On Monday, since I didn’t have classes (have I mentioned how much I absolutely love not having classes on most Mondays? :)), my Belgian friend Fatima and I went on an expedition around Lille. We bought day passes for the metro and tried a part of a line we had never been on before. We got off at every stop (about seven or eight stops in total), I snapped some photos, and we generally just walked around a little bit just to see what was there. One thing I know is that some of the more urban parts of Lille reminded me much more of Milwaukee and other urban neighborhoods back home than where I live in Vieux Lille. All in all, I think it was definitely worth the four euros spent on the day pass. After the exploration came a relaxing night which included some ping-pong to break up the day-to-day monotony.
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| First stop on our adventure: the metro station at République-Beaux Arts. |
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| Being the stop for a famous art museum, it made sense that there would be some art in the station, such as this sculpture. |
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| One of the more urban parts of Lille: graffiti |
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| We even found an Au Bon Pain in France! :) |
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| Some of the stations, like the one pictured above, are real works of art. |
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| EuraLille, the mall, waits in the background while Fatima and I have some fun by an art sculpture. |
Tuesday brought more classes and lots of studying… and also cake and ice cream! So the fun story is that I made a cake and bought ice cream to celebrate Walker’s birthday a month late… but the real story is that I bet Walker in London that I would be able to find Lay’s chips while we were there (and not just the popular brand, incidentally called Walker’s). Not that I looked too hard or anything, but I did lose the bet, and so since Walker had made all of us some apple crumble recently before the break, he requested that I make a dessert, and so I did – I made some cake. It was delicious, and everybody loved it! And it definitely made for a better Tuesday night than usual.
Pumpkin soup and a Halloween party were on the agenda for Wednesday night. (Yep, we had a Halloween party a few days late with everyone from our residence, and yes some people did dress up in costumes. It was fun!) Rob tells us that apparently pumpkin soup is the traditional thing to do on Halloween night in England, and so I prepared the vegetables for the soup (including scraping out a small pumpkin, which actually made me a little homesick!), and then Rob made sure everything cooked well on the stove, and then we all sat down to eat together. It was a nice dinner, and then we got to enjoy lots of people, lots of candy, and lots of fun as half of us watched a scary movie (“Sinister”) while the rest of us (me included) played a game called Loup-Garou, or Werewolf in English, similar to the card game Mafia for those who are familiar. It was funny when we could hear the reactions to the movie playing on the other side of the wall – it made our game all the more entertaining. It ended up being a success as a program, as I see it at least. Happy Halloween!
Long class day is always Thursday – I’m in class from 8:00AM to 6:40PM (albeit with a two-hour lunch break… but still! :)). The nice thing about this particular Thursday was that to break it up in the middle, I was invited to attend a nice luncheon with coordinators from all sorts of programs at the university who work with international students to determine the university’s image in foreign countries (to its foreign exchange partners). I had the wonderful opportunity to voice my opinions about my semester so far at La Catho, how the university could improve its image to international students, and what the university could do to make international students feel more welcome in Lille. It didn’t hurt that it was a nice place to eat as well – we had our full main plates with vegetables and all, and then we even got to have dessert, before moving to another building to continue the discussion. It was a nice way to spend a Thursday afternoon!
Friday brought an easy morning, not too rushed, but then I had a midterm exam in the afternoon for my intercultural communications class. It went fairly well – better than just about any of my previous exams actually – and before I knew it, two hours was up and I handed my test in. I did get another exam to take home over the weekend, because the rule is students can’t have more than 4 hours combined of exams on any given day and, had I taken that exam regularly, I would have had five hours combined of exams. After the test was over, I made another cake to celebrate a friend’s farewell (already, I know!), and then I headed to an American friend’s birthday party (which, you guessed it, included alcohol… who knew a 5€ bottle of wine could actually be halfway decent?), where I had lots of fun talking and dancing with friends, and then Sam, the other Wisconsinite in Lille (WI PRIDE) and another friend walked me all the way home (a 30-minute walk from their place). Great friends, great fun!
Saturday I was a little hungover, but I made do. I actually ended up going to Amandine’s house for the afternoon into evening (which was, as always, marvelous!), and I helped her with her American Civilization research paper and also had a delicious, healthy dinner. Amandine and her family had wanted to take me to a local circus, but unfortunately the date was incorrect on the flyer for the event, and so we had actually missed it by a night, but we didn’t let it get in the way of our fun too much – we ended up watching a dance movie on Netflix instead. (Oh Netflix, how I love you…)
Last but certainly not least, Sunday was a very chill day. I got to sleep in in the morning, took my time doing my take-home exam in the evening, and in between just relax and chat with friends (and of course play some ping pong). A great day off to end the week.
Looking toward the future, I plan to do a little bit more traveling, and of course I’ll be studying alongside all my adventures. And of course my birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, which will be a blast! Until next time – à bientôt!
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