Halloween, à la française.

Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, but I must admit that I do miss the economy size bags of trick or treat candy and The Rocky Horror Picture show. Being in a country where Halloween really doesn't exist at all in the American sense made me feel the need to fête this day of fright and fun in any way possible. Yesterday my friend and I happened upon a pretty neat video store near the Hôtel de Ville and purchased a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds for 4 euros. We had dinner and a chocolate pumpkin at her residence and watched the movie. All in all a pleasant evening on All Hallows Eve.

communal toilet paper, and other tales from french public restrooms

This is probably the "bloggiest" thing I've ever done -- writing an entry in between classes. Just thought I'd finally write about the most stressful parts of my day at the fac: finding a bathroom. Turns out that restrooms here at the university are unisex (which was certainly a shock the first time I walked in). They also seem to be cleaned about once a year, which makes the situation especially bad on rainy days like today. We're talking muddy floors and no hooks on the doors to hang your coat or bag. Oh, and there's also that odor that I can't even compare to anything you might recognize because it's worse than anything else I can think of. And did I mention that there are no toilet seats? Well, there are no toilet seats! But luckily for the guys, that isn't a problem (I can tell because there's no door separating the urinals from the toilet stalls.

So my daily quest is to find a bathroom where the word "sanitaire" (the word on the doors of bathrooms here, ironically) actually means something. Thanks to an exchange student from New Zealand, I've discovered the wonders of the library restrooms, where you can get toilet paper in your own individual stall rather than from the one dispenser outside (which begs the question, what if you need more than you anticipated before going to the stall? what then, I ask, what then?), but the floors still have a wetness problem. My favorite one so far is all the way on the top floor of the southernmost building, because it seems like I might be the only one who knows about it -- which means cleanliness and no odor. But also no mirrors. Well, you've got to take what you can get.

I knew libraries were cool, but this is something else!

Am pretty proud of myself today because I actually got a good amount of work done by getting off my butt and going to la Bibliothéque de la Part Dieu -- the biggest municipal library in Lyon. Turns out you've got to have all sorts of paperwork to get a library card, so I just hung out there and read up on Courbet, who I have to write a paper on in my Art History class.

While the architecture of the whole Part Dieu complex is pretty horrid, the inside of the library is cool. They have a gallery/exhibition space that's really open and bright and a nifty little café right in the lobby where I had a delicious lyonnais salad. Also picked up a ton of brochures about stuff going on in Lyon, which should come in handy.

I'm in this weird place where I don't know exactly what to do with myself at the moment -- I didn't get invited to go out tonight by anyone, so I'm just kind of lounging around at home. Hopefully someone will organize something for tomorrow because I'm not sure I like this feeling of having nothing to do.

my new favorite food

RACLETTE. It's what's for dinner.

It's kind of like fondue, but more delicious. You need a special little machine that melts the cheese in individual pans which you then slather onto your choice of cured meats (saucisson, prosciutto, etc) and boiled potatoes. According to my host mom, it's a specialty of the Haute-Savoie region, where I also had the ridiculous pleasure of eating tartiflette, a mix of cream, potatoes, and bacon (basically raclette but already melted and all mixed together). I feel like I weigh 1000 pounds, but it is SO worth it.

la vita è bella

Still recovering from a busy weekend in Torino. The city was a lot bigger than I expected it to be (probably bigger even than Lyon) and it seems like we chose the right weekend to go: there was a huge festival that featured stalls with regional farmers selling their wares, which meant a Sunday lunch feast like you wouldn't believe. Torino's also jam packed with museums, of which I only got to three: below you've got some pictures of the inside of the Palazzo Madama, once the seat of the royal family of Savoia. I'm thinking about sticking around Lyon for the next few weekends since it's literally been a month since I've done so! I'm all traveled out for the time being...

broken.

Tonight was one of my most awkward here at the Pellet home. Neither my oldest host sister nor my host brother were at home for dinner, so there were only 5 of us at the table. My two youngest host sisters (aged 8 and 10) were pulling what seemed like the normal antics, but the parents were especially on edge - even going so far as to hit the two of them on the back of the head. Both my host parents hit them each once, at the table, but it didn't really change anything about the way they were acting.

My host mother is an aggressive character - earlier, I scuttled into the kitchen to get a cup of tea since I've been feeling under the weather today. She told me off for not dressing appropriately, calling it idiote that I wasn't wearing a scarf inside the house. I was a bit taken aback that she would talk to me that way, but perhaps that language isn't quite as strong in French as it is in English?

At any rate, I'm pretty excited about my weekend trip to Turin tomorrow. I'm going with a group of American girls, only one of which I actually know. But it doesn't matter - I'll be thrilled to be at Italy again.

I must say that I feel quite guilty for spending as much money as I am on traveling when the only news you ever hear these days is that the economy is a mess. Am I being a good global citizen by not witholding my spending, or should I be more prudent about where my money is going?

3 countries in 3 weeks? systems are go

Turns out blogging is hard when you travel. And when you watch lots of TV shows online.

I made my first big solo trip two weekends ago to San Sebastian, Spain for their annual film festival. The city is absolutely gorgeous; once the beach getaway for the royal family, it remains a ritzy vacation spot, but also a hangout for Basque surf bums.


While I certainly had some butterflies in my stomach about traveling alone, everything went fine. The weirdest thing about going solo is eating -- although luckily, I was saved by tapas and bounced from one café to another and only eating one tapa at each.

Last weekend, I finally met up with my friends who's studying in Menton for a weekend in Avignon. While the weather was gorgeous, it was colder than we thought!

And now I'm planning a weekend away in Torino, Italy. I miss Italy so much and now that I'm surrounded by French people 24/7, I zone in on Italians the way I used to with French people back home in the States. I've met some lovely students from Bologna at the university, so hopefully I'll be able to continue practicing my italian with them.