France

This was my first two day weekend since arriving in France and I was feeling a little worn out from all the long distance travelling so I decided to take a shorter trip and go visit my friend, Travis, who was working in a small town of Peage de Rousillon and living in the smaller town of Annonay, France. He decided that there wasn't two days of stuff to do in Annonay so we met in Lyon on friday where we walked around and saw the town. That night he thought he was meeting his friend at a bar in Lyon so we waited for about an hour in this bar and sent numerous text messages to his friend only to return to the hotel and a text message explaining that travis was mistaken on the meeting date and time, it was saturday night. The next morning we went up to the large basillica on the top of a large hill in Lyon, went to a FNAC (a french version of Bestbuy) where we spent a good bit of time trying to find an electrical adapter for travis. Then we headed to Peage de Rousillon to get Travis' car, which is a manual delivery van with no rear view mirror (because there is no rear window). This was pretty fun to watch Travis drive since he still has not mastered the stick shift yet and it is in the Rhone Alps region in France where there is no shortage of large hills, round-abouts, and large hills with round-abouts. Needless to say there were a few stalls but we made it there safely. That night we walked around and got some tasty pizza before our night began. We decided to go do our own Annonay pub crawl. We had some really good and really bad beers, a very drunk bartender gave us some licorice flavored liquor, and a lot of funny or weird people. We of course never got drunk because we were too cheap to buy that much beer and spread this out over a course of 4 or 5 hours. The next morning we got up and tried to find a place where travis could throw away his trash and then we headed back to Peage de Rousillon where I caught my train back to Metz.

Sorry I have fallen so far behind in posting. The weekend in Marseille was awesome. Emily and I left on thursday night and arrived in Marseille early morning on Friday. When we arrived we went to the hostel with a "24-hour reception" which was closed. So we walked along the water for quite a long time. We went back to the hostel around 11 and they were open this time. They were very nice explaining that they had just finished renovations on the whole hostel at 3AM and since our train was late figured we weren't showing up until later and went back to bed. We rested at the hostel until my good friend, who is interning near Lyon, France this summer, met us at the hostel. After that we went down to the Vieux Port which has been a bustling port since the Greek empire. There is a vieux fort to go along with the vieux port and we got to go up into the fort and check it out. There was an amazing church on the top of a hill in Marseille but since we were feeling a little cheesy we took a little gas powered "train" (a gas powered tourist trap) up to the top for a couple euros each. We saw the church and got to ride the train with 50 obnoxious teenagers who were chanting something in French that we couldn't quite understand (despite all three of us speaking good french). That night we went out to dinner at a really cool tapas place that was suggested by the owners of the hostel. This hostel, by the way, was the coolest place we were all weekend. The staff was soooo friendly, they all spoke GREAT english and even helped us learn some new french and practice it. They also called the tapas bar to let them know that a couple of americans were coming over! After that we were exhausted so we just went off to bed. The next day we took a boat out to an island off the coast, about a 20 minute ride and spent the morning and early afternoon eating some mussels, walking along the beach and exploring the island. This trip had a lot of interesting experiences involved with it. The first was the first beach we found had about 5 or 6 dead birds washed up on the shore, we assume it was due to the high winds but we couldn't be sure. The next was my brilliant idea to pick up a piece of cactus. I carefully procured this piece of cactus from the ground, being careful to avoid the thorns, well the whole thing was covered in thorns so my hand became covered in thorns which Emily and Travis thought was hilarious. It was rather painful though. That night we went to a wine bar where we had some pretty good food and great wine.
The next morning we walked around Marseille for awhile until Travis had to catch his train and Emily and I went off to the beach. We spent the afternoon at the beach until it was time to head off to Avignon.
I finally had my dream come true on the train to Avignon, we got to ride a TGV (train a grand vitesse: train of high speed) which really was fast, on our "slow train" the time from avignon to marseille was about 1.5 hours, the TGV did it in 30 minutes. It was sooo smooth and comfortable. Our hostel in Avignon was nice and the first evening we were so tired from Marseille we grabbed some food and went off to bed. The next day we got up early and went to the Palais de Papes (palace of the popes) which is where the French popes lived for several hundred years during the church's more troubled times. It was spectacular how they managed to spend all of their papal money, mostly gold things or wars. After palais des papes we checked out the next door church and the walled part of the city, this pretty much covered everything in the city. At this point it was around 4 and our train didn't leave until midnight so we did what all smart people do in this situation, go to a movie, in french, without subtitles. We saw pirates of the Carribean 3 which was good but despite our impeccable french skills, I think we still missed a few things. After the movie it was dinner and then off to the train station where we played cards and chatted to other people from the Tech program before we got on our train back to Metz.

