I'm getting bad at doing this consistently...

Well it's apparently been nearly a week since the last time I wrote in this. I guess it's because of the fast amount of work I have during the week so I really only have time to write on the weekends...

To start off, I don't think anything exciting happened over the course of last week (until the weekend of course). Thursday I got a foulard (read: man-scarf). Judge all you want; it's awesome. I unfortunately don't have any (good) pictures of me rockin' it at the moment (someone hopefully will eventually post a picture on the Facebook and then maybe I'll steal it for my own purposes). After that, Daniel (who got a matching foulard) and I went to le Louvre to look at some more art (the other time we went we were supposed to look at very specific paintings which, to me were boring) while looking awesome in our foulards. I enjoyed this visit much more. First of all, I got to see some artifacts from the Aegean Bronze Age, so I actually almost knew stuff about them:

A Cycladic idol. In theory, I was once able to identify the island that likely produced this and  the time period of production. At least I remember what it was...

After we got to see stuff from Egypt which was awesome. As a young'un i loved Ancient Egypt, so I felt like a little child again:

This may  not be the best photo I took of the Egyptian stuff, but the thumbnail looked really cool when I was picking pictures so you'll have to deal

Then we got to see some famous stuff (La Jaconde, etc.). Wasn't terrible, mais j'aime les autres choses mieux. Here is an interesting photo:

La Vénus de Milo et quelques touristes avec Nintendo 3DS audioguides

We had a group trip to Lyon Friday and Saturday. It wasn't bad. It was quite pretty (not on Avignon's level, but better than Aix). I don't remember what we did Friday (I was very callous and I'm really tired right now so even if something happened, I'm far too tired to remember, but more on that later).

Oh I remember what happened now. After flanning a bit, we got to take a cooking class. We made pasta avec muscles. Normally I hate seafood (read: I've never been willing to try seafood because in my head I hate it). Cooking it was pretty fun:

Scott showing off his mixing skillz

It tasted pretty good too. Like the ocean (aka the EL which was a nice memory of home).

I don't remember what we did the rest of the day. Oh I guess we learned about silk because there's a lot of silk produced in Lyon. Let's see, after that we a guided tour of part of the city from some random dude. We just walked a lot so we were all exhausted before dinner, so we just laid out on some grass until we had to eat. Dinner was interesting. I don't remember the name of my main course, but it wasn't the best decision on my part...

The next day (samedi) was filled with a lot more walking and whatever. We got to visit the old part of the city, which was way up on a hill so it provided us with many beautiful views of the city. There was also this beautiful basilica, though there was some construction going on so it wasn't at its full splendor. After walking some more, we had lunch with one of our professor's twin sister and her two children, who were both absurdly cute and absurdly distracting during our guided tour that we had after lunch. We then took the long train ride back home (more things may have happened in between, but I wasn't exactly paying attention to anything over the two days so I apologize).

Upon returning, we decided to go celebrate Ananya's birthday (because son anniversaire was Saturday so it made sense). Jenn said there was a boat ride on the Seine for international students, but that didn't end up working out so we just chilled au Champ de Mars (near la tour Eiffel) and then flanned a bit until we were able to find a train to take us to an area we knew better.

When that was done, we started to head home. In a rather foolish move, Anna left her suitcase containing all of her clean clothes at Ananya's apartment (it was so travel to the meeting spot would be easier, even though Anna's apartment was much closer to the SNCF station). Since she wanted some clean clothes for the next day, she went to go get her stuff (Ananya and I live on the same street by the way). The real issue was that we pretty got on the last metro, so Anna couldn't have taken that back to her place. Ananya and I had taken the night bus before, so I decided to help her get back to her place since they're incredibly confusing (and as a large brown person I'd like to thing that, from afar in the dark, I'm somewhat intimidating). This is where things got interesting.

After walking for a while, we found a night bus stop that would take us in the right general direction. Of course, the first bus we saw just drove past the stop (the driver couldn't see us). Instead of giving up, we just walked to the next stop (which was in a slightly better location). We took that to the area that I think contains the largest amount of night bus stops (so we figured we could find a bus that would take Anna back and then I would just take the opposite path home).

I don't think I wrote about the first night bus adventure, but Ananya and I were at the area with the many stops and we once we figured out which bus we needed, we couldn't find its stop. We did see the bus in the middle of the street, though, and people were getting on there, so we ran across the street and entered.

Luckily, I think Anna actually found the correct stop, but the bus came very infrequently and it was cold so we decided against waiting for it. We walked to an nearby area that had a velib' station, because we figured we could take some bikes to Anna's area (we've all been wanting to use the bikes, and it seemed much safer to ride them at night when there were fewer cars to kill us). Unfortunately, our credit cards didn't work at the station (and the ticket the British dude we met at the station didn't work either so I guess that station was broken).

Since plan B failed, we just decided to walk back (I'm not sure what time it was at this point in time, but I want to say that we left my neighborhood at 2ish, so it was probably between 3 and 4 when we decided to walk). We got to the Bastille area after a lovely walk (though I almost got destroyed by a night bus which was pretty scary), but since the metro reopens at 5:30 (or 5) and by the time we got near Anna's place it was 4:30ish, Anna said that she'd rather go to a café and get some coffee/hot chocolate so I could take the metro back home as opposed to trying to figure out the night bus/walking/taking a taxi (we contemplated whether or not Anna should have taken a taxi from my neighborhood when we missed the first bus, but I'm very glad that plan didn't work out). We picked a café that was still open (actually there were many open) and we just talked some more while we waited for the metro to open. By the time we got it, the sun was rising and it was pretty weird since I honestly didn't feel that tired at the time (even without the coffee). We finally parted ways after our 3-4 hour adventure and I just took the metro home (there were some thugs with what I hope was a fake (and not a real) gun on my train so I was pretty scared the whole ride home, but since I'm writing this now, I obviously made it back with minimal damage).

Today (as in after I woke up) was much more low key, especially after last night's adventure. Just an absurd amount of work, grocery shopping, and dinner with my host mother. And writing this blog post.

I would like to write more about the adventure, though. It was honestly the most enjoyable night I've had (n'importe où). It was just really nice being able to walk around without such a huge group of people (not that I don't love you guys) and without an absurd amount of people in the streets. And it was really nice just being able to talk to someone about anything and everything. Sure, I could have gotten more sleep had we gotten a taxi for Anna at the beginning of our adventure, but I'm glad we didn't. I hope that I'll remember such a legen- (wait for it) -dary story (well in my head it was awesome, but I'm sure the story's not as exciting as I think it is when it's retold in blog form) for the rest of my life, because it really was one of the greatest experiences I've had.

Anyways, I'm pretty exhausted right now (who would have thought) and I have to wake up almost as early as I went to sleep yesterday so I can get ready for class, so I think I'm going to go to sleep now (instead of doing some more work because I think I have a lot for this week). My sleepiness is also my excuse for the above-average amount of spelling/grammatical errors that I'm sure I've made throughout this blog post.

Au revoir tout le monde!