overwhelmed

Well here I am...finally, after six weeks, giving in to homesickness and all I really want to do is spend the day curled up in bed being melancholy. And to think that I woke up almost 3 hours ago ready to face a productive day of errands and getting stuff done. Boo.

Anyway, in order to cheer myself up a little by not wallowing, here is my weekend, which was a LOT of fun:

On Friday, after my Portuguese class, I went to the bookstore at Part Dieu (this ginormous mall in Lyon) to look for a copy of our book for class, but they were out (sad). The important part of that story, though, is that I now have a friend in France (that isn't American or related to one of the host families I have stayed with). Her name is Hélène and she is studying economics at Lyon 2. We are some of the only people in the Portuguese class that aren't taking it as part of a language degree. Anyway, she is really nice! That has been a good class for meeting people. I'm glad I decided to take it :-)

Friday night I ended up going out with some friends from UO. It was actually kind of lame because we sat in a park and then wandered around and ended up in a crowded smoky bar and then no one could agree on what to do so we ended up standing around for way too long and then I came home at like 4am. Despite all that, it was nice to just be out with friends, which I haven't been doing much lately.

Saturday morning there was a yard sale along one of the streets by my apartment. Since no one actually has garages or yards, they blocked off at least 6 blocks and people set up tables and sold stuff. My roommate and I wandered around for about 2 hours and didn't buy anything, but it was a really festive atmosphere, so it was all good. Afterwards, I went to the open air market nearby and bought fresh fruits and veggies (yum!). Then I ate lunch and toor a nap, because I didn't get enough sleep. Then it was off to Place des Terreaux to watch the rugby game (see previous post). That was a lot of fun!

I spent yesterday with the Roys, the host family that I stayed with 3 years ago. It was Stéphane, their oldest son's 17th birthday, and they had a big lunch with all of their family out at their "country house". Their was delicious food and delicious wine and, much like the times I have spent with the Babot's families, everyone was really nice and made me feel like part of the family. It was funny because Céline the oldest daughter, who is a year younger than me, was at Place des Terreaux on Saturday night too. Their were tons of people there, so it's not surprising that we didn't see each other, but it was kind of nice to have one of those small world kind of moments. Also, Céline said that next time she is going out with friends, she will invite me so that I can get to know more people my age. Woot!

Basically, excellent weekend, but I think the overwhelmingness of it all, combined with emails from home (and the fact that I'm missing the balloon fiesta) and today being my sister's birthday and a number of other things all hitting me at once is a little too much for me. If you are reading this, chances are I miss you a lot and I hope you are doing well!!!

Ok, now I really am going to try to be productive.

*MUAH*