Things I've Grown Used To
- pink toilet paper....its not just in my dorm, its a trend all over Lille
- 0,40 machine-made cappucinos in between classes and in the "pause" or break of my long classes to keep me awake and focused
- cold fingers and toes
- pain au chocolat from the brilliant patisserie down the street
- sandwiches with butter
- dog poop on the sidewalks: there is no movement to clean up personally after your dog, however once or twice a week the pooper-sucker guy as I like to call him comes around and sucks it up into this vacuum like machine. However it rains a lot here so sometimes the vacuum can't get all the poop......
- Irish sayings from my friend Mick: "where's the crack?" and "a bit of beer and banter"
- (unfortunately) not exercising: though I did twice this week and it felt great :)
- euros, though I still take forever to give change, and I still don't understand the reasoning behind a 2 cent coin, its just a like a penny only two of them and they don't work in vending machines either.
- going to Casino nearly everyday with Dani to buy whatever little item of food or whatnot that we need. We now know the owner, though not by name, and recently he's started chatting with us at the register, but it all started one night when he said, "see you tomorrow?" and unfortunately it was the day before we went to London for the weekend so we said no, and for an entire week we did not go back; he had missed us. (note: a) he speaks to us in french, I just translated the quote for ease of understanding and b) Casino is the little store I mentioned earlier on that day when I spoke only to the shoplady, however I haven't seen her in there since that day)
- skyping with my family on sundays
- going to bed super early on wednesdays in order to prepare for 7.5 hours of french madness on thursday, starting at 8am.
- everyone teasing me for my slowness: in eating and in getting ready to leave. what can I say, some things just don't change.
So that is just a short list of weekly or daily occurrences for me. Other things of note:
Dani met a woman at the French Consulate in the US when she was there getting her visa who married a French man and was moving to Lille in December. Lynn, the woman's name, was stoked that Dani was studying to Lille and was intent on meeting up with her once she arrived. Since Dani and I have become rather inseparable, Dani of course said she had a friend she would like to bring along and so it was that I met Lynn 3 Fridays ago. I absolutely love her, and Dani does too. We are not positive of her age but we guess around 30 maybe a few years older. She wanted to do drinks sometime so the next Thursday we went for drinks and then later walked 30 minutes to Old Lille to have drinks with her husband Benoit and a friend. We like Lynn so much that we met again this past Thursday and introduced her to more of our friends.
I took a weekend trip to London through the management school(IESEG) Jan 24 & 25 and spent my first ever night in a youth hostel. We met at 6:30 am just down from my dorm to load the tour buses that we were taking to London. I slept most of the trip and missed the entrance into the Chunnel, however I did awake for a moment once we were inside to catch a glimpse. We arrived in London at 11:30 local time and once we dropped our bags at the hostel we were free to do whatever we chose. I was there with Dani and Kayla(from NC State) and other IESEG internationals I had met previously. We were staying near the King's Cross Station, which interestingly enough is where Platform 9 3/4 is located, from the ever-popular Harry Potter series. I did not go inside to see it, but I did take a picture of the station building from the outside. We bought day passes for the metro and headed towards Westminster Abbey. Beautiful building, though we did not go inside. Next we saw Big Ben, keeping time as always. We then turned down and walked opposite the Thames from the London Eye. We crossed the bridge over to the London Eye, on which a young bloke was playing a bagpipe. I gave him some pound coin for letting me take his picture. But I love the sound of bagpipes, so that was quite exciting. We then watched breakdancers and all sorts of street entertainers trying to make a buck. The London Eye is beautiful but we did not go for a ride as the lines were incredibly long and we had a deadline to get the hostel key at 7 pm. Instead we grabbed a coffe in a cafe right beneath the Eye and people-watched. (sidenote: it is at this point in the day that I am slowly getting adjusted to the fact that I don't have to approach people in French, much less some other foreign language, but it was quite bizarre for english to be the native language after only 3 weeks in France, haha. When I first was ordering my lunch at McDonalds, yes I know I never go there, but no matter..., I was nervous to order and wasn't sure I knew what to say, you know how you rehearse a little in your head before you speak, but then I was like, "wait a minute, why am I getting nervous? This lady speaks english, not some other language, gosh. haha." ) We then went to Buckingham Palace as it was getting dark and saw it at night and sat on the marble monument in front of it and chatted and people watched, again. After this long long day of walking around and being cold, albeit it was a beautiful relatively sunny and clear day in London, we were tired so we napped the hostel until 9 pm. It was then time for dinner, but we were feeling lazy so we went to this Italian place just around the corner and let me tell you, this Italian was amazing, in comparison to the French version of Italian which just doesn't cut it. This is sad for me since I loooovve Italian, so this meal was to die for, and I was able to drink a glass of my favorite Italian wine, chianti.
The next day we awoke to rain and drizzle and gray clouds. We ate a quick breakfast of bread and jam at the hostel and departed towards St. Paul's Cathedral. We walked in just before a service was starting but we decided not to stay for mass since we wanted to hit the Tate Modern Art museum. After the modern art we were quite famished so we stopped in the cutest little London pub restaurant and sampled the infamous fish and chips; verdict: I like it, and the fries were more like steak fries and very potato-y. love it. OH. and this place had PEPSI!! We were so incredibly excited. Then we walked beside the Thames towards the London Bridge and the Tower of London. We held up the bridge, though its not really falling down, and had to then take a rest for some coffee in another cute pub. Then we had to return to catch our bus back to France. All in all it was about 30 hours in London and I really do not feel that I got a good enough sense of the city, so I must return, because I also missed several attractions, however, in 30 hours it is nearly impossible to see all of London. It was a great trip and I am very lucky to have paid the reduced group fare :)
It is time for me to go to a museum in Lille, finally. The Palais des Beaux Arts. an art museum. But I will return to provide an update on my most recent adventure: a day trip to Brussels, Belgium, yesterday :)
No comments:
Post a Comment