Jours Quinze, Seize, Dix-sept, et Dix-huit.

Jours Quinze, Seize, Dix-sept, et Dix-huit. 15/9/10, 16/9/10, 17/9/10, 18/9/10.

Hello again, dear readers.

Some exciting business happening, so I’ll try my best to be brief (since I’m lazy and sleepy) but detailed (because I know you’re hanging on my every word).

I’m pretty sure that on Wednesday, the only thing of importance that happened was that I did laundry and it was 5 euro. How ridiculous is that. Actually … maybe it was even Monday that I did laundry. Oops. I can’t even remember. :|

If I can’t remember, I guess it means I did nothing worthwhile. EXCEPT I think maybe that was the day I attempted to make a rice/chicken/onion/egg/soysauce concoction and then Rosalind stopped by to chat for part of the day. Sure. We’ll say that was my Wednesday.

Thursday, I did indeed have an interesting day. I grabbed some grapes at Auchan, hopped on the metro to meet Georgie, Katie, Laura, and Stephanie at Place Rihour so we could go for a trip out to the Citadelle, which is supposed to be a nice little area to walk/jog/wander and is also the location of the zoo! Well, I came up from the metro station and surprise, surprise! Il pleuvait. It wasn’t so bad, but we decided to try and wait it out. It only rained harder. Au lieu de going to the Citadelle, we turned around and headed back to Fives/Marbrerie where Georgie, Katie, and Laura live. We made a pretty makeshift but enjoyable lunch, where I learned about an English love for gherkin pickles, that the Germans use a really strange verb for “to bruise” that they also use for children playing in sandboxes (Yeah, even Stephanie was confused when she tried to explain it to us…), and told everyone that we have horse and buggy parking at the Walmarts in Lancaster County. Following tea, Stephanie and I left their house and went back to the metro. Thankfully, it had stopped raining by then, and I went right back into Lille to meet Rosalind.

Rosalind is a very likeable person. We get along great, and she’s a woman who likes to make a plan. (As I am about to summarize our adventures, I'd like to make you aware of her blog as well, as it might give some different, or, dare I admit, better information than my own: http://notlostjustwandering-rosalind.blogspot.com/). We followed her highlighted path on the map of Lille for a while, stopping at the Opera house to enquire about tickets, a few bookstores, Vieille Bourse, Meert, Lush, and l’Église Saint-Maurice, specifically.

(A street in Lille)

The opera house is a pretty intense looking building, if you ask me. I always want to take pictures of it when we pass by it. I grabbed some pamphlets with information about shows and tickets, but will admit I haven’t really looked at any of it. Yet.

(Opera et Chambre de Commerce et la tete de Rosalind)

The Vieille Bourse is this really cool, golden building with some historical information about Lille on the inside. Even better, it doubles as a neat little vending area for old books, some movies, postcards, and posters. I bought some old francs to use in my creation of some special souvenirs (Rosalind gave me the idea, I never would’ve come up with it on my own..) and then also bought what will probably be my best purchase in France: a full size Harry Potter et le Prince Sang-Mele poster. I’m not entirely sure how I’ll pack it to go home, and I did look a bit awkward and bizarre walking all around Lille with it, and then I even had to pawn it off to the care of Rosalind and Sarah later, as it started raining and I was (once more) sans parapluie..

(Vieille Bourse - on the right)

(Vieille Bourse)

The bookstores were interesting. Rosalind was on the hunt for some Nord-Pas-de-Calais cookbooks, and all the French books, although pleasing and exciting to see, kind of overwhelmed me. Reading books will be good practice for me, but it’s been such a long time since I sat down and read for pleasure that it intimidates me. I have Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets on the little shelf above my bed (Really, are you at all surprised?) and I’m slowly trying to read through it. Slowly. It will be really great to go back to the bookstores later in the year to buy things, though.

