A slew of Russian building exteriors and a few others:

At long last: From Russia, with love

Before I write anything, I feel that I need to apologize for the lack of update on the blog recently. I really let time get out from under me this past month. The good news is that time has flown because I feel so situated to life in Lyon, and I've had the chance to spend lots of time with friends on the weekends. I'm thankful to not have to spend much time in my room on the computer, but I'm very sorry for dropping off the face of the earth for a month! Obviously quite a lot has happened, and I'll try to give an update on all, but I need to start with my fabulous fall vacation to St. Petersburg, Russia.

I can't remember exactly why, but at some point years ago I decided that one of my trip priorities was St. Petersburg, Russia. While France isn't exactly close to Russia, the trip is much shorter from Lyon than it would be from the United States, so I jumped on the opportunity to spend the week of my fall break in Russia. I also know two guys from Ole Miss who are studying in St. Petersburg for the semester; since I can't even read the Cyrillic alphabet, I don't think I would have been able to get through the trip without some translation help. All this to say, all the stars aligned, and on October 28 I flew to Russia.

St. Petersburg is truly an amazing city. To say that there is a palace on every corner is not much of an exaggeration. The bright color of the buildings stands out against the bleak grey sky and is reflected off the icy water that runs through the canals and rivers that wind through the main part of the city. Stunning bridges arch over the dark water every few blocks to string together the roads of the highly impractical city. Peter the Great picked an impossible place to construct a capital for his empire; the land is so swampy and so riddled with rivers that when he demanded that the aristocracy move from Moscow to St. Petersburg, each family had to buy their way into the city with several tons of stone to be used for fortifying the land. Thousands of peasants died doing the impossible work of making the swamp that was the city's waterfront property strong enough to support the massive buildings that a lavish world capital requires. St. Petersburg was founded in impracticality, so it's only fitting that the appearance today remains extraordinary.

The gardens of St. Petersburg are supposed to be incredible in the summer, but my trip was too late in the year to see much vegetation. I personally really enjoyed seeing the city just beginning to cross over into winter. The late fall landscape was Russia as I had imagined; the black bare tree branches start against a colorless sky, the city itself falling into a subdued tone as the population braced for an icy winter. I can't exactly say how seeing the city made me understand better the tone and grandeur of Russian art, but somehow I can now better feel the anguish of Dostoyevsky's literature and better sense the drama of Tchikovsky's soaring melodic lines. The bleak overtone of the city seemed to beg a massive explosion of arts to bring the culture to life. The highlight of the week (and probably one of the highlights of my life) was seeing Swan Lake performed by the world's leading ballet company at the Mariinsky Theater. The performance of the ballerinas touched perfection, and the music from the full live orchestra blasted through the small theater. I realized part way through the second act that my mouth was gaping open and that I was trying not to blink.

Considering that I only really had four days in the city, I think I did very well with my sightseeing. I'm never one to short change a good museum, so I took out about eight hours to visit the Hermatige, the world's second largest arts museum that is housed in the Winter Palace of the tsars. I paid homage to the great Russian artists, musicians and writers in the cemetery where they are all buried. I stood in front of the desk where Dostoyevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov in his last apartment. I explored the lavish Yusopov Palace where Rasputin was assassinated. I journeyed out to Peter and Paul Fortress to see the tombs of all the tsars and their families. Head covered with a scarf, I wandered through most of the major orthodox cathedrals in the city. The iconography in the churches and gaudy gold and ruby red alters was really fascinating; the cathedrals were unlike anything I had ever seen. In several of them, I never could figure out exactly where the focal point of the church was. Every nook was crammed with a seemingly random series of objects.

