Week of January 17th, 2022

This week, I started my elective classes at my new university. I’m taking Lyon Beyond the Walls, Travel Photography (which doesn’t begin until March), and French International Relations since 1945 (which doesn’t begin until next week). So I guess only one of my electives start this week! I am also taking a French language preparation course for my placement exam that I’ll be taking in the beginning of February. All of the students in my program have to take this exam in order to be placed in the correct intensive language courses that we’ll be taking from February through the end of the semester. I’m hoping to be placed into Third Year French 2 and Fourth Year French 1. My French prep course is also to help refresh me on anything I might’ve forgotten since my last French class (which was only last semester) but it seems that I’ve forgotten some basics already! I’m really excited to start my intensive French classes so I can become more confident in speaking French with native speakers! Right now, I stumble over my words and hesitate a lot. Though, I feel like my listening skills have already improved a decent amount. If I’m having a conversation with a local, some of the time I still don’t understand them, but I’m starting to recognize what they’re saying a few seconds afterwards. My downfall is struggling to come up with a response at a reasonable speed.

Lyon Beyond the Walls

For my Lyon Beyond the Walls class, we meet in a different part of the city for each session, and it only lasts the first two weeks of school! We meet five days the first week and then one day the second. I’m happy it’s a short class because it can be exhausting walking for two hours and listening to different speakers, however, I still really enjoy my class. This class is completely in French, so it is challenging at times. Yet, as the week went on, I felt like I understood more and more of what Madame was saying. I really enjoyed this class because we explored some of the arrondissements of Lyon and businesses that I wouldn’t know of if I didn’t take the class.

For our first class, we sat in the classroom to learn some background info for the course, and on Monday we started exploring. For our first meet up, we were supposed to meet on a corner street of Lyon, but the address we were given was to a medical center about twenty minutes away by metro. Our class showed up pair by pair, yet we still couldn’t find the teacher. We figured we had to have gotten the location right if we all showed up to the same place, but where was Madame? We decided to shoot her a text to see if we were at the wrong place, and sure enough we were. I thought this happened on purpose to give us time to bond and find our way through the city, but it was in fact not supposed to happen. Twenty minutes later, we meet up with Madame and begin our class.

On Monday, we visited a fire station in the 7th arrondissement, along with a youth hostel, family run honey company, a local café, and a local carpenter. It was really cool to walk through the hostel and learn about their story since I’d never been to one before, but I plan on staying in hostels when I travel throughout this semester and after my study abroad is over. My favorite stop was at the family run honey company, called ABC – Apiculture Bleta Company. I really enjoyed this visit because we were able to sample some of their honeys, such as lavender, montagne, and acacia. My favorite was their floral honey! I didn’t buy any honey, however I may go back to buy a jar because I normally have honey every day back home.

After class on Monday, I went to a coffee shop with some friends to chat before we decided what we wanted to do next. I didn’t order anything but they did have wine list so I want to go back there for a glass some day. The café was called Café Nova, and it was really cute inside with a bunch of tables, even tables outside, and their menu was handwritten in multiple notebooks with sections for each type of drink. I thought this was a really unique way of presenting their menu! I think this would be a good spot for me to write blogs when I have time.

My other favorite day of Lyon Beyond the Walls this week was on Thursday when we visited Les Halles De Paul Bocuse – which is the international center of gastronomy! Les Halles de Paul Bocuse is essentially an indoor market with restaurants layered throughout. Madame gave us a paper with different foods we had to find throughout the market and set us on our way in groups of two. Some of the things we had to find were different types of cheese, macarons, what a groton and coussin were, and to create our own three course meal and pair it with a glass of wine. This activity was very enjoyable because I got to learn about different ingredients of the French culture and even try it for myself. I tried the coussin and groton out of all of the things on the list. A coussin is a traditional Lyonaisse dessert, and is essentially a small, soft, turquoise almond paste coated in sugar and filled with chocolate ganache in the shape of a little pillow. The coussin dates back to 1960 when a plague hit Lyon, and an alderman presented a 7-kilogram candle along with a gold écu coin on a silk pillow to the Virgin Mary, in efforts to have the plague leave the city. Nowadays, the coussin is a classic Lyonnaise dessert and it often gifted to love ones. I also tried the groton, which is essentially pork fat, similar to bacon, however it had a mixture of crunchiness and chewiness. I wasn’t a fan of the groton, it left a bad after taste in my mouth. I thought I would like the groton, but I think the main difference between it and bacon is that the groton is only fat.

After class, I picked up a salmon burger from one of the shops before heading to my next class. I wasn’t originally planning on having fish for lunch (mainly because I’m not a big seafood person) but the salmon burger looked so decadent I knew I had to have it. It was essentially a salmon filet in between a sesame seed bun with an aioli. Also, fun fact, aioli is called aioli because it has garlic in it, and in French, garlic is ail. Once I picked up my salmon burger, I needed to hop on a bus to get to school but I happened to hop on the wrong one and needed to find another stop, so I only arrived right on time and wasn’t able to eat my burger until we had a break during class. The salmon burger was easily the best decision I’d made all day, it was bursting with flavor and made me fall more onto the side of being a fan of seafood.

Band Dessinée

I sat in on the Band Dessinée class, meaning, I wasn’t enrolled in the class but I was interested in seeing what it was about. I had read some Band Dessinées in my French Literature class last semester. I really enjoyed the way Madame presented this Band Dessinée course, and I think it’d definitely be challenging. I’m considering taking it but if I do, I would need to drop my other elective, French International Relations since 1945, but I already bought the textbook for it. We’ll see what I decide to do.

**Update: I decided not to take the Band Dessinée class since it brought me too much stress since I’d have to present multiple times throughout the semester, but I plan on reading band dessinées on my own time throughout the semester.

Overall, this week brought some stress but also a lot of excitement! I didn’t write about any of the new places I’d seen because I ran out of time, but hopefully I will keep up with it next week. À plus tard!