Today, after riding the tram for 25 minutes into the suburbs of Lyon to meet a professor who didn't show up to our 9am meeting, and then, an hour and a half later, walking home from the tram station in the rain...I decided to bake an apple pie!
Kate and Ashleigh came over to help me eat it, and then of course, I had to make some sweet tea to go along with it.
And man, was it good (even if I do say so myself). Thanks for the recipe Aunt Beth Graham!
Ashleigh and Kate eatin' some pie.
Anddd then tonight for dinner, my host fam wasn't home, and I just happened to find some hamburger meat in the freezer and so made a hamburger for dinner! Of course it was on a french baguette, with chevre, pesto, sundried tomatoes and a little spinach...a french take on my favorite, irreplaceable American classic.
Feeling slightly enclosed by the city's (ridiculously beautiful) roads and buildings, Ashleigh, Olivia and I set off on a mission: to find trees.
We stopped by the market, bought some fresh fruit, baguettes, & cheese, and then took the bus as far as we could go into the countryside northwest of Lyon! Following an ancient map from the 80s given to me my host ma, we walked along the road through several teeny tiny little villages made up of gorgeous french houses with immaculate gardens and views looking out over the river valley.
Walking up! You can't tell from the picture, but thats the Lyon skyline in the background.
Somewhat randomly, we ran across a jazz band performance, a dog obedience school, a sweet tree fort, and a scary version of Epcot along the way.
Jazz band jammin' out in the middle of a pedestrian bridge over the Saone River.
hahaha, dog school.
awesome tree fort!
Evil version of Epcot, which we actually found out is a french military base you're not supposed to take pictures of. Whoops - don't tell.
We found a trail and hiked through fields and some forested areas across Mont Cindre, and then to Mont Thou! There were lots of Mountain bikers on the trail which made me really happy. Wish I could find someone to loan me their bike for a day! In all we were walking for about 5 hours...pretty impressive. I'm still tired. Its amazing how much ground you can cover by foot.
We felt kinda like we were in Pride and Prejudice.
pretty!
I can't wait until spring when everything will be green and beautiful! :-D
When I say Dijon what do you think of? Probably mustard. :) Back in the day, Dijon was the mustard capital of France. Nowadays, there actually just one small mustard factory, and most of the mustardseeds used to make Dijon mustard are imported from other parts of France. But they still have a cool little store for the tourists where you can taste different types of mustard. So this weekend Kate, Juliette, and I took a should little train ride to explore this little city and "gouter le moutard."
So for lunch, I grabbed a baguette and some fruit at the market, and bought some fun-looking mustard.
mmm mustard!
On the left we have the bright-green tarragon mustard (tarragon is a spice), in the middle "mutard d'espices", which is basically gingerbread flavored, and then on the right, bright pink ___ mustard! The gingerbread was a little funky, haha, but I loved the rose. It was super spicy though, it really clears out your sinuses. By far the most interesting mustard we tasted was the Chocolate-Speckulos variety that we tasted in the store. MMMMmmm, and it definitely tasted more like chocolate than mustard :)
There are so many gorgeous churches in Lyon, here are Kevin, Juliette, and Kate in front of one. Kevin was our Couch-Surfing host for the weekend. For those of you who don't know, Couch Surfing in a network of people who are willing to "host" travelers for a couple of days. This could mean merely showing them around the area, or offering couches or spare bedrooms for them to stay in. You may think that sounds really sketchy, but generally, people are incredibly nice and are just really eager to share their culture, learn about other cultures, and show off their hometown to others. I met two girls my first week in Lyon, who were originally from Hong Kong and had spent the last YEAR AND A HALF traveling throughout California, England, and France. They couchsurfed the entire time and said they had never had a sketchy, questionable situation. Amazing. Kevin is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. He spent his entire Saturday and Sunday showing us around Dijon. He was such a great sport for putting up with all our questions and our horrible french (most people who speak english end up speaking back to you in English, even when you talk to them in french because their comprehension of English is so much better than our comprehension of French, America- we should start teaching language at an earlier age....) Anyways, as a thank you, we cooked dinner for Kevin Saturday night! We were all craving some Tex-Mex (almost impossible to find here!) so we cooked up some fajitas and guacamole! Yummmm. :) only problem was, the "Fajita" seasoning packet we bought tasted like barbecue! Somebody mixed up their "american" flavors!
Throughout the town of Dijon, there are these little, bronze owls in between the cobblestones. If you follow them, they lead to a sculpture of an owl on the side of an ancient church. If you find the owl, you're supposed to touch it with your left hand and make a wish.
une chouette (that means owl in french:) )
Me getting lucky.
Then, we decided to take a bus out into the countryside. The city of Dijon has about 100,000 people or so, but it doesn't take very long to get out of the city into the middle of nowhere.
hello wine country.
Ha. Yeah so it wasn't until after we had gotten off the bus that we realized that since it was Sunday, another bus wouldn't come for about 5 hours. Typical. On Sundays in France, nearly everything is closed. Ah, but little village was so pretty! To bad it was cold and we didn't have a way to get home
.
A cool tower/gazebo we found
Luckily, we found a wine retail shop that was open! The lady there helped us find some sandwiches and get a ride back to town.
Stranded.