There are a lot of things about Russia that I would describe simply with the word "random," in that the coherency of the city and culture lacks some sort of flow. St. Petersburg was a city of contrasts to say the least with the looming palaces and cathedrals still recovering from Soviet possession. The people were not friendly and didn't even seem remotely happy. The streets smell of vodka, which it literally cheaper than water. I decided that Russian people are just really dehydrated, and there's nothing about the rampant depression that a drinkable municipal water system couldn't fix. I myself got a bit unhappy after spending only four days with a very limited amount of liquid. Every single thing I ate had dill in it, which I thought was an odd choice of an herb to make so ubiquitous. I can't imagine how tired Russian people are of that taste. Breakfast at my hotel included such classic fare as broccoli in mayonnaise and picked herring. On another "random" note, I thought another cultural oddity is that no one likes to give change. There are around 32 roubles to a dollar, and I would have vendors tell me that they couldn't give me change equivalent to about ten dollars. Even more surprising, most of the tourist attractions couldn't change anything much larger than what would be about twenty dollars. I have no idea why the Russians are so hung up on exact change.

Being a foreigner in the city was interesting. I had no trouble with getting around, but my system was a bit odd. I had a really good map, and I just had to find everything in relation to where I had been before. I couldn't read any street signs and nothing was translated, so unless I was standing in front of a landmark, I couldn't find myself on a map. Luckily, St. Petersburg is littered with landmarks. On the rare occasion that I needed to find a particular street, I just had to stare and the sign and match the characters to the characters on my map. I felt a bit like a small child reducing all the words to a series of symbols that needed to be matched to each other. In Russia, prices on everything are ostensibly different for Russians and for foreigners. A museum ticket was three times more expensive for me than it would have been if I spoke Russian, and my audio guide in English was four times the price of the audio guide in Russian. I paid double for my ballet ticket and triple for admission into almost everything else. I have no pictures of the insides of buildings, because tourists have to buy special additional tickets to take indoor pictures. The interiors of everything I saw will simply have to live in my memory.

As I walked off the plane in Lyon on November 1, I really did have a good "coming home" feeling. Russia was a fantastic place to spend a week, but the culture was really quite different from any other culture I have ever seen. French culture actually is as well, but I've now spent a good several months getting acclimated to the habits of this people group, and I think I'm only capable of readjusting to one foreign culture per year. Anyway, I think around 2015 I'll try to go back to Russia to see the Nutcracker at the Mariinsky if anyone is interested.

The Wheels on the Bus . . .

In the absence of any earth-shattering news from France this week, I've decided to write a rather mundane post about an integral part of my daily life in Lyon. At least once a day, I march up the little hill in front of the Bardel's house to wait for the number 19 bus, which carries me to the center of the city every morning. Being the people-watcher that I am, the number 19 has become to me a fascinating microcosm of Lyon. I have a favorite seat halfway to the back beside one of the exit doors, from which I can clearly watch everyone getting on and off the bus for the 20 minutes that I spend riding from home to the metro.

Some of my favorite people to watch are the French teenagers, who all seem to have mastered a tortured and misunderstood aura. Clothes that drape and hang in such a way as to make the bodies under them look completely emaciated are a la mode for the girls, and I think every last one of the girls I see on the number 19 owns a leather jacket with a coordinating Burberry scarf. Nothing says I'm angry, but still wealthy and aware of class like a nice scarf thrown over a distressed leather coat, which only half conceals the long drapey shirt worn over skinny jeans that disappear into distressed mid-calf boots. The fact that most of them smoke only adds to the entire look; I would swear that some of the girls who sit puffing away at the bus stops can't be more than seventeen years old, but all stare off into the distance and take long drags off of cigarettes before crushing the smoldering filter under their incredibly fashionable boots.

The number 19 also boasts a very large contingency of older women who carry the air of France from years gone by. I rarely see any of them in pants, and though not all walk with the greatest of ease, most wear some sort of dress shoe. One woman who is particularly amusing to me wears an immense amount of makeup and never a smile. She often sits across from the aforementioned teenagers and eyes them with complete disgust, as if she can't believe what her beloved France is becoming. That's what I like to imagine, anyway.

There are a lot of characters that I won't fully explain here. There is the man who dresses very nicely and always stands without holding on to any support while he reads gigantic novels on the moving bus. There is the woman with the high collared blouses and broaches who sits across from me every Sunday on the way to church. There is the man and his friend who speak in sign language. There is the very thin woman with the pointed nose and the brown crocodile bag who gets very agitated when other people brush against her. There is the woman who is incapable of controlling her 3 year old identical twin boys.

