Finally, I have access to a computer with internet! Unfortunately, all the keys seem to be in different places. I strongly considered just typing as I normally would (qs I nor,qlly zould) and let you all decipher what I was saying, but I decided that it would be better to practice this, in case I have to write a paper. Please excuse any typos I make.
So, France is great so far. I arrived in Lyon Friday night. I thought that there would be food provided, but they must have decided to let us fend for ourselves. So, we went to Quick (burger). That was the cheapest place we could find, apart from McDonalds. I knew it was more expensive here, but I hadn't quite appreciated how expensive it was. My meal at Quick was almost 7 € (~ten dollars). One of the people working here told us that after a month or two, 15 € (twenty dollars) would seem like a great price for a meal.
On Saturday, my host family picked me up and took me to their house. It looked small from the outside, but it's three stories tall, and has a great back yard, complete with a well, grape vines, playground, garden, and swimming pool. My family is all very nice. I've spent a lot of time watching cartoons or reading with the kids (Anastasia, or Lulu, 7, and Alexandre, 5). I've seen two Christmas specials already. Alexandre has a Santa hat too, and Anastastia has a Santa teddy bear. Maybe they just celebrate Christmas in August in their family. The dog (Artus) is also nice, but the cat (Bianca) would have clawed my eyes out by now if it wasn't declawed.
For food, we haven't had anything really bizarre so far. The strangest things have been deviled avocado (with tuna) and tomato salad. They also made this really rich chicken squash casserole, which is the only thing so far I haven't been able to finish. They generally have fruit and cheese for dessert. Surprisingly, they haven't served much wine, although some of the other students in the program have apparently been given it nonstop. They smoke a little, but it's not too bad. One of the first things I did when I arrived was help Christian (dad) cut vegetables. I also helped them move furniture in though my (second story) window.
They already took me to the bus station to get a month pass for the Metro, tramway and buses. I didn't realize how much work that takes (e.g. a letter proving address) until afterwards, because Anita (mom) took care of everything while I was keeping the kids under control. She also took me to the Basilique, which is extremely impressive. It's full of all kinds of statues and murals.
Classes are going well so far. We've been divided into two groups of nine (and, amazingly, I know all their names). I haven't figured out the class schedule exactly. We've got an hour and a half lunch break, and three classes (two before, one after) but the teachers keep switching around. I'm basically taking it day by day. We got our first homework assignment tonight, plus we're supposed to watch a movie that's on, which pretty much killed all the plans we were making of getting together to do something.
The only real other news is that I caused a power outage in their house. My dad gave me a transformer, but it didn't fit in the socket because there's an extra pole in the way (for grounding). I wanted to listen to my CD player, and I figured that since that had one of the big plugs, there was already a transformer built in, right? Um, wrong. Apparently, it was a transformer, but it tranformed from the US frequency to a lower one, while the French frequency is already higher. I figured all this out while hunting for a flashlight and listening to the shouts of the kids upstairs (Maman? Qu'est-ce qui est passè?). Later I found an outlet in my room that works with the transformer my dad gave me, but the CD power cord is shot, so basically I'm reduced to battery power. Luckily, I brought my recharger. I did have an added bit of difficulty getting it working, because it's designed to be vertical to the outlet, not hor! izontal, so it wouldn't stay in the outlet. Initially I used paper towels to rest it on, but it occurred to me that plugging in two twenty year old electrical devices (the converter and transformer) to an outlet with loose wiring, then plugging into that a recharger that reaches high temperatures, adding batteries that can explode in contact to high temperatures or a short circuit, then resting all of that onto a stack of rolled up kindling, might not be a wise thing to do in someone else's house.
Oh, my flight was great. I didn't sleep at all of course, but there were tvs in every seatback, so I could pick which movie or tv I wanted to watch (Mission Impossible, anyone? McGyver?) There were also games (solitaire, othello, pong, etc). Plus all the people in the group were sitting together, so we could practice our French. For our dinner, we had smoked salmon salad, a choice of veal or ravioli, cheese, fruit, bread, chocolate cake, a choice of red or white wine, etc. you know: the usual.
More later. For now, I'm tired of hunting and pecking on this keyboard.
Au revoir!
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