The word "bizarre" stands out this week . . .

Being in a foreign country, day after day I am constantly running into new things. Some of those things are actually enjoyable, and some are downright bizarre. Following is a completely incoherent blog entry of my new experiences of the past week.

1. I went to my school to take placement tests, and was told upon arriving that I after I took the tests, I didn't need to return to school for the next two weeks. Before school even starts, I'm having a surprise holiday to continue exploring the city. For some reason, the school does not tell the students until they arrive for tests that normal classes do not start until September 22.

2. I do think the food here is alright, but I have long since decided that the food I most love is thick comfort food. I'm sure the light French food is better cuisine, but I already miss processed bread, battered meat, and ranch dressing. On the weirder side, I would like to highlight the fact that when "ham" is on a restaurant menu, or Martine makes "ham" for dinner, it means they open up a pack of lunch meat and put the cold cuts on the table. I have also for the past few meals at the house been eating pre-toasted bread. It's like if you bought a package of Sara Lee at the grocery store that had been cut into slices and browned in the toaster before arriving in the bag at the grocery store. I find the bread to be odd. What's the point of toast if it's already cold and stale? I guess French people can simply not stomach soft white bread. Also, I noticed the expiration date on the boxed milk we have been drinking: November 20. The milk is so heavily homogenized that it doesn't even taste the same.

3. I have been on two adventures to two different Carrefours, the French equivalent of Wal-Mart. Believe it or not, Carrefour makes Wal-Mart look like it has a small selection. I was so amazed at the size of both stores that I plan to take a camera when I return. Aisles and aisles as far as the eye can see - the stores really are a sight. I spent nearly an hour trying to find the four things I needed at the Carrefour in Ecully. I had to go to a different Carrefour yesterday in Part-Dieu, and this one is of note because it is a two-level grocery store. There is a large slanting conveyor-belt type apparatus at the far end of the store, because shoppers need to be able to get to the second level with large carts. I have no idea why the French require such a large selection of goods. They buy most of their produce at markets anyway.

4. I found a department store that I adore. Printemps is heavily associated with the French Vogue, and the displays are great. The store shows mostly mid-range French designers with a few Italian stars in the corners. It's like a very nationalistic Neiman Marcus.

5. I attended a ballet last night as part of the great dance exhibition going on in Lyon during September. Have you ever stood in front of a great piece of modern art and thought it was interesting, feeling at the same time that you were surely missing part of the point? The ballet was like looking at that piece of art for two hours. The show was dedicated to William Forsythe,who has built a career in choreography on his intense examination of the motion of dance through exaggeration. The dances were done to modern "music" - that most exploratory of types that often sounds just like static noise or crashing metal. No melodies, in other words. I can hardly begin to describe the dancing, except to say that it involved lots of contortion. For the first ballet, the stage was entirely set in grey, with fourteen grey chairs at the back and a small black and white sign that read "THE." Fourteen dancers in grey danced (never as an ensemble) in between walking randomly around the stage, leaving the stage, sitting on the stage, and sitting in their chairs at the back. For the end, a violent looking woman dressed in a white sheet with wild blond hair streaming down her back and blood dripping from her mouth ran onto stage to danced even more violently than the others. She beat on the stage with her fists and stared into the audience a lot. Then she and most of the other dancers walked off and someone kicked over the sign that said "THE." I have no idea what the thing was about. I won't describe the other two ballets except to say that one involved choreographed sighing and the other involved dancers running around with metal operating tables. It certainly met the theme of the dance celebration, "Retour en avance," which roughly means "Past Forward." I don't know if it was supposed to be scary, but it was.

6. On my way to the ballet, I walked by one of the major squares to see a man on stage teaching the salsa to hundreds of people in lines on the square. Dancing in the street seems out of French character to me. I suppose I have a lot to learn about the French character.

7. I visited a museum in Vieux Lyon that didn't seem to have much of a theme. The first half was about setting scenes in movies, because some Dustin Hoffman movie about perfume was filmed in the basement. The third floor had a lot of dolls, and the top floors were miniatures scenes by several celebrated miniatures artists. Everything was interesting, but I found the arrangement strange.

I suppose that's about all of interest I have encountered. I've done some other sight-seeing, but nothing that seems worth special mention among the ranks of pre-toasted bread, Carrefours and William Forsythe.