There are of course the people who I try to avoid: some don't smell very nice, and one boy in particular really bothers me because he always eats candy on the bus and throws the trash on the ground. I just want to shake him and tell him that he just can't do whatever he pleases with his trash, because it's unpleasant for everyone else to ride on a dirty bus. Since he probably wouldn't understand my accented French, though, I just ignore him and sit far away when I spot him on the 19.

No summary of life on the bus would be complete without a brief description of my favorite driver. The man knows how to have a good time driving the bus. Not to be held back by silly things like strict timetables or the fact that some people have to stand on the bus, he barrels around corners and through the streets of Lyon at top speed, jostling all the passengers around. While most drivers keep the radio on at a very low volume, this particular man has on several occasions turned up the volume to full blast and started to SING loudly to what I assume are his favorite songs. I have noted that the fact that he obviously doesn't speak English doesn't stop him from at least trying to make the same sounds as Colby Caillat. On one memorable evening, he had the soccer game on and was yelling some choice words at what I assume were bad plays by the beloved Lyonnais soccer team.

So that's them: the regulars of the number 19. Hardly anyone speaks to each other, and I wonder sometimes how many years they have all passed riding the same bus line. I wonder if they watch each other and remark changes in appearance or habit. I wonder if they have noticed that I have invaded their small world for a semester. I would tend to think they have, since I sometimes don't get around to putting my makeup on before I have to catch the bus, and I then sit with my makeup bag open in my lap trying to draw an even line under my eyelid on the sometimes very rocky ride to the metro station. Leaving the house before one is fully made up is decidedly atypical in France, and I feel like quite a few people watch me as I use the 20 minutes on the 19 to finish putting myself together.

Chicken Salad goes Global

This might be my favorite picture that I have from France so far. Last week, my professors organized a picnic and asked us each to bring a typical lunch food from our country. In this photo, sweet Yang Qinglei is eating my chicken salad croissant with chopsticks. I simply couldn't convince him to pick the sandwich up and eat it with his hands.

The picnic was only the latest of my cooking adventures in France. My first opportunity to make something from home came up two weeks ago with the potluck lunch at the church, and I chose to make small chicken salad sandwiches for that event as well. Though I had noticed that French people never use croissants for sandwiches, I guess I hadn't fully realized that the concept was simply completely unheard of. As I finished the chicken salad with apples and nuts, Martine came into the kitchen to see me scooping the fresh salad onto croissant halves. You would have thought I was slathering the mayonnaise based chicken dish all over pieces of chocolate cake the way she reacted. She stood over me gasping and saying over and over that croissants were a sweet pastry, for eating with coffee. She called her husband in the room to see my sandwiches and the two stood in the kitchen looking very disturbed. I think the trepidation in their eyes had a lot to do with the fact that I was cooking dinner for them three days later. Martine and Herve declined to taste the croissants. I took the sandwiches to church only to hear many of the same questions of amazement. I kept being asked to clarify that yes, that was CHICKEN on a CROISSANT. And then came the moment of truth: the potluck began, and people began taking my sandwiches to try. I'm proud to say that they were a grand success. The chicken salad was gone before anything else, and several people had me explain to them how to make the salad. The South collides with France experience number 1.

For my host family, I went all out to make a real Southern meal. We had biscuits and fried chicken and mashed potatos and gravy and peach cobbler. I also made a green salad with strawberries and almonds, inadvertently creating another sweet/salty combination which seemed completely bizarre to Martine. Martine stood with me in the kitchen while I was cooking so she could watch how I cooked. When I poured the oil into the pan to fry the chicken, I think she wished she hadn't seen how I prepared the meat. When everything was nearly finished, though, she set a beautiful table for my dinner. She was so kind to really make the evening a special occasion. I think everyone really liked my food. They thought the potatos and salad were very good, and I think they liked the chicken, although that was by far the most bizarre part of the meal to them. The peach cobbler with ice cream was truly a smashing success; cinnamon is not a very commonly used spice in French food, and I think that was the taste they were trying to identify that they thought made the crust so good. Martine has since complemented me several times on my wonderful "cake" (after several attempts, she decided she can't say cobbler - read the mother in My Big Fat Greek Wedding trying to say bundt). The South collides with France experience number 2.