(A street in Lille)

Meert (www.meert.fr) is a completely beautiful, famous chocolaterie/superawesomedessert store. We walked inside, saw how delicious everything looked, and then I sort of regretted even going inside because I wanted to buy and eat everything.

We ended up in Lush, which is a really popular cosmetics/bath/body/stuff store (www.lush.com). Or at least, it’s a really popular store in the rest of the world. I think very few people in the US know of it, but Anne from Amsterdam works at a store, and there’s one right in Lille, so I’m planning to try some, despite how expensive it is. Solid bar shampoo+conditioner with fruity/interesting flavors sounds really neat.

On from Lush, we stopped at l’Église Saint-Maurice. Beautiful. It was beautiful. When we meandered around to the other side, we stopped to read some flyers posted on the door about free guided tours this weekend (Les Journées de Patrimoine). At this point, a very random, albeit friendly, old Frenchman came up to me and started asking me questions. I legitimately had difficulty understanding him, and kept blinking and repeating that I didn’t understand, at which point he sort of turned his attention to Rosalind. When we still didn’t get it, he instead whipped out a ring of keys and unlocked the door for us, motioning us to go inside. Why yes, yes, indeed. This man was opening up l’Église Saint-Maurice out of the kindness of his fast-talking, toothy French heart (what?) and showing us inside, letting the two of us wander through the church quickly to snap a few dark photos before exiting again. It took me about a minute to get over my panicked thought of “what if this strange man locks us inside the church and calls the police to tell them that two American tourists have broken into a breath-taking gothic church?!” once I saw a bit inside. It really did overwhelm me and take my breath away.

(l’Église Saint-Maurice)

(l’Église Saint-Maurice)

(l’Église Saint-Maurice)

(l’Église Saint-Maurice)

(l’Église Saint-Maurice)

Calm and completely safe, we left the church and headed for République Beaux Arts, where we were to meet the other ISEP students and my friend Clémence, stopping in a cd/dvd/videogame store (which was playing “It’s Raining Men” over the loudspeakers when we entered, by the way…) along the trek. We arrived a bit early and waited at the fountain.

(Palais des Beaux Arts. Encore.)

(Préfecture de Lille. Yep. I found out what it was..)

Clémence is a student from Lille 3 who spent the last year on an ISEP exchange to University of Kansas. I contacted her on facebook when I found out I would be coming here, and she’s been nothing but friendly, welcoming, and helpful. She brought along two of her friends to take us for drinks. After a quick detour to Subway for some hungry mouths, we shuffled along in the rain (Yep. Again.) to make it to a bar which had no room for us. So, we hopped next door to a “Canadian Bar” and stayed there for quite a while. More of Clémence’s friends joined us, including two American guys who had studied abroad in France and are now English TAs, one in a university in Valenciennes (a city nearby) and one in Lille 1 (the school for sciences, I think?). I had panaché, which is beer with lemonade, I suppose? It was pretty okay, but I tried Sarah’s cherry beer, and that was really, really good. All the beer makes me think of Dad, and how excited he’ll be to try it all.

After the drinks, we encountered several girls from Juniata College. That’s right. Juniata. Really, what are the odds of that? In any case, they were completely drunk, loud, rude, and practically stumbling all over one another. It turns out that Juniata College does indeed have a special program in Lille, a partnership with the Catholic university here. Right, well, let’s just say that I am wholly uninterested in meeting those girls again, after seeing them like that. It was really sort of disgusting, to be honest. If there was one thing that was pounded into my head by my peers and advisors before I left, it was to be sensible and careful, specifically of stereotypes people may have towards Americans or women (or American women) and to work to reverse them. These girls… I can’t even.. I was really upset by the way they were acting, basically shouting in English without a care in the world on a subway in a foreign country, full of locals who most probably don’t appreciate having their lives disrupted in such a way. I’m a foreigner in a foreign country and I don’t want my night ruined by loud drunks. Anyway, I think that’s a bit too much on the subject, but needless to say, we’re not really planning on seeking out their company…

Righto. On to Friday.

