Week 3: The start of my adventures!

Here in Lille, I have had so many cultural experiences, even only three weeks in. I’ve been to the braderie, I’ve made my way around town trying to familiarize myself and navigate with some sort of ease, and I’ve been engaging some locals in conversation every now and again. This week takes the cake so far though, especially in terms of travel, but even just in terms of cultural experiences in general.

Monday was my first day of classes, and my first class of the whole year was in English about American history. Too funny! Classes haven’t been too bad so far, but especially in my literature classes I’ve had a few difficulties in keeping up with the lecture. The timing and scheduling of classes hasn’t been too bad either (except for a couple of 8:00AM classes), and we’ll see how I agree with the structure of the classes themselves as the semester rolls on.

Tuesday, as some of you might have already seen on Facebook, I hopped on a train with my friend Katherine, and we went to Dunkirk for the day! We caught the train at around 10:00AM, and we were on our way to a different city for half an hour (with a few stops of the train in between). We had a great time finding the grocery store to gather materials for a lovely picnic on the beach, and in the midst of our own great conversation, we even got to speak with a local lady about her dog and the area while enjoying our lunch. We looked around for a place to eat dinner, but ended up settling on picking up sandwiches from the train station, and then it was time to head back. All in all, it was definitely the most exciting Tuesday I’ve had in a while!

Map showing Paris, Lille, Dunkirk, and London.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday brought more classes (yay for starting at 8AM), including a Master’s level class about American Civilization on Friday, and on Thursday evening all international students (including me) took a test to determine which French class we will be in for the semester. This French class is mandatory for all international students, and so even those who didn’t know French at all had to at least write their name on the test before they walked out. The listening section was a little difficult because they only played the audio sample one time, but on the whole I think I did pretty well on the test, so we’ll see what group I actually end up in. Classes in general have been going pretty well, but there are some slight differences between American and French academic culture that have been interesting to discover, and I have switched more than a few classes over the past week. Hopefully now all will work out well for getting credit at home.

After the excitement of Dunkirk combined with the slow pace of the week in classes, Saturday took off with the pace of the week. I hadn’t planned anything, so I didn’t think the weekend would be too eventful, but then Rob, Walker, Katherine and I headed to the Vélodrome in Roubaix (my first time on the metro!) to watch an international cycling competition. It was definitely interesting to experience such a big part of French culture on a new level; a lot of people in France ride bicycles as transportation, and there are even stations where you can rent a bike for 30 minutes at a time, but this was an actual international competition. There weren’t any American competitors, but there were several English cyclists, and so Katherine and I cheered along with Rob and Walker, and we all had a good time.

My first time on the metro!

Me and the guys at the Vélodrome. It was a cool cultural experience!

By lunchtime, we made it out of the vélodrome, grabbed lunch from a local grocery store, and headed to an art museum in the same city called La Piscine. It was another cool cultural experience because not only did we get to see paintings and sculptures and fashion from many different French artists, but also it’s in a building that was historically a swimming pool, and the pool still exists there today, along with the showers (although no one today can actually go swimming in the pool). So we walked around the museum for a little while and took our time appreciating French art, which was good for me, because I haven’t taken the time to just appreciate art (of any kind) for a long time.

The coolest view in the Piscine: a window that looked like the sun, with the pool below and sculptures up the sides.

A gallery of Cameo pendants and brooches.

A painting entitled "Vue de Tolède," or "View of Toledo" in English. I'll be in Toledo next semester,  so I was particularly interested in this painting!

A painting that reminded me a lot of the Weasleys' house in the Harry Potter movies!

After the museum, Katherine and I thought we were headed home, but Rob and Walker then announced that they planned to walk into Belgium. Um, excuse me, hold the phone, what?! Being from America, Katherine and I had never heard of such lax country borders, and so we were surprised to say the least that this was their plan, but since we were so close anyway, we took the metro to the end of the line and then literally walked right into Belgium.

We literally walked right into Belgium! Here's us at the border.

Since Rob and Walker had both been in Belgium before, they weren’t as excited as we were to be there, but they were good sports about it (up to and including applauding Katherine and I as we walked across the border line). They then said that they had other plans, but that Katherine and I should stay in Belgium and try to explore and navigate as much as possible. I’ve recently found that I have a little trouble with navigation (to say the least), so this seemed a little daunting to me (to be clear, the boys’ plan had been to leave us in Belgium to fend for ourselves), but I also enjoy taking on challenges, and it is a growing-up kind of thing to do. After a little bit of discussion, Katherine and I decided to pounce on the opportunity. We had to walk about 40 minutes to make it to the city center, but we finally made it, and we said hello to Mouscron, Belgium!

The little blue dot is where we were, in Mouscron. Tourcoing, the next city to the left, is in France, and the black line through the middle is the French-Belgian border.

One of our first views of Belgium. We had been told that this is a somewhat sketchy part, so we'll be going back to experience the real deal later in the semester, but for now, we can say we've been to Belgium!

After exploring the city for a while, we happened across a lovely place to eat dinner, and we had some nice sandwiches and beer, which although it wasn’t fancy, was fine with us, as we had been getting pretty hungry. Once we picked up dessert, we made our way back to France and the metro, and we finally made it home at 10:00PM. After a nice evening of wine and card games, Katherine and I caught up with the boys, and we found out that they had gone back to the vélodrome and watched the finals for the international competition, and we all had had a wonderful day.

Pierre Alain, the pâtisserie-boulangerie where Katherine and I found dinner. We had a great time!

Back across the border - we made it!

After sleeping in this morning, I’ve had a pretty low-key day today, full of blog writing, homework, and meal planning. Nothing’s open today, so I haven’t been out very much, but I have been working on homework and such, and also thinking about what I need to do this week. I’ve been trying to get a French SIM card for my phone for a week or two, but I need a French bank card to get a SIM card, and I’ve been in the process of opening a French bank account for that time, which has been a somewhat stressful experience so far. My advice to any students who wish to study abroad in France in the future is that the first thing you should do when you get into France after settling into your accommodation is to set up your French bank account; this will enable you to more easily get a SIM card (and an Internet box if you want), and for non-European students, it’s necessary anyway to set up a French bank account for the country-mandated health insurance (called social security) that’s obligatory for all non-European students. In addition to not having my French bank account completely set up yet, I also have to consider whether I want to get an Internet box and a SIM card, or just a SIM card. Decisions, decisions… and it only makes it more difficult when most stores and businesses close for the day at around 6:00PM or 7:00PM (when I’m used to stores in the US staying open until at least 7:00PM if not later).

This next week I will hopefully be getting my bank card and then my SIM card (and possibly Internet), and my classes should all be settled, so I’ll be getting a taste of what the semester will be like. I’ve also been challenged to cook dinner for myself every night this week, and so with meal planning today and grocery shopping tomorrow, I should be able to get through it (and win!). (This challenge is a part of my growing-up experience throughout this entire year, so hopefully I’ll get a leg up on maturity, at least in that area of my life.) This week and beyond will hopefully have lots of travel and adventure in store, not to mention French culture. As I get further on into the semester, I’m starting to plan trips with friends, and so hopefully that will all pan out – I’ll of course be documenting trips as they come up. With this bright outlook in mind, I will leave you all for this week. À bientôt!