From a big picture perspective, I feel like not ALL that much has been going on in my life. School really is keeping me very busy (not entirely sure what I was thinking taking on 7 classes, but I'm ridiculous and I've come to accept that about myself), and I don't have a lot of free time, so I've been trying to take advantage of what little time I do have, so I've had some concentrated pockets of excitement scattered amongst long streaks of boring going to class and doing homework.
I guess I'll start where I left off with my last blog...I ended up going to see Made in L.A. which was an interesting documentary, and I had planned on going to see a Portuguese movie (The Year My Parents Left on Vacation) and a Brazilian movie (I Am From Brazil..although I'm sure it could be more eloquently translated..), but then there was dancing that weekend, which, in my life, pretty much always wins out over everything. It was all sort of loosely tied to the film festival, though, so it works out. That Friday night, there was a Brazilian night, which I ended up going to alone, and I was really nervous that I would end up in a corner being lame, but there were a couple guys from my capoeira class there, and I worked up the nerve to go sit with them. Then, there was a capoeira demonstration and they wanted to get people from the audience to participate, so they started with people they knew were taking classes, so I did that (turn out it's much less successful in jeans and sans hair-tie, but whatever), and then they taught everyone forro, which is a Brazilian dance similar to salsa and we danced a lot. There was also a demonstration of gafieira, which is another dance that is kind of like argentine tango and looked really cool. Much to my happiness, they announced a dance workshop the next day, which was going to be an hour and a half of gafieira and an hour and a half of capoeira. So clearly I went to that and it was so much fun! Then, on Sunday, there was a Brazilian soirée and this club which is on a péniche (a big boat) called the Marquise. Katie came with me and we danced for like 3 hours straight and it was wonderful. There was live samba for a while, and then a DJ playing Brazilian funk and then more live samba. Seriously a lot of fun. My feet hated me afterward because I was wearing heels, but I totally didn't even care cuz I was so happy. My life also hated me a little bit after because I didn't make it to sleep til about 2am and I had an 8 am class, but I had some coffee and survived.
That weekend I also had dinner with some girls for my friend Molly's bday and then went to a party at this guy, Sofiane's house. He's one of the frenchies who is going to be studying in Eugene next year. It was a fun party and it was cool to go to a party at his apartment, because it was kind of like house parties back in the states, which I've kinda missed since being here. Unfortunately, he lives ridiculously far away, so we had to leave at midnight so as not to miss the last metro, but maybe there will be more of that another time. Basically, it was a really crazy weekend. Oh! The sun also peeked out that weekend, which was exciting, but it was gone about as quickly as it came.
Then there was a lot of school and work until this past weekend, which was another kind of crazy one. On Friday Katie had a party at her apartment, which was an attempt to get to know her host brother and his friends better. He's 18 and most of his friends are about 20 and they come over a lot, but they always hang out in Antoine's room playing computer games, so Katie was basically like, "Hey Antoine! Your friends. My friends. Here. Friday." And so that's what we did. And it ended up being really fabulous. We all meshed quite well together, and all of Katie's suppositions about Antoine and his friends were true (they are into RPGs, they smoke weed, and they are all pretty much awesome). So we had a silly fun night just kinda chillin in the apartment. I had to leave early because I had told a friend of mine that she could stay at my apt that night because we had to leave super early in the morning for a trip and she lives a way out of town, and of course the most exciting aspects of the night (namely breaking into an abandoned building and hanging out on the roof) took place after I left, but since everything went so well, there are already plans for a remix of the party in the works. And this one I won't miss.
Last but not least, our trip to Dordogne, which was organized by the Centre Oregon for all the people in my program. We left at 7:30 am on Saturday and spent 6 hours on a bus en route to Sarlat, which is one of the most well-preserved medieval villages in France. While there we had some yummy lunch and then toured around the town before heading to our hotel in Montignac (ps. Maja, it was called Le Manoir du Chambon), where we played charades and then were served a ridiculously huge dinner, and then I pretty much