puppet action.

Oh you never know what suprises the day will bring!

So, my buddy Steph's (a W&M kiddo on the UVA program) host mom, Madame Peugot, is a Marionette-ist. So last night, we went to see her perform!  If you were wondering, marionettes are a type of puppet. Apparently Lyon was pretty famous for them back in the day. It literally took us 40 minutes to walk to the theater, and then we thought it was the wrong place because all these buff guys were outside (very uncommon sight in france) because apparently it was a community center with a gym downstairs. hahaa. Anyways, the show was so random, and halarious, and amazing. 

Plot line: Male puppet with long, braided rat-tail invites various friends over to his house (about 6 to be exact) and then procedes to beat them with a large bâton (wooden stick) until they fall in agony to the ground. Then he picks them up and throws them outside in the poubelle (trash can).  Then everyone claps, and the pianist plays a little tune, everyone (minus us) sings this little song, and thats the end of Scene one! 

Then in scene two, the rat-tail puppet puts his belle-mere (mother-in-law) behind bars and stabs her with une grande forchette (a pitch fork). 

100% serious. Hahaha! It was great.

Let me remind you, these are puppets. The faces are carved out of wood, hand painted, and then dressed with handsewn clothes. And we are the only people under 65 in the entire theater. BAHAHAHAA!

Then they closed Scene Two with a catchy little song about mother-in-laws, brought out wine and salami for everyone to eat and mingle, and then Madame Peugot showed us around backstage!

The wall of marionettes. All are handmade by their puppetier! Pretty impressive.

Mme Peugot showing us how its done

Dear Mary Briggs - I wish you had been there. I got a really bad case of the giggles. It was bad. You know that creepy doll under the bunk beds at the cabin? Cross that with Harriet, and you got it. Bahahaha!

More Paris

Day two in Paris: more sightseeing! it was SO cold, but we still covered a lot of ground. Stop one: Musee d'Orsay, for some reason I dont have any pictures from here except this cool clock:

streets of paris, they still had a lot of christmas decorations up which made everything even more beautiful.

anyone up for a dip in the pool? oh wait its like 15 degrees outside.

 Destination # 2: Notre Dame. It looked much different in the daylight. :)

the inside of Notre Dame

This was a box where people could write messages of  peace for the world. It was really cool because you could look inside the box and see little messages written in all different languages and alphabets. Peace, a univeral value.

Some tiles framing this random door that I thought were really cool and colorful!


After roaming the streets of the Latin quarter and Ile Saint Michel, we headed on to stop number 3, The Louvre.

The Louvre!

Winged Victory

a person can only enjoy seeing so many 17th century paintings and marble statues of naked people in one day. but we did our best. 

howdy Mona. 

whoever designed the Louve really liked the way red walls look with golden frames! haha. room after room after room. dont get me wrong, it was beautiful. :)

The Louvre all lit up!

That night we were invited to diner with some of Kate's family friends. We had raclette (cheese fondue, apparently a favorite french dinner party menu, so delicous!) and had a chance to really practice our french.

Then the next day, we went to visit Sacre Coeur, and explored the shops in the artsy district of Montmartre.

there was a parade going on while we were walking up to Sacre Coeur.  Lots of bagpipes and costumes! :)

artists in Montmatre

what better way to see a city than to aimlessly roam the streets? :)

the Dam Button store.

view of Paris from Sacre Coeur

If you ask french people to take a picture of you at a historic landmark, they often mistakenly think that you want the picture to be of YOU rather than the famous view or building in the background. hahaha. This kept happening! 

Kate and Dorothy infront of Sacre Coeur!

The City of Lights

Coucou tout le monde!

I just returned home from spending the weekend in Paris.  I went and visited some UVA pals who are studying at Science Po Paris (thats a university, apparently the most competitive in France!) and tried to hit all the typical Paris tourist destinations. I like to call it power-tourism.

