My last weekend before classes!

Tomorrow is my first day of class here. I'll be in classes all in French (except for maybe one in English..) with French students. The way that class scheduling works for international students is that we "shop" for classes for the first two weeks, and then turn in a registration form by the first week of February. My "advisor" here, or my program director, Laurie, suggests going to as many classes as possible to see which ones will be feasible. So, this week will be hectic and tiring, but I'll get to see which classes out of those that seem interesting actually will be interesting, and which professors I can understand well enough to succeed in the class. I actually quite like this idea, so we shall see how it goes!

My plan for tomorrow looks like this: (I'll give you all updates throughout the week!)

A class called "couple, famille, et genre," or "couple, family, and gender" that is a women's/gender studies type of class; and "religions et laicites dans les societes contemporaines" - "Religions and secular-things (la laicite in french is the separation of church and state, or secularism, I suppose) in contemporary societies" - a sort of political science-y class. Those are both at the Bron campus of Lyon 2, which is out in the suburbs. It will take about a 25-30 minute tram ride to get there. My first class there is at 10am, but I'll have to get there a bit earlier to make sure I can find my classrooms! Then, at 6pm, I'm going to a class called "le Cour Supreme," which is a course all about the US Supreme Court. This is the only one that's taught in English! It will be downtown near the main Lyon 2 campus, but it's at the Political Science Institute of Lyon, which is a separate, but administratively linked, institution.

I've had a particularly difficult time deciding which classes to go to this week, because I have found a ton that look interesting, but I can't go to all of them because some of them have conflicting times, and some are right after each other, but are on different campuses. So I can't go back and forth between campuses for each class, because I don't have time to make the 30 minute trip (in a 15 minute break between classes.. duh. not possible). Anyways, I'm still trying to figure the rest of the week out, but I'll try to post again tomorrow to let you all know how the day goes! and which classes I'm looking at for at least Tuesday, if not for the rest of the week. It will be interesting, to say the least!

To give you all a little update on my weekend (as I entitled this post), I had fun on Friday night - I went over to the hostel where my friend is staying and had a few drinks. The hostel has this awesome atmosphere, with a kitchen area and a lounge area, complete with a bar. So we hung out and chatted with some of the other people staying there. I ended up getting up really, really late Friday night, and slept in until about 3pm on Saturday. It was glorious. I have been super tired my whole time here so far, so it was really nice to be able to sleep in forever. Then on Saturday I didn't do much - just ate some "lunch" in the afternoon, and dinner later with my host family. And hung out on the computer and reading, etc. It was super low-key, but good to relax.

Today, I went exploring with one of my friends, Jill. We went to the gallo-roman amphitheater, which was the center of life in Lyon a couple centuries ago. Lyon was the capital of Gaule (France, before it was France). Pictures are the only good way to show how it was! (It was a bit rainy, so the pictures aren't the best, but here they are:

The walk was quick from my house, but was ALL uphill.
Up a steep, steep hill.

It was worth it!

You can look out over the entire city from here. I'll go back when it's sunny!

From here we walked to the "Basilique Fourvière" - the Fourviere Basilica. It's also on top of this huge hill (obviously) and is absolutely gorgeous. I'll come back here when it's sunny, too. And I'll go inside next time. :) but the outside is great! These are all the front of the Fourviere: 

As seen from the roman theater ruins

And these are all from a platform next to the church, looking out on the city.

So those were my adventures for the day! We went and got coffee after this, because it's a tad bit too cold outside. Then I hung out for a little bit, and just ate dinner with my host family. For the rest of the night, I'm going to go out for a little bit with some fellow students - but for too long! I have classes tomorrow, so I'll be back at a reasonable hour. Then I'll be off to bed and to school in the morning! eek!!!

Much, much love to you all!