Pardonnez mon anglais... -- 17/09-06

Music is f*cking awesome!! Pardon my Shakespeare (don't ask, read The Metaphysical Touch by Sylvia Brownrigg if you can find it). But it really IS F*cking awesome! There was a dance parade, le defilé - Biennale de la danse, on today, all through the city from Place Terreaux to Place Bellecour and the weather, although threateningly cloudy at times, held up just splendidly and even being far too far away behind the crowds and too short to see most of the action, it was, in every sense of the word, SPECTACULAR! Most probably because rhythmic, chant-enducing, fanstically drummed music (think Jesmaq and Liz Stringer's crazy drummer) is very much my cup of tea, and this parade had much of that, but even so, it was just such an awesome atmosphere to be in. Thousands (actually, I have no idea how many, but it seemed like thousands) of people lined the streets and clapped and cheered and whoa-ed at the fabulous, fantastic, surrealist costumes of the whole event, not really understanding, but who really cares anyway? And I thought, how f*cking awesome to be a part of it all. How f*cking awesome if I could be in there, a part of the whole making of it, of the putting together, planning, and watching it all come to life, not forgetting how f*cking awesome it would be to actually be dancing in there with them, and I'm not even a person who likes to dance!!

Anyway, I think you all get the idea that I loved it. I loved every sun-burning-my-neck, squished-in-strangers'-sweaty-armpits, little-sausage-dog-carried-by-owner-kicking-my-back, can't-see-anything-but-a-tiny-flicker-of-colour-every-now-and-then bit of it! Except for one thing... I had no idea it was on so I didn't have my camera, and even if I did, my memory card is full :( so the only pics I have are on my crappy V3 mobile... you'll all just have to use your imaginations :P

This is my happy post.

It struck me the other day that most of my posts have been of the whining, whinging, rambling, ranting nature, and I don't want you all to think I'm having a yuck time, or even that I don't like it here. Yes, sure, it's really hard. REALLY hard sometimes. And I can honestly say , being the shy creature that I am, that I haven't made any *real* (as opposed to imaginary? no, as opposed to hi-bye) friends yet, aside from Ling, whose charitable company I am taking much advantage of because she's generous and kind and knows what's going on (unlike moi!) and has a knack for talking to random strangers and making friends with them, whom she introduces to me... BUT!! I've decided I have to start looking at things differently if I'm really going to make the most of my time here. I can't just compare everything to Melbourne and look for what's wrong, and what's hard and what's stupidly wrong (like the lack of toilet seats in the uni toilets!! not to mention at Allix!)..

I started making a list of things in Lyon that make me smile, and it goes a bit like this:

1. The view walking down the hill towards the city and away from Allix. It never ceases to take my breath away. Did I mention that Allix is on a hill? It's about a ten minute bus ride, plus another five minutes by tram, OR it takes me roughly 40 minutes to walk briskly to uni, I suspect it'll be quicker by vélo but I am still too cowardly to brave the roads just yet..

2. The Rhône river. It's the most beautiful (natural) green-blue colour, and there are ducks and swans swimming in it.

3. Buses that run til midnight! I went out to have a traditional lyonnais 3 course dinner at a traditional lyonnais bouchon on Friday night with Ling and a couple of her local-ised contacts. The meal, the first HOT, REAL meal I've had since Brussels (no, instant noodles and microwave dinners don't count!) was also f*cking awesome. Cost me 15 euro, so not something I plan to do every week, but it came with a delicious, sweet apertif wine, entrée salad, main - I had a quenelle fish sausage thing bathed in lobster sauce with rice, and desert - two of us had crème brulée while the other two had a lemon tart, both of which were yummmmmmmmmmm! Everything was YUM! I was stuffed but I ate every grain of rice and mopped up the sauce with bread, as you do, because I am a struggling student afterall :P

Anyway, the story continues. By this point you must be wondering why I started talking about buses when this is actually about food, but I'll get to that.

After dinner, we walked through Vieux Lyon, the old, historic quarter, and went up to a friend's place which also took my breath away. From the outside, it was just an ordinary old-looking building but inside it was dark and stone and the only way up was via a spiral staircase which made me soooooooooo jealous that I didn't get to live in a place like this (think, Round the Twist lighthouse but older and more european and just plain gorgeously mysterious), eventhough it would've been HELL to get my luggage (or anyone elses' for that matter) up the stairs, I would've gladly run up and down doing everything in tiny trips just to be able to live in a place like this! It was like a magical secretly hidden castle... I've been told the view in the morning is magical also...

We then headed off to an Irish pub where I had a panache (lemonade and beer) and discovered that my ability to spell in both English AND French is deteriorating rapidly because things look wrong AND they look right because the two languages share so many words that are just that tiny little bit different!!! I realised that I had written an email the other day in English talking about 'salades' which looked perfectly fine until I was in the Irish pub looking at a menu in English which had the word 'salad' on it, which set off a lightbulb in my head and I remembered that that's how you spell it in English... hmmm.... I am also thinking/speaking in a non-existent third language I like to call franglais (I didn't make that up - I wish I had). I think things like, oh I should do the laundry today parce que (because) blah blah blah... hmmmm.....

So what does this all have to do with public transport? Well, I got so carried away with dinner and the hidden spiral staircase and being in a pub that I forgot that I was not at home, that getting home after ten/eleven pm may be a problem since only buses run to Allix.. and it being on a hill and all... I was super worried that I'd end up having to walk for half an hour uphill in the dark at midnight all on my own...

But, lucky ducky lil me! Buses run til midnight :D I am a lucky ducky indeedy!

4. Saluting everyone. Because for those who don't know, 'salut' pronounced SALU, is the casual greeting around here so everyone at Allix 'saluts' everyone :)

5. Saving ALL my change to do laundry and to appease highly demanding coin-collectors back home, even when I have to break a fifty euro note to buy a three euro sandwhich because all I have are Portuguese euros and I haven't saved any of them yet for her, so... see how nice I am?? I'm giving away MONEY!

6. Mineral water that tells you the exact altitude of where it's from. Eg. 1051M.

7. Hearing a rooster crow at 5pm from my room... then realising that's it's just a couple of kids mucking around.

8. Long life bread. Ahhhh.. such is life when all you feed is one, and you don't have a fridge... My bread will still be good, err.. maybe I should just say 'edible' on the fourth of december, 2006... hmm.. should I be worried about the amount of ocnservatives I am consuming?

9. Stumbling across seedy Chinatown and buying 'un sandwich vietnamien', sitting inside the restaurant feeling at home not understanding all the vietnamese spoken around me, but recognising words like 'pho'... being reminded of home by the taste of coriander.. smiling at Hoi Sin sauce being translated as 'barbecue' sauce..

10. Being somewhere ELSE that keeps me constantly alert and on my feet and gasping around corners at unexpected views and splurging wayyyy too much on Kettle chips that claim to be suitable for vegans and being constantly with pen and paper writing lists of things to remember to blog about for all my lovely people back at home...

Can you tell I'm smiling? :) oh! oh! oh! Miss catdog came up with the most wonderful thing! {:) smiley face with beret!!

Uni starts tomorrow. There's a public transport strike on and most of my subjects are out on the other campus which is in woop woop (also known as Bron - campus de Portes des Alpes). So I'll have fun getting there and back.

miss you

luce xx