After safely making it back to Dijon, we went to another museum and looked at 17th century french paintings and naked marble statues. There was an entire room of marble Saints, all in different poses. I thought this one was really great:
The other trains that I have ridden just had seats in rows, kinda like a bus, but on the ride back from Dijon, we ended up having our own compartment! It was just like HARRY POTTER! We were SO incredibly excited, and pulled the curtains closed, blasted some music, and pretended we were on the Hogwarts Express.
This year, my Superbowl sunday was spent watching two different types of football. I went with all the UVA students to see a Lyon vs. Bordeaux (a city in the West of France) football match! In france, colleges and universities do not have athletic teams, instead each of the bigger cities have their own team. Apparently, Lyon's football team has won the championship several times, but this game they were a little off. BUT the game was evenly matched and remained 0:0 the whole time. Apparently they only have overtime/tie breakers in tournament games. The stadium was huge, and really smokey, and we had fun trying to figure out what the crowd was chanting.
Then after the match, all twenty or so of us headed over to watch the Superbowl! Even though it started at 12:30 am our time, and most of us didn't really care about football (french majors...yea, a broad yet quite accurate generalization), we were really excited to watch it!
We were SOOOOO disappointed to find out that we were viewing a British broadcast of the game, and apparently the US companies didn't want to pay to show their awesome advertisements to europeans, so we didn't get to see any of the commercials! :-( That's like my favorite part! Haha, so feel free to tell me what your favorites were so i can go look them up on youtube.
After being in dear old France for nearly a month now, I've conquered steep alpine mountains, the Lyon metro system, some intense hamburger cravings and I've come across a few more funny little facts along the way.
Olivia, Annie, Ashleigh, and I about to chow down on some hamburgers at Nankasi's (think Para couches, Macados decor, and Bolyan burgers. yes.)
zee french guide, take two:
1. In France, Coffee To-Go doesn’t really exist. Apparently coffee is more of a sit down and think about life kind of affair rather than an “oh crap, lets chug this on the way to class so I can stay awake” type of thing. Hahaa. On the other hand, footlong baguette sandwiches are often eaten while walking down the sidewalk.
2. Refrigeration. They don’t refrigerate eggs. And milk is only refrigerated after you open the bottle!
3. SUVs do exist. Granted I’ve only seen like 3, but yeah, I saw three! And I saw a Ford the other day too, some American brands are kind of a novelty just because its really hard to get them here (I was told I could sell my Abercrombie and American Eagle shirts for pretty good money, haha)
4. The jazz scene in Lyon is surprisingly happenin’. Lots of college kids. Packed jazz bars. Sweet, who would have thought!?
5. Sadly its true, the french aren't really big fans of peanut butter. They just don't understand. :) however, you can find it, its just really expensive in comparison. Though i have to say, nutella is a good substitute.
Pen for scale. notice that the electronic price thingie says 6.45 euro, almost nine dollas!! yum yum!
6. So many people smoke. It you’re walking down the sidewalk and don’t smell tobacco, something is wrong. And its people of all ages. After class, probably a third of the students go outside and smoke, just different.
7. Being young. If you’re between 18-25 years old in France, you've got it made. We get all sorts of benefits…free entry to almost any museum (only one I had to pay for in Paris was Eiffel Tower), reduced train, metro, and opera tix, meal specials at restaurants…yes, fabulous.
8. Crème de Marrons. Ever eaten a chestnut? We had a couple trees in my backyard growing up, haha I just remember the prickley shells getting stuck in my feet. But along side the Nutella in the grocery store, they sell Crème des Marrons, which is a nutella/jam/I dunno type of spread that I thought I would try just for the heck of it. And its really funky, but kinda good! Haha. Acutally my host mom made a cake out of it! Mmmmmmm so good!
creme de marrons!
9. Speaking of cake, we almost never have dessert – or what I would consider in America to be dessert. The only time was for Steph’s birthday (the chestnut cake)! Instead after dinner, we always have either fruit, applesauce, or plain yogurt with lots of sugar on top. Which I like a lot. But its just a little different from living in the Graham household where either Nana or Dad is encouraging you to eat pie and icecream after every meal. :-D
10. Hearing a French person say the word “brownie” is hilarious. Ashleigh ordered one the other night and the waitress had no clue what she was asking for. Hahaa. I don’t know how to type phonetic spellings, but here’s my best attempt: “bruuuniee.”
11. Classes are really looooonnnnnnggggg. A typical 3 credit class at UVA meets three days a week for 50 minutes each. In France, they meet once a week for 3 hours. Hey, why not just get it all over with at once?
12. There is a candy store in the older part of town that has big wooden barrels filled with candy. It made me think of the one in Valley Crucis, NC! No worries though, the Valley Crucis one still wins. Stiff completion. But it was a good try.
i think the cashier thought we were really weird. haha
13. French students are really bad about talking in class! In ALL my lectures last week there were groups of students chatting CONSTANTLY throughout the class! The prof in one class kept having to stop and sshhhh the class. So weird. and rather annoying.
14. There is NO SLICED BREAD in our kitchen. My host mom never buys it, always baguettes! :-D and they are so heavenly. But, they get hard and stale after about a day. So, she buys like 8 at a time and puts them in the freezer, then we just pull one out and thaw/microwave it when we wanna eat it!
15. A couple nights ago as I was walking home, a little bitty green European car with 3 students about my age, and the windows down blasting Shania Twain’s “Man I Feel like a Woman.” Hahaaaha. I was like YES. Thank you US of A. It was great.