So this last week and a half has been really busy!! Last week I had a ton of work plus planning for my Paris trip with Emily!!
Thursday morning I got done with class at 10 and ran back to my room threw everything into my bag and dashed off to the train station. I took a train from Met-Nancy which is about 45 minutes south of Metz (and no closer to Paris) and then a larger (yet somehow slower) train from Nancy to Paris which took about 3 hours. Once in Paris I took the metro(subway system) (which I am now the master at navigating) to meet Emily at the hostel. That night we explored our neighborhood and went to bed early so we could see more of Paris the next day. The next morning Emily wakes me up at 6AM to go explore the city!! We got to the Louvre just before it opened and there was only a short line. Since neither Emily nor myself are really big on art, we did the whirl-wind tour of the Louvre, we saw the basics: the mona lisa, madonna on the rocks, the venus-di-milo, etc etc. Interesting that there is much Italian art in a French museum. After that we walked through the gardens by the Louvre, to the place de la concorde and then down the Champs Elysee to the Arc du Triomphe where we climbed the 287 stairs to get to the top where there is a beautiful panoramic of the city. After that we ate at a cute little cafe on the champs elysee and went back to the hostel and went to bed. After waking up from a short nap we went to dinner at a nice little italian restaurant where the food was delicious, they treated us right and even gave us a free after dinner drink!! After that dinner we were stuffed and sleepy so we went off to sleep.
We got up early again and trucked off to Notre Dame!! After finding Notre Dame and taking all of its glory in we went to the hotel de ville and saw the architecture. After seeing the classic architecture of the Hotel de Ville it was off to the Centre Pompidou to see the "modern" architecture. There we were lured into getting drawings done of us by some artists. They were pretty neat looking so we paid them. After that I was hell-bent on finding this amazing ice-cream place we had when I was in Paris last time. After about 20 minutes of wandering the ile-de-la-cite we managed to find it and it was just as amazing as I remembered. After our ice cream I sent us out on a voyage, this was no simple voyage more like a journey like that from the "Odyssey" we walked through the Quartier Latin and we saw 2 Starbucks across the street from each other!!! In Paris!! Continuing this epic journey we walked to the Luxembourg Gardens where we saw the parisiens in their natural habitat (taking naps, smoking, floating little boats in the fountains, letting their dogs poop and not cleaning it up, writing existensialist poetry, etc) but this was no time for us to brush up on our Jean Paul Sartre, we had to continue our space odyssey. We headed to the Hotel des Invalids which is where napoleon is buried and there is an army museum, but our voyage to the Eiffel Tower would not afford such luxuries as to see the body of our beloved leader, we had to continue on, some men being left behind! We finally stumbled upon the champs de mars which is the park that leads up to the Eiffel Tower. After trying to track down somebody to take our picture we walked up to the beast. We waited in line for about an hour and a half to buy our tickets then another 1/2 hour to take the elevator to the second floor (there are three floors and 2 elevators one takes you to the 1st and 2nd floors and the 2nd takes you to the top floor) after taking a quick look on the second floor we jumped in ANOTHER line to wait for the next elevator to the top floor for another 1/2 hour or so. When we finally got to the top, the weather had turned bad and we only took a short look around before heading back down (and waiting in another 45 minutes of lines) to head back to the hotel. That night we just had kebabs and went to bed!!
The next morning we got up and checked out of our hostel. They let us keep our bags there while we walked around that day which was perfect. We jumped on the metro to the Sacre Coeur and the district of Montemartre it was wet and rainy so we just took some pictures, had some lunch, saw the "moulin rouge" (the place the film is based off of) and headed to the train station back to metz.