Day 1:

i love this translation. ha.

some random, ornate gold statues along the Seine river

ohhh Camps Elysees....ohh champs elysees...(thats the beggining of a slightly annoying, classic french song :)

they were having some type of memorial as we were leaving the monument. The bugler was playing Taps, so I think it was in honor of the death of someone important (which i recognized because i had to play it for the civil war encampment in 5th grade, hahhaa!)  Pretty cool. Except that they were blocking the exit and we wanted to leave because it was really cold. 

the Eiffel Tower!

from below.

Then after our first night of sightseeing, we visited dear Courtney Seldon in her cute little tiny-tiny Paris appartement!  :)  We chatted so long the metros were closed. Luckily, Theo, one of  french guys whose apartment we were staying at (a highschool friend of my host-sister in Lyon) was with us, and knew where we were. So we rented city bikes (Lyon and Paris both have a city bike program, there are bikes at designated locations throught the city and you just swipe a card and take one from one spot and return it at another, for free! its amazing) and took a 2am bike tour of Paris!  Past Notre Dame, the Centre Pompedieu, the latin quarter....all over. It was incredible! and absolutely freezing. But as our french friend said "But it is not everyday that you are in Paris so maybe you can just do it."

Phew! I believe thats a long enough post for now. More to come!

a different kinda mountain

I spent this past weekend skiing in La Clusaz, in the french Alps!  So gorgeous. I might have been dreaming.  It was so crazy, amazing crazy.

Megan, Sima, and I: ready to go!

The ski resort was HUGE! Just in La Clusaz, there were three 6,000-8,000 ft peaks (for comparison, Mt. Rodgers, the tallest in VA is about 5,800ft), and each of these peaks were definitely bigger than the entire Beech Mountain Ski resort. By far. it was just huge. I think you could go all day without doing the same track twice...haha if you're cool enough to handle it.

I love skiing in good ole VA mountains, but skiing here was a completely different ballgame! I think a black slope at Beech Mountain would maybeeeee equal a blue or red here! For all you non-skiiers out there, green<blue<red<black. 

view from our lunch spot

Normally, "whimp" is not a word that I typically use to describe myself. Hahaha, but standing at the top of one of the red slopes and looking down....I dont remember the last time I was that scared!! 

But I lived! :-D

and got so much better at skiing!

The snow was pretty icy, but it was really warm and sunny. At lunch time, we skiied a bit off the slope and chilled out under this tree in the sunshine and looked out over the mountains while munchin' on our little french sandwiches. 

drop off.  that would scare you too, yea?

go magz.

Streets of the little ski town

Incredibly tired, we went back to the chalet (french word for wooden cabin-like house) and made some crepes! a crepe is basically a really really thin pancake. really thin..like paper thin. no way you could put chocolate chips or blueberries in it. This comes after its cooked...you fill it with jelly or nutella or other yummy stuff. But anyways I was really proud of myself for learning to flip one! haha.




Not wanting to pay for a second lift ticket, Megan and I decided to go cross country skiing the next day! CC skiing is kinda like a cross between snowshoeing and ice skating...haha except on skis, if that makes any sense at all. :)

Apparently XC skiing is really popular here! They had all these spiffy little manicured tracks just for skiiers. It was really fun, and of course the view was gorgeous.

french guide: edition 1.

After being in france for a total of One Week, i think its time for me to share some lil things I've learned about the wonderful country of france.

oh and by the way this is a pic of kate and i looking silly beside this huge painted chicken in the middle of the street. hahahaa.

so here it goes.

zee french guide: edition 1:

