Recent Travels: a brief update & more to come!

Shmello, world!

I just wanted to give a quick update on what's been happening lately. About a week and a half ago, my friend and I started a grand, 11 day traveling adventure. We went to a bunch of places in the south of France: Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Nice, and Monaco. After that stint, which was ridiculously beautiful, I was already pretty tired, and could have settled with going back to Lyon for some rest. But wait, there's more!!! Next up was Poland! We went to Krakow to participate in the American Jewish Center's Program for Students Abroad, which was an incredible and moving experience. We got to know Krakow and went to see Auschwitz, all over the course of four days. Needless to say, I was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted after all of that. (Think sun + walking + Holocaust. oy.)

Yesterday, after 12 hours of traveling, I finally made it back to my cozy apartment and was able to sleep in my own bed. I woke up and fell back asleep a couple of times, but after getting home at midnight, I slept on and off until about 4pm here today. It was much needed! Anyways, this post is to let you all know that I have a slew of updates coming your way (or a SLU of updates, for all of my fellow billikens reading this! aren't I punny?)! This week is also one of my last weeks of papers and exams, but I'm hoping to get a bunch of posts up here in the mean time, as well.

Alors, à bientôt! Oh, and I will be back in the US a month from yesterday~! Ahhhh. (Those feelings/thoughts are for another post, though!)

Sending love!

Alsace: France, done the German way

Hellooooo everyone! I'm really, really sorry that I've been lagging behind so much on writing here! To give you a short update on what I've been up to since I've last written here: I went to Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, and London, England during my "winter vacation." I definitely slacked on updating about that, and realized that if I keep waiting until I write those posts, I may never update this blog again. Briefly: everything was absolutely beautiful, but my friend with whom I traveled and me were sick in Madrid and recovering from sickness the rest of the trip. So, it could have been better, but we made the most of it and saw some great places! For now, I'm going to jump forward a little bit, and hopefully I will get around to writing more about those at some point. If nothing else, I will try to post some photos.

Since that trip, things have been a bit busier around here than they had been before. I did some lazying around at first, which was good (especially for that recovering from illness thing), and have been running constantly (it feels like, at least) since then. I have a bunch of papers to write and exams to take for this week (which is SOOO early. It doesn't feel right.), so this last week was/this week is crazy busy. But, before all of this madness, I had a fantastic week or so of adventures! First, I took a trip up to Alsace over Easter weekend, which is a region in northern France that borders Germany. And while I was there, my dad and Grace were in Paris - !!!!! So when I returned to Lyon, they came here, and I got to spend the week with them! Literally right before they left on Friday, two of my friends from SLU, who are studying abroad in Europe this semester, came to visit for the weekend! (It was really right before they left. I picked up my friends at the train station, and left Dad and Grace about twenty minutes later at the same train station.) Soooo, in this post I'll talk about Alsace, and then I'll write some more about my lovely week of friends and family from home. :)

Alrighty, so I may have explained this before, but SLU uses Oregon University System's study abroad programs for France, so I'm "in the Oregon program" here in Lyon, even though I'm not really from Oregon at all. Anyways, the Oregon program was the group that I went to Alsace with, so I didn't have to do any planning or anything, as it was all done for us already! Which was a nice change in pace for traveling. The region, as I said, is near Germany, so has a lot of German aspects to its culture, and, as my host dad told me, it has all sorts of it's own cultural aspects that aren't really French, but "we still love it as a part of France." The region was actually back and forth between French and German rule up until.. around World War II, I think? And it has been French ever since then. So here are my adventures (and photos borrowed from friends since I was without a camera for the weekend! thanks guys) in Alsace!

Our whole group of about twenty people took a bus from Lyon and went to the "Ecomusée" first. I'm not really sure why it's called that... literally, an eco-museum. But, the Alsace region is known for their houses with wooden frames. So this museum was built when a bunch of people decided that they would bring those houses from different towns in the area and re-create a little village thing. We toured the "village" and walked around and looked at the cool houses. So here are some pictures of them!