During the week, I showed Emily around Metz while still staying on top of my work. Until thursday when we took off for Marseille...

My first week in Metz has been an eventful one. I arrived on Monday in the early afternoon. It was a very simple voyage and communicating with the taxi driver was simple enough (I pretty much just gave him the sheet of where I was going and he entered it into his GPS) After arriving, I checked in, a simple enough process. I got all my stuff sorted and folded and went to set up my internet, this is where the story got interesting. I had the group that runs the internet in the dorms (who all are majoring in computer science) set up my computer and they checked it downstairs and it worked fine. I went up to my room and alas it didn't work. After trying many different ideas, I returned, humbly assuming I had made some silly mistake. Another check and sure enough it worked fine downstairs, was it my cable? Nope we checked that. Ok this is when 3 of them follow me to my room. They run a series of tests on my computer, then on my outlet and ask eachother who was in my room last semester, aye now there's the rub, apparently this person had violated their internet code of conduct and they had physically disconnected the room from the internet (IE unplugged a cable) so they plug the cable back in, I try connecting the computer again and sure enough it works just fine. By that point I was too tired to deal with anything other than a quick e-mail and I went off to bed.

Day 2: Orientation: we had our orientation in the morning and then afternoon classes started. The first class was circuits and electronics. Taught by a "very french" teacher (think of any french person you have seen in a movie and thats the guy). A very nice guy but he underestimates our intelligence I think so the class will be "hard" but he plans on going really slow. The second class was history of rocketry, pretty much what it sounds like: the history of rockets around the world , the class was originally scheduled for tues/thurs 4-6pm but as most of our weekends start friday our teacher didn't want us to miss out on precious travel time thursday evening so we moved the thursday meetings to wednesday! That night we went to downtown Metz to take a tour and have a group pizza dinner. The city is gorgeous, lots of old buildings built in the same style stone (pictures to come soon, I have been way over my upload limit so I will upload those at GTL on monday) It is interesting to think of cathedrals built in the 14th century, before people knew the world was round! It is truly fascinating. The town itself has very little night life and everything closes at about 7! The restaurants stay open a little later (about 10) very interesting considering that most french people don't eat until 8.

Wednesday was the first full day of classes, they will be a significant amount of work but they all seem understanding of travel and travel plans, they aren't going to test us or have large assignments due on monday or tuesday when we have just arrived back in town! They are serious about attendance since we have so few classes it is important to attend class but this shouldn't be a problem since in Metz there isn't much to do other than study and go to class. The network limit should prevent the internet from taking up too much of my time.

Thursday I only had my 9:15 class so I had lunch and then went to Metz with some friends. We went to the train station and asked about reservations on the trains we were going to take that weekend, since we didn't have much time to plan, we decided on day trips out of Metz to Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Nancy, all less than 2 hours by train from metz. I was able to communicate in French to the people at the train station, it was very successful. After that we walked around Metz and got some dinner. We were taking some pictures of the cathedral when I tripped on the cobbles, as I went down I heard (and felt) a pop in my knee and realized I had sublexed it (a minor dislocation) this happens to me about every 6 months due to an abnormal knee and typically is no big deal. I got up and rested for a few minutes, trying to walk it off. Walked around for awhile more and then took the bus back. I figured everything would be fine the next morning but to my dismay I woke up and it was still swollen and stiff. I decided not to go to strasbourg and let my knee heal and potentially go to the doctor. I went back to bed and woke up at 4pm that day!! I guess I was tired. My knee seemed to have improved drastically so I opted out of the doctor that day (not really thinking about it) After walking around the dorm that night I realized my knee wasn't as good as it looked. Realizing that I had no hope in getting to a doctor until monday I took the weekend off. Doing homework and going to the grocery store to buy some food for my meals. It was a very restful weekend. Hopefully tomorrow I can get to a doctor. The swelling has gone down significantly but it is still not back to even 90% so I am pretty sure I need to go to the doctor after class tomorrow.