My third experience was more the South collides with the world. When my classmates and I talk at school, I sometimes forget what an incredibly diverse group we are until the professors remind me by asking that we arrange ourselves into groups of three and stipulate that no two people in the group can be from the same continent. The picnic this week was probably one of my favorite experiences relating to school so far. My four favorite professors hosted our picnic on the banks of the Rhone, and they all brought sausages and cheeses for us to sample. The fare for the day was chips and guacamole, empanadas, chicken salad croissants, stuffed bell peppers and six Chinese dishes. I will say at this point that the Chinese food was absolutely to die for - it was all incredibly spicy, and I finally fully understood why the Chinese kids think the French food is too bland. We had a really wonderful meal, and a wonderful time getting to eat together and talk about the culture behind each dish. This week I think we started really to bond as a class; when we said goodbye on Friday, I was actually sad that I wasn't going to be seeing everyone for two days! That's the happy group after the picnic posted at the top of this post.

I've started to become rather close to Yang Qinglei and Dia Xiao'ou, and I've been getting a lot of opportunity to learn about Chinese culture. I've gotten to accompany Dia Xiao'ou to the Chinese supermarket, which I thought was fascinating. I'm sure she was somewhat bothered by me trailing her around the store with a constant stream of questions while she tried to find a particular spice. Yang Qinglei marveled to me this week how heavy French food is. He thinks it must be horrible for the health of the French, and the cause of "all the fat people." If he thinks people in France are fat, he might just keel over and die to see Americans. We also talk about the government in China; I'm endlessly interested by the laws and the feelings of the people about each law. Yang Qinglei's parents had to pay the government twice the equivalent of the average yearly Chinese salary when he was born because he was their second child. Xiao'ou said later that she was sure they had chosen to pay for him because he was a boy and their first child was a girl. Though they don't like laws like that, they love China, and they both want to work very hard for the advancement of the country.

I took the two of them to see a grand cathedral in Lyon this week, and we started to talk about religion. Neither of them has any concept of Christianity, and when I was trying to explain the mosaics and statues in the cathedral, I realized I have never had to explain literally everything about Christianity. Qinglei and Xiao'ou don't speak English, so our broken and simple French is the only tool we have to communicate with each other. Xiao'ou understands my French better than Qinglei, so for many of my explanations, she had to translate into Chinese for him. Xiao'ou thought the story I was telling about a God who became a man and was killed to save humanity and then rose again was completely insane, and Qinglei thought it was downright horrifying. They were confused by literally every element of the story, and disturbed by the fact that I really believed this story I was recounting.

It would mean so much to me if you all would pray for my classmates and my ability to share the gospel with them. No one else in my class is a Christian. For some of my friends who think they know the story of the Bible, I need God to show them the true gospel through what I say and do. For others like Qinglei and Xiao'ou, I need the ability to communicate clearly so I can logically explain Christianity, and the wisdom to know how to best tell the story. I'm really becoming so attached to all of my friends, and it's very painful for me to think that they aren't Christians. My email link is in my profile on the blog if any of you has any ideas for me!

I am so appreciative to all of you who are praying for me. I can't say enough how blessed I have felt the entire time I've been in France. I know this is truly where God meant me to be this semester so that I could grow and broaden my perspective on God's kingdom in the world.

Faire les courses en France n'est pas les doigts dans le nez

I figured out why French people are willing to peel themselves out of bed on Sunday mornings to shop at markets: the grocery stores here are enough to make one want to curl up in a corner and die. Or maybe that's just the effect the grocery store has on me.