Friday morning, Raashnie, Rosalind and I headed over to the Lille 3 campus to search for the times and locations of our classes. Coincidentally, Clémence and her two friends are some sort of helpers to hand out planners, maps, and show people where they need to go. We successfully managed to take down the information we needed. Rosalind and I had an excellent little lunch in the café on campus, discussing everything from classes, to music, to politics, to pets, to growing up. I had to leave her, though, and rushed to the metro to meet Laura, Georgie, and Stephanie for the Citadelle. The Citadelle is super cool, and after walking around the perimeter with Georgie (Laura and Stephanie wanted to run. Gross.), we all headed into the zoo!

(Awesome tree trunk carving around the Citadelle)

(Citadelle)

(Oh haaaayyyyyy, guys! I'm in the Citadelle!)

(Hedwig. She's winking at me. She knows I really should have gone to Hogwarts..)

(The only thing I know about mongoose(mongeese?) are that they eat cobras. Yeah, Rikki Tikki Tavi, I'm talking about YOU.)

(Meerkats!)

(WHAT AN AWESOME EXHIBIT!!!!!!1)

(This giant tortoise was huge and lumbering and really, really old. We liked him a lot.)

(Pelicans are HUGE.)

(Rhino!)

(Some pretty houses on the walk to the Citadelle)

Taynà came over to watch Mulan with me (in French, of course). Partway through, we wanted some chocolat chaud. Down in the kitchen, we met Khalid and talked with him for a few minutes. The movie was, as expected, great, and afterwards we spent some time sitting on my bed chatting and looking up maps of Brazil, the US, and France. With Taynà, I have to speak French, so it’s good practice and she’s a really sweet girl. After she left, I ended up staying up too late and slept in until almost noon.

I declined all invitations of social fun today, and instead worked out my class schedule and relaxed. If all goes according to plan and I can manage to stay in Arabic 2, I’ll be finished with classes for the week by 10:30am on Wednesdays. Great news, as that should allow for more liberty with traveling. I studied a little French, a little Arabic, both of which are leaving me pretty self-conscious and discouraged, if you’d like for me to be completely honest. I am fighting a battle with myself to stay motivated about learning the languages, and the situation is turning into a constant mantra of “This will be easier in time. Things will come back to my memory in time. Give it time.”

En outreeeee, I did a teeny bit of research to make plans for my birthday. Hello, I’ll be 20 on Monday. No longer a teenager. I feel so old. Like, really old. Anyway, I have class until 8pm on Monday, so then I do believe we’ll be hitting a BAKED POTATO RESTAURANT (http://www.lapatatiere.com/restaurant-lille) for dinner to celebrate. James, lovely, Irish, silly James, asked me why I would go to a baked potato restaurant in France, and I suppose if you’re wondering the same thing, I’d just like to (re)inform you that my favorite food is potatoes and it is my birthday dinner…

Tomorrow, I have plans to go to the Wazemmes market with Rosalind, before heading back to l'Église Saint-Maurice for the free guided tour, and perhaps meandering up to Vieux Lille. Monday does begin class as I mentioned, so I’ll try and update soon with a recap/photos of tomorrow’s adventures, my birthday, etc. Oh, and this weekend is “Les Journées Européennes du Patrimoine”. I’m not entirely sure of the point or what it means, and I feel guilty for not investigating, but I’m too lazy. Basically, what I’ve gathered is that most monuments and museums are free or have things going on by reservation. Cool idea, had I really planned things better, but today was well deserved regardless.

Right so, this is really, really lengthy.

In parting, I’d like to leave a song that I constantly have to play over and over again on Youtube. I think the first link may not work in the US, so I’m hoping the second will, but please try both!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAdr5j1ztNQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1-Dg6qERhI

A la prochaine fois, mes amis.