en conclusion...

Just got finished with my final exam at Lyon 3. In true French university fashion, the people at Relations Internationales were not expecting me and my classmate this morning, and it took nearly half an hour for them to find our exams and get us underway. I am so happy to be done with the school system here and will very much be looking forward to going back to real school in the fall.

From the beginning, I always said that I wasn't coming to Europe for the classroom education. In many ways, it's disheartening to see how badly higher education operates and is organized in a country with so many wonderful cultural and historical resources. As much as I want to stay objective, it seems impossible to me for anyone to make a case for the French system over the American system.

In other news, I finally visited the Institut Lumière yesterday. It is housed in the villa once inhabited by Louis and Auguste Lumière, the brothers who invented the first motion picture camera. Turns out that Thomas Edison had a better marketing strategy and his machine, the kinetoscope, ended up being the market standard, but Lumière remains an important name in film history. The museum is surprisingly well-curated with interesting and informative exhibitions on the history of motion pictures and the famille Lumière.

The photo above is from the most beautiful room in the villa, the Salon d'Hiver. All of the Art Nouveau interiors of the house were gorgeous!