I have the opportunity to cook several times in the next few days, which I am oh-so-excited about. Last night I very enthusiastically wrote out a grocery list of the supplies I need to cook a true Southern meal for my French family, but today I set out with some trepidation for the Carrefour at Part-Dieu.

There are several million people living in Lyon and the surrounding areas, and there is only one major mall: Part-Dieu. The complex is completely unmanageable; in some cases there is more than one of the same store, presumably because if you were in the basement in the south corner of the mall, you would be insane to try to get to the fourth floor in the north corner. The commercially savvy have therefore placed their store locations in several areas. The issue is not that Part-Dieu is that large, the issue is that Part-Dieu is that crowded. When several million people do all their mall shopping in the same place, it's impossible to hit an off-time. The fact that I hate shopping there speaks volumes, because I usually love to shop, and the merchandise selection is really very wonderful.

Despite the overwhelming nature of the mall, it's in the center of Lyon and has a metro station that feeds directly into the center. The combination of these elements makes the Part-Dieu Carrefour the most convenient place for me to shop. "Convenient" is not really the right word, but you understand what I'm trying to say.

You most faithful readers may remember that I have previously discussed Carrefour with a somewhat amazed tone, tinted with amusement. Carrefour is interesting when you have to go in to pick up a few objects, but there is absolutely nothing funny about having to do actual grocery shopping there.

Shopping carts cost money to use (I suppose this is an attempt to limit the space taken by carts so that more customers can cram into the store), so most people carry large bags or roll their personal shopping baskets through the store. Shoppers are therefore constantly knocking and jostling each other around trying to manage unwieldy loads in such close proximity. I will proudly add at this point that I have purchased my reusable carry bags for groceries, so I too can do my shopping in bags. The purchase wasn't so much an ecologically conscious decision as it was a necessary action: Carrefour does not give bags with the groceries. Each customer is responsible to figure out how to bag and carry their own items away from the cash register.

So I march into Carrefour today bearing my shopping bags with a fairly comprehensible list. I know the task won't be easy, so I steel my nerves as I enter the food section of the store. Moving through produce isn't too much of an issue, but the number of people significantly weaken my resolve. I become even more disheartened when I go to find frozen broccoli and have to sift through selves and shelves of frozen broccoli puree to find actual florets. Why would frozen cubes of broccoli mush be a larger selling item than whole pieces of broccoli? Such a consumer product is obviously the work of the people who are toasting bread before putting it in the package.

By this point, my sacs are getting heavy (not to mention that I'm still wearing my backpack from school), and I have passed upwards of 40 minutes bumping into strangers, so I'm really wanting to leave. I move towards the dairy section of the store for butter and sour cream. Not so hard, right? Wrong. Carrefour Part-Dieu has no less than five, yes five whole long aisles, of cheese, cream, butter and milk. I can't imagine the disappointment a French person would feel stopping at Kroger to pick up the Land O'Lakes right next to the Daisy. Needless to say, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what kind of cream would be the closest thing to sour cream. Fighting the urge to take the fetal position on the floor, I finally selected some sort of 30% Normandie something something. Bags and arms full, I moved towards the registers.

The register lines are always insane. Part of the quality assurance promise of Carrefour is that you will not wait in a check-out line for more than 20 minutes. This fact is written on signs all around the check-out area with exclamation points, as if the corporation has achieved a great feat of efficiency. Thoroughly worn out, I settled in line for my 20 wait.

Carrefour is about 45 minutes by metro and bus from my house, so I had to schlep my rather heavy groceries over quite a distance before I was relieved of the load. For everyone's amusement, I will add that I had to run with all these groceries to catch my bus at a very large station. I can't imagine what I looked like, since I can't run anyway, and today I had stuffed bags dangling from my arms. And it was raining.

Obviously, I made it home. Perhaps my exasperation was really more an effect of finishing another week of intensive French study than the actual shopping situation. I suppose some parts of this narrative exaggerate the point a bit. But you all understand that my brain is completely fried! And I must point out that since the grocery store is 45 minutes from my house, when my arms were full, I had to be done shopping. Unfortunately, my arms were full about halfway through my list, so tomorrow I will once again have to gather my bags and return to the Carrefour.

