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:

Weekend Vacation #1

I took about a million pictures of Mont St Michael, attempting to capture in a photograph the sense of awe that overtook me when I saw the abbey through the bus windows for the first time. Over the last few days, I journeyed all the way up to northern France to see just this one church that I had decided years ago was a must-see. Mont St Michael is a very small village on a rock slightly off the coast of Normandy. The crowning glory of the village is a great abbey built on the highest rocks that is dedicated to the archangel Michael.

Construction on the abbey began in 708 when the Bishop of Avranches had a series of visions of the angel requesting that an abbey be built in his honor. Nothing of that original abbey remains as there have been various phases of construction through the eighteenth century. The oldest parts of the abbey remaining are from the tenth century, and the bulk of the construction was completed by the beginning of the fifteenth century. The structure is truly a testament to the genius of Gothic and Romanesque stone masons as the buildings are perched on the peak of a great rock formation. The cavernous halls and stairwells constitute a journey through centuries of innovative techniques in the construction of a great religious monument.

Today, the abbey again has a monastic life, after going through several conversions in purpose from fortress to prison. I went to mass in the great Romanesque cathedral, and I was very moved by the presence of monks and nuns cloaked entirely in white as they sang psalms from the chambers surrounding the sanctuary. The job of those living at Mont St Michael is to ensure there is constant prayer coming from the abbey.

After the abbey grew to be a place of religious pilgrimage, a town sprung up around the base. I was truly enchanted by the small Norman town. The people of Normandy seemed to be much more of a rural background than those of Lyon. The architecture was very different, as was the food. In the interest of continuing the cuisine-associated part of my blog, I'll say that crepes and creme brulee both have ancient roots in Normandy. I was in love with the food in the northern part of the country - everything was much heavier, and quite a lot cheaper. And as something of a creme brulee connoisseur, I will say the best I have ever had was from the small restaurant at which I ate the night I arrived. I had to restrain myself from licking out the three miniature pots in which the dessert was served. Sorry to dwell on food, but it's obviously one of the most important facets of daily life in my mind.

Due to some strange train connections (I think the woman who booked my ticket was confused), I also ended up getting to spend a few hours in Brittany. Brittany is another rural region in France with a very distinct culture. Because the area was in English possession for so long, the countryside looks very English, and the people have their own way of doing things. I found the people to be not very friendly; I think like any set of farm people they are very set in their ways and dislike change and outsiders. However, the towns were truly charming. I was in Dol en Bretagne on Saturday morning, with the market is full swing downtown. I thoroughly enjoyed the market until I saw one woman surrounded by crates of ducks and chickens. After a customer pointed to a particular bird, the vendor yanked the bird from the crate and with one swift motion broke the bird's neck. She was obviously selling the freshest fowl in the entire market.

Despite that one highly unpleasant experience, I had a most fabulous trip. I was thrilled to visit two regions of France that were entirely new to me, and I can't really relate in a post how magnificent I thought Mont St Michael was. The church was far greater than I had imagined it would be. So I guess that's the reason I couldn't get a picture that I thought did the structure justice: I had never seen one before. Wonderful photographs of the island prompted me to visit the particular bay in Normandy, but nothing prepared me for something so moving. But that's the joy of actually getting to see something in person for the first time. I'm very lucky to have had the opportunity to take such a wonderful weekend trip.

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.