I found the canned soup....

for those who were concerned. ie my lovely family (gotta love em and laugh at em) who sent me a huge ass package full of canned food. Plus, the staples: vegemite, miso soup, green tea, wasabi peas AND my absolute favourite, sunflower seeds. Boy are they addictive! I found myself eating them in a blind ritual of snapping and popping for half an hour simply staring at the wall. So there you go Manh, it's not the tv at all. They're just plain addictive.

But of course, as soon as I received said wonderful package, I found the canned soup in the Carrefour supermarket. Carrefour, I don't know if I've mentioned it, is one of the HUGE supermarket/department stores here where people go crazy and buy like they've never had the luxury of standing in a five hour queue before.. BUT.. it's cheap(er than a lot of the other smaller supermarkets) and you can basically get ALL your shopping done in one place, so...

Anyway, the canned soup. I found in it the EXOTIC food section of Carrefour. Actually, it's probably called 'the foods of the world section' but calling it the 'exotic' food section makes my story so much funnier :P It (two flavours of Campbell's soup) was found alongside the savoury crackers (yes, apparently europeans don't eat savoury crackers, just sweet biscuits), alongside the canned spaghetti and baked beans (good ol Heinz brand too!), AND vegemite!!! You can imagine how happy I was! I had mums with little children staring at me as I gasped in ecstatic joy. But... it all costs a bomb. At least I know where the important things are...

In other news, I have downloaded my photos but haven't had time nor patience to upload them onto a site... so umm.. err.. I shan't go into the horrendous detail of my five hours wasted on corrupted files... but I will get them up soon. I promise! They are awesome, even if I do say so myself. If only I had Miss candlewax here, then they would be even more awesome.... but oh well, we can't have everything we want...

I went to a dinner party last Friday night, thrown by a lovely miss Kavita (who is an exchange student from Singapore) and her flatmate, miss Miwa (who is from Japan), also known as the two lovely ladies who took me and Ling to our first, very memorable Lyonnais dinner a few weeks ago. I was asked by Ling if I would be interested in going to a 'pot luck' dinner, to which i replied, 'yes! Sounds great! err... what's a pot luck?' And for those of you, who like me, had no idea, it means everybody brings a dish. Great. Yep. I can't cook anything.... but clever me, I brought a pizza.

And yep, it was a gorgeously HUGE, delicious pizza that only took ten minutes to make FROM SCRATCH!!! 'Twas fun getting on the packed metro with it taking up so much bloody room and smelling like the best thing that had ever made it's way into the subway (it probably was). Of course, Kavita and Miwa's apartment was miles away from te metro station, about ten minutes walk :P, and it had to start raining.... it was cold by the time we got to eat it but it was yummmmmmmmmmmmm!

I met the whole Singaporean exchange student community. Well, that's what they say anyway. it was a party of about ten. And with all that Singlish flying around it was hard not to smile. I do miss my own bummy evenings with my own lovelies (YOU).. just sitting on the living room floor eating and drinking and chatting and laughing but it was nice to feel not so alone if only for one evening. There were some bloody hilarious stories since some of them had been here for over a year now.. and it was really comforting to hear that other people felt lonely too. Derek, who took six months to learn that the dryer was NOT the washing machine, said that for the first year he felt so lonely and sad because he had no friends and couldn't speak the language... strangely, that made me feel better because now I know I am not the only one.

See, when I say I have no friends and I'm lonely, I don't mean that I don't talk to ANYone or that I've locked myself in my room as a hermit or anything.. I have Ling and Kavita and Miwa and people I talk to in class... but it's not the same. It's not at all the same as having the people who love and know you best around you so you can be stupid with them and be silly with them.. new friends are still just that. New friends. It's not everyday that I meet a Miss catdog that I can just click with from the start. Most other friendships take a lot of time and effort and getting to know you. Which, of course, is beautiful too!!! In it's own lovely way, it is fantastic meeting all these different people from different parts of the world (since exchange students are the only ones prone to go to exchange student gatherings... :P)... and it's great. It's fun and it's excellent and I love it. But it doesn't make me miss home any less if I don't miss it even MORE because I want to share it all with you so much....

and this... it's so hard to do this regularly... it's not at all a good representation or even a close representation of what I am feeling or experiencing... especially without photos....

Uni started two weeks ago.

It's been... good and hard. Very Hard. It's good cos it's keeping me busy. The amount of reading I have to do is really unbelievable... the way the French system works too is really... different to what we have in Melbourne. You need to listen a lot more and take notes like crazy, which is hard when you only understand 50 percent of what the teacher is saying. But there are hardly ANY lecture slides, or notes online, and some teachers just talk, they don't even write things on the board or anything... so... it's kinda frustrating too, because I'm so used to knowing exactly what my assessment will be for each subject and exactly when it will be, but here, they don't tell you stuff like that... I guess cos they haven't decided yet themselves... so.. it's all kinda like a guessing game..

And for those who are interested, these are the subjects I am taking:
1. Suivi Linguistic Méthodologique - Francais pour les étrangers
(French for exchange students, for those who were tuned in, the French test that I had to take earlier on was to place me in the right 'level' class. And I made it into the top class. So there :P)

2. Masculin/Féminin en Littérature
(exactly what it sounds like, literature and gender studies mixed)

3. L'escalade.
(Indoor Rock Climbing. Yes! it is f*cking awesome as well!!!!)

4. Langues et Cultures.
(Languages and Cultures from a Linguistic viewpoint)

5. Problématiques de Genre.
(Also exactly what it sounds like. Gender studies)

6. Histoire Moderne: La France d'Ancien Régime
(French History. Around 1500 - 1800)

What else what else? I really should do this more often cos then it wouldn't be so bloody long and hard to remember stuff i wanted to tell you... hmmmmmmmm...........

Oh I am falling in love with French. The language. In case you didn't know, I was only in like with it before, but the more I hear it, the more I love it. I've been listening to french girls in my lit class read aloud poetry and it's just.... breath taking. It's gorgeous. What a beautiful language. I need to find me some local music. Or local musos... :P

Ummmmmm......... I'm really buggered now. There's more, there's always more to tell but I am braindead now. I promise to update more often from now on. This weekend I have a guided tour of Lyon lined up. A soccer match to see. Lyon vs St Etienne. Annnnnnnd... I think Ling and I are gonna make Vietnamese rice paper rolls this Friday...

Hope you're all well. I miss you....

much love

luce xx