On the bright side, I tasted the 30% Normandie whatever cream, and while it's not sour cream, it's not exactly NOT sour cream. I've proclaimed the substance close enough!

Drowning

I managed to get more than half the class moved to the same spot for a picture.
Sophie, Kati and Olaya Lillian before class.
Dia Xio'ou and Kati at a cafe after we finished our first week of class!

I think starting school in a foreign country must be something akin to drowning. I am suddenly deeply out of my element, dark waters swirling above my head, obscuring my ability to understand those still on land, and I'm unable to push my head above the water barrier to clearly hear their words. Caught underneath such an oppressive barrier, my head grows dizzy, and the water becomes crushing. Yeah, I think that's an accurate comparison for school.

Though the week was utterly overwhelming, I don't mean to imply that the week was horrible. I actually had a lot of fun finally starting classes. I'll probably never grow out of being such a nerd that I adore going to school to learn new things. The university is situated on the banks of the Rhone in the middle of Lyon, and I really enjoy my walk from the main square to school, despite the fact that summer has definitely already passed in France. I had been to the university a few times to take placements tests and register before this week, but Friday concluded my first real week of classes.

I must have performed above my abilities on the placement tests, because I was placed into a much higher level than I had anticipated. The day I went to school to take placement tests, I met a girl named Kati (say "catty") from Romania who I liked very much, and so I tried in all the tests to match her level so we would be in the same class. I succeeded, which is very lucky, because the 150 or so students in the program are divided into levels of 12 - 14 students each. Though I'm so thankful to have all my classes with Kati, I must say I'm now wondering a bit about the sagacity of throwing such effort into the placement tests. Oh, well. I'm certainly not in France so I can be coddled. I'm in France to learn French, so here we go.

Our classes are in block format, which means that I'm going to have to keep up with 13 different classes this semester. I go to class for a total of 20 hours every week, but I stay at school much longer because not all the classes run right next to each other. We have oral classes, comprehension classes, writing classes and culture classes. All the professors seem very nice, some are individual characters that I find quite interesting. I can't quite explain this next statement, but I feel like my oral comprehension and oral tools professor belongs in a Harry Potter novel. She is a very tiny person with a high a squeaky voice that emanates from her sharply pointed nose. She seemed a bit terrified of the class, but meekly approached us in the cafeteria during the coffee break to get to know us a bit better. She very quietly corrected every pronunciation error any of us made, eyes downcast with a tiny smile. I really can't fully explain her except to say she seems to me like the feminine counter part to Peter Pettigrew.

Coffee and lunch breaks at school have given me some time to get to know my highly international class. I'm having a very nice time getting to know people from such diverse backgrounds, though that getting to know process is slow since the only common language in the class is French. Meet level IB 21: Kati (Romanian), Bunyamin (Turkish), Samer (Lebonese), Sophie (Venezualan), Olaya Lillian and Andrea (Hispanic), and then the Chinese contingency with Yang Qinglei, Tang Jing, Ye Zhenjia, Xu Ning, Li Fei, Zhen Zhang and Dia Xio'ou. Maybe my ability to learn French this week was hindered by my attempts to learn my Chinese classmates' names. I can't complain, though: my name absolutely blows everyone's mind. Kati finally made the connection to Halley's comet, which she can pronounce correctly, so she sometimes just refers to me as "the comet." After much spelling of names and pronunciation correcting, we are developing quite a sense of camaraderie in IB 21. My closest friends so far are Kati, Sophie, Olaya Lillian and Dia Xio'ou.

So even though I feel like I'm drowning in French, I don't feel too discouraged yet because I don't plan on completely drowning. I plan on thrashing around in the water until I can push to the top to see and hear clearly and shake the oppressive pressure to my head. We'll see how my plan works. I have accepted that this first month is going to require quite a lot of Advil.

Vacation Slideshow

Here are a few other highlights: