contemporary French literature and culture, Middle Age and Renaissance French literature, African history and history of Lyon. But to be honest, uni has played a minor role in my time here – we’re only just beginning to realise that we should actually do some work now. For me, the most important and exciting part of living here has been getting to know people and experiencing the culture here (including the bad parts).
It’s been great to see Meg and Jonathan and Ruth. There are also lots of Aussies studying here in Lyon, with most of us hailing from Melbourne. There are about 10 of us Aussies living in the same building at our res, so I’ve got a built-in group. I got to know these guys early on at a Saturday night exchangie picnic on the banks of the Rhone. Then I’ve got classes with other people from Oz. And I’ve met some great Aussies at church and GBU, the Christian group here. It’s been great getting to know these guys, and having a slice of home here. One of the girls used the word ‘chockers’ the other day, which made me laugh. I’ve also gotten to know some exchangies from other countries: England, Switzerland, Jordan and China. Getting to know Frenchies is hard, especially in class. Us Aussies congratulate each other when we manage to have a conversation with one of them! Although I’ve spoken to a couple of girls in class, and they’ve been really lovely and helpful! Church and GBU have been very different experiences to Australia (of course), which has made me appreciate CU and unichurch. But I’m starting to get to know people here too, and am loving my current church. We had an awesome GBU weekend away with people from GBUs in the Rhone-Alpes region, where I got to know more great Frenchies.
In terms of cultural things, I’ve managed to pack lots into the last 11 weeks. And when I say culture, I don’t necessarily mean exclusively French culture… Early on, Mum and I visited Fourvière, the cathedral here, and I went on two tours of Lyon, so I’ve seen all the touristy stuff. I’ve wandered a few times through Vieux Lyon, the old part of the city. We’ve experienced one longer public transport strike as well as a couple of one-day ones. The long one went for two weeks, which wasn’t as bad as the 90 days they were threatening. Thankfully during the strikes they don’t stop everything, although buses to our residence would run every 30-45 mins. And the tram out to our suburban campus ended at 7pm, so we’d only have half an hour of my 6-8pm class before we all went to catch the last tram back into the city! Early on, Meg put on a raclette lunch for a bunch of us Aussies, which was fun and yummy! I’ve had various dinners at the res with us Aussies, and at Lis’ place, a Melburnian Christian. And dinners out: with Claudia, and then me and another Aussie girl and two French girls (us Aussies spoke French and the Frenchies spoke English, good practice all round!). Lis put on a dessert soiree, where we had 3 courses of dessert! And at an exchange party I unknowingly ate frog! It was only afterwards that we saw the sign saying what it was. I had thought it tasted a bit weird, but it wasn’t too bad. I’ve been out for lunch and dinner with various groups of Aussies at bouchons, traditional Lyonnais restaurants. Lis, Claudia and I went out for dinner at a Paul Bocuse brasserie (well-known Lyonnais chef) to celebrate Claudia’s engagement. At home I’ve enjoyed regular baguettes, viennois (sweet baguettes), good French cheese and nutella. I’ve had lots of crepes and patisseries, including a macaroon, éclair, religieuse, and an ecstase (!). I’ve been to a couple of food markets, but have been a little disappointed by them – will have to try some other ones. I went for a walk around Parc de la Tête d’Or, a huge, beautiful park here. With GBU I saw Le Petit Nicolas, a very French film. Some of us Aussies went out to a jazz club called “Hot Club de Lyon”, which was excellent! Poppy and I went to a photo exhibition on Lyon. Lis and I went on a day trip to Chambery, an old town nearby, where we found a great market and patisseries. During the hols I went down to Marseille, Cannes and Nice with a couple of Chinese girls. It was good to get out of Lyon and into the warmth of the south, and to see these beautiful places. And I’ve managed to buy a few French things: boots, socks, PJs, a shirt, an umbrella…
There are a few frustrating things about France, that have played a big role in my time here. The bureaucracy has got to be one of the most frustrating things about this place – I’ve gotten used to simple things taking lots of time and multiple visits. They have crazy inefficient and complicated systems. And the French aren’t the hardest workers either – they often chat with their colleagues rather than doing their job – and everything closes for a couple of hours in the middle of the day and finishes for the day at about 4.30pm. I’ve become used to having to queue and wait a while for everything – I think coming back to Australia everything will seem very easy! We only got wifi access at our residence at the end of the first week of classes, after signing up a week earlier. And the net often doesn’t work. So communicating with family and Paul back in Melbourne has been another of the most frustrating things. Skype is blocked at my residence, so my anticipated main form of contact went out the window. For a while I skyped Paul on my laptop at uni or wifi cafes. Which became less feasible as cold autumn kicked in. I spent a long time and lots of frustration looking at other communication options, including paying 50euros/month, which I discovered didn’t support skype, just as I was about to buy it. I eventually found iChat to use with my family, and googletalk with Paul. It’s so good to be able to talk to them all regularly and from home! Us Melbourne uni people have come to love Alloc8 (a computer system that organises your timetable for you, which used to drive us nuts). Here at Lyon 2 you have to go to each faculty that you want to do subjects in, which are invariably on different campuses in different buildings depending on the year level it’s taught at, and get information about when and where the classes will happen from a noticeboard outside the office, which often changes. We had to get info for backup subjects too, to make sure everything worked with Lyon 2 and with Melb uni. I got stuck in the lift in our building a while back, which was mostly pretty funny. Less funny was, on getting out after not too long, being patronised by the lift repair guy asking me if I’d tried using the emergency call button in the lift – no, I saw that button and decided I wouldn’t use it: of course I tried every button in the lift! And I was patronised by a builder earlier that day, as I asked him what the heck he was doing making a ridiculous amount of noise at 8am in our apartment, especially when we didn’t know he was coming. The strike was quite a pain, but generally the public transport here is excellent!
So that’s one of the great things about Lyon: metros, trams and buses, which are widespread and frequent! And the metro’s beeping noise as the doors close sounds exactly like the start of the Kings of Leon song Closer – gets the song in my head every time I take the metro! I’m living in the west of Lyon, which (once I’ve gotten out of the dingy modern residence) is beautiful. We’re up a huge hill that has amazing views out over Lyon. On my way down to uni on Monday mornings I can see the sun rise over the city. I’m quite close to one of my uni campuses on the banks of the Rhône, on a scenic tree-lined boulevard. And on that positive note, that’s plenty for now.