After the Ecomusée, we hopped on the bus again and went to a wine tasting. Alsace is known for its white wines, especially their Riesling. I don't remember what the names of all the wines were that we tasted... I know that one was a Muscato, and another was a Pinot Grigio... but I couldn't even pronounce the names of the other ones because they were German... But, almost every inch of hillside in the area is used to grow grapes! (The French are all about using all of their resources. They never, ever waste food, so I feel just like I'm at home with the Pierson family!) The weather was kind of gross while we were there. It was overcast and cold, but nonetheless, some grape vines!: 

We also spent some time wandering around the little village of Riquewhir (which took me until we were back in Lyon to know how to pronounce. Reek-veer for those of you wondering.) This was really just a tiny tourist town, that has about 1,000 habitants and tons of little souvenir shops and cafés. And that's about it. But it was cute! (with more traditional Alsacien houses!)

Now that I think about it, I can't actually remember if Riquewhir was on our first or second day there. It may have been the second... bad memory. oops, sorry! Also on the second day, though, we went to the castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg, which has been around since at least the 12th century. So that was cool, and really old. Another picture! The inside was really cold, but also elaborately decorated. One room had frescoes on every wall, depicting the castle's history. Another was the hunting trophy room, and had a bunch of deer (?) antlers hanging that were decorated with a "W" plaque, because the king who lived there was Wilhelm II (that's William in German, if anyone was wondering. and Guillaume in French. look at all the things I'm learning!). It was cool to see all of the history, etc, that was embodied in this one building.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think those were almost all of the main sites we saw. We spent a lot of time napping on the bus in between locations. The last real fun thing that we did was go to another (apparently well-known) town, called Colmar. I know that this was on the last day of our trip, because it was sunny! Which was a relief, after a few days of cold mountain air. I wish that it had been nicer before, because a lot of the places we saw, including the hotel where we stayed, were up on hills that were just covered in greenery, with the exception of the tiny villages in the valleys. I'm sure that they were all really beautiful, and it would have been an amazing view, but it was too foggy to see and know for sure. :( Anyways, it was sunny and beautiful on our last day, and Colmar was a really nice town. It has a beautiful cathedral, and they had a knock-off Christmas market, but the Easter version! Here are some photooooos!

Colmar is also the birthplace of Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor who designed (and gave to the US) the Statue of Liberty! His birthplace is now a museum, which we stopped at on our tour, but I didn't go inside, unfortunately. It was pretty neat to see it, though, especially because there's a huge sculpture by Bartholdi in Lyon! Here's the museum (not too exciting from the outside, but for photographic evidence): 

I also have a picture of me in Colmar - one of the only ones from the trip. Sorry, Mom! :) and following that one is a photo of the entire group!

After Colmar, we got on the bus to get back to Lyon. Overall, it was a really fun trip! I loved being able to spend time with everyone in the program, and to see a part of France that is completely different from where I am living. As my host mom always tells me, each region (and even city) of France has a different and unique culture. Oh! and the last exciting part of our trip was our hotel. It's an old monastery/convent that now has a hotel and restaurant. But there are still chapels and they even have masses there! It was called Mont Sainte Odile (link to its wikipedia page). I don't have any pictures of it, but I highly encourage you all to look it up! It's literally an old convent on top of a mountain. And it's beautiful. (Again, it would have been nice to see the view from the top, but it was too foggy to see anything, really.)

So, that was my Easter weekend! It wasn't one filled with family events, but it was a lot of fun! Oh yeah, and I ate an ENORMOUS meal of sauerkraut (of course, being so close to Germany. it's an Alsacien traditional plate) and seafood on Easter Sunday. I thought I was going to explode, but it was sooo delicious. Food is definitely still one of my favorite parts of being in France. Now, that was really the entirety of my trip. So, I got back to Lyon on Easter Monday (a national holiday in France, even though they have a "secular" society and calendar. kind of.), and then on Tuesday, my dad and Grace got here! That's a whole nother story to tell, though. :) I will get to it soon, I promise! Sooner than it took me to write this from last time. Really. Sorry again for falling off track with my posts! I miss you all at home so so much, and am sending you all love!!! 

Until next time ~!