1. the BREAD is amazing. and cheap! Mmmmm today I bought a decious, crispy, fresh baguette for 0.6 euros. Thats a little less than a dollar. Cheese and wine - equally cheap (i bought amazing goat cheese for 1.3 euro), and delicious.
2. Shampoo and soap are ridiculously expensive! I guess the french are known for having a tendency to be a bit stinky, haha, but everyone i've met has smelled fine so far...
3. Paper products are also really expensive. The cheapest notebook i could find was 5 euros. Thats over $7! and it definitely wasnt anything special. Maybe because there isnt a lot of unsettled land with abundant tress to cut down and make into paper like we have in america?
4. Bathrooms. the toilet is in a completely separate room from the bathtub. In my house, theyre on opposite sides of the house!
5. Litter on the streets is basically inexistent. A couple times we've seen poop on the sidewalks (dog i hope?) but almost never any trash.
6. And i was told that the french dont excercise, but this is false! they do! actually theres a really sweet running path that goes right along the Rhone river, through one of the busiest parts of town. Its great, and lots of people run there, not just americans. Though you can tell which ones are european because they wear these sleek little jogging outfits. haha.
7. As in most big cities, nobody looks at you or acknowledges your presence on the sidewalks. BUT on the designated running paths apparently its okay to stare people down. Or maybe I just look weird in my shorts and tshirt. Or maybe its because i was running on the right side instead of the left. ha, who knows.
8. un cafe = a shot of expresso. not an 8 ounce cup. for those who know coffee lingo, a cafe americano is when you take an expresso shot and add water to it. its called that because thats exactly what american coffee is, expresso shot toned down with some water. so basically here, all the coffee is REALLY STRONG. really strong. not that i mind that, haha, but it is. And they drink coffee throughout the day, my host family even has it after dinner (about 9pm).
9. reduced fat milk isnt really very popular. everything is made with whole. yummmmmmmmyyyy. this i like. yet it seems like all the french people are skinny. hmm, guess all the walking evens it out. yay for real food. :-)

january ninth

So I moved in with my family Friday evening! They are so sweet. My host maman teaches English/French translation classes at the l’Universitie Catholique in Lyon, et my host papa just retired from some sort of financial/organizational counseling with large businesses & universities ( he told me in French so I’m not really sure what it is haha).  

They have had lots of exchange students over the years, one of which is still here from last semester (leaving on Monday actually) who has given me a ton of advice about Lyon and which iphone apps I need to download.

Ma famille has 5 children, all older than me, two of which are living at the house now! Their daughter (whose 21^st birthday happens to be today!) studies la coulture which is SEWING!!! She is hoping to do some sort of occupational therapy type thing using sewing, and also just to teach people in impoverished areas how to sew so they can use the skill to make a living! Isn’t that awesome?! 

And then one of their older sons lives with his wife in the alps, and makes a living taking people on backpacking trips in the alps!

Could you think of two more awesome jobs? I think that’s pretty cool.

Anyways, heres a pic of my room:

And some pics from walking around:

a little polka dot smart car!!! :-D

a store of undies. undiz! haha.

passageway through some buildings in Vieux Lyon (the old part of the city), used to be an open sewer, haha, now a tourist attraction.

a cool view of Vieux Lyon

We randomly ran into another student and her host dad on the street, who took us throught this locked secret passageway that cut through some building in the middle of the city!

he told us this is where they put bad americans. 

And right now I'm sitting im my little french room, watching the rain pour down on the streets of Lyon.  Phew! It's nice to have some time to sit and rest! I feel like we've just been going going going all the time! Not that thats any different from back home but still...haha. Yesterday we ended up walking over 6 miles (yes i calculated it from the map).  My feet are just a tad sore. Haha, next time i thimk we might just take the bus! :-) 

I finally made it!

Tri-Cities to Atlanta to Amsterdam, and at last, to Lyon! There are two rivers that run through the city, the Rhone and the Saone, forming "le presqu'ile" which means almost island en francais. Here's the Rhone just before sunset:

The city is pretty cool. Yep. We had a blast exploring the streets and getting lost yesterday!

We have a two week introductory/how to be a frenchstudent class which we started this morning. It was ummm...interesting! haha. The university is right on the river, heres a picture:

More exploring tomorrow! :-)