catch up

hey everyone whats up? i've been busy recently and have been trying to do this blog forever so here goes. i did have a list but lost it, sad.

Lyon here has a special "festival of lights" each december 8. it is a huge deal and millions of peps come to lyon to visit, its now a 4 day deal. they light up popular buildings and have other special stuff. it was actually a bit disappointing. too much talk not enough walk, but definately worth seeing. they gave 17 century sculptures and buildings a painted look etc. there was also alot of errie music, we kept wondering what was up with the music.

I have a good story about our first night out to see the lights too: Ellie (england), Catrine (quebec), Rita(finland) and I (in order of pic) decided we were going to meet some of their friends in another part of town. when we started our journey her friends were already waiting for us in the meeting place. well first ellie and stephen had to have pizza that took 45 min, then we finally got on the metro but one was comming right then so ellie and i decided to sneek in behind the others who already had tickets, we would get tickets at the next stop. (you can get a 39 euro fine, 50$ if you dont have a ticket) so we were on our way just hanging out on the metro when all of a sudden the driver slammed on the breaks and we stopped faster than i thought the metro could stop. Ellie flew into some old people and screamed, we had a good laugh. then we sat there for a while (making us even later). i guess someone "vandalized" something at the next stop. finally we got to the stop where we were going to change metro lines and guess who was there!!!! Yes, the people who make sure you have your tickets, ellie and i had an inner freekout and then calmly turned around and walked back to the line we had just gotten off (you had to walk by the people to get to the other line). so we went to the next stop to buy tickets, but first ellie wanted to go see the lights in that area, pretty but took another 15-30 mins. then we got back on the metro, bought tickets and promptly went to the wrong metro stop, we had to wait 10 mins for the next one. we finally made it back to the others, only a few hours behind schedule, my american ways must be rubbing off on my Sagitaire (residence) friends. (i guess we have some pretty dang loyal friends, haha) eventful night.

we also went out the next night to see another part of town on the real "fete des lumieres."

for the last two weeks i had also been madly reading a french 700 pg book so i could write 8-10 pgs. Ellie and I hung out just doing homework all day. my laptop cord broke just when i was almost done with the book, all my notes were on it. bad deal, i'm still not done with the paper.

me and 3 scottish friends sang in our chior at the christmas market.

for our last day of fencing we got to hook up to the electric scoring system, that was pretty cool, we wore jackets with metal woven into them and everything.

the week b4 xmas break i studyed for and took a written test over slavery in rome and greece. at first i thought the teacher said i would get to do a homework assignment but the word "devoir" that translates to homework in english doesn't necessarily mean you get to do the work at home! I had to do it at the same time as the others during the regular test time. i also thought that i was going to get a different "easier" test, she had said that she would only be testing me on if i understood. Well i had to take the exact same test as the other students, but i was prepaired. we had 2 hours to write 6 short essays. i did well on 4 of them it was the info i had studied, the fifth was on slavery and christianity so i wrote every thing i knew about what the apostle Paul had said about slavery and onesimus ect. i think it worked out pretty well. the last one asked about some roman emperior and what he did with slavery, i had no clue but i just wrote that he made lots of nice laws for the slaves etc. passing is the most important thing to do here for me cuz my grades dont transfer. i was actually pretty happy with the test, for one of the few times i felt very ready for it and glad with how i did. thanks to the class notes i "harvested" off another student at the last minute and to wikipedia.org. like most french exams it was just alot of regergitating information than actually applying it and analyzing it like in the states. that makes it quite harder, but maybe less bennificial. but then in my UM history major i dont learn a ton of informati0n, just get better at writing and anaylizing and honestly bsing.

after the test i got ready to visit Alice and her family heres some pics of her her parents (german mom, french dad) and a german cousin sarah who is studying in paris.

They picked me up at the train station, alice and i watched some movies of when she was in montana and then we decorated the tree. we spent the next few days just relaxing watching movies, playing music, just hanging out. we did presents the 24th, i didnt get to go to a real catholic midnight christmas mass though.

story: i had a non american experience with the bath tub at alices. it wasn't a bad experience at all it was just different. (americans make too many wrong/right, good/bad judgments about these kinds of things, but then again that's our culture, its just different than others...) I was totally up for the experience, probably thinking about a real french cultural memory than anything. they didnt have a shower, just a bath tub with a shower cord thing. you had to wet up, turn the water off, soap up, turn the water back on then rince, repeat. i enjoyed it, though it was dark (i couldnt get the light to work, thought it was just another european energy conservation thing, turns out the light switch was out side, yea i made it more "barbaric" than it had to be. hahaha). They didnt want me to show the video of their house on their blog, i guess that was kind of an intrusion of privacy type deal. But i'm cool with that, i guess i hadn't ever thought of it. i was just excited to see a french house. I really enjoyed my time their, alices dad, a french teacher, even did a grammer lesson with me. we watched movies in english, french, german. (indiana jones is interesting in german.) i also learned a bit of german such as unkontrollierentes Pubsen/Furzen (said: uncontroll i ert es poop sen/ foort zen......... think about it alittle................ yes uncontrollable farting!!! it was the funniest thing ever to hear in german it litterally sounded like uncontrolable pooping or farting, there were two ways of sayign it)


Lastly when i got back i moved in with my new family the Rabenarivo's!!! I met them in my lutheran church here. They are from madagascar originally but have been in france for like 20 years since they studied in lyon. we have also had lots of their cousins here too. we've been having alot of fun, last night we went to a Malgash (Madagascarian is incorect i guess) New Years party and today they thought me their traditonal congo line type dance. Anyone know how to put videos on blogs? i will get some videos up soon if i find out.

This pic is me making grandma's dumplings for dinner, they were facinated at how you put the little "dumps" of dough into boiling water with spoons.

God bless you all in the New Year!!!! And I will miss you Sagi!!!! Clay (or Cligh as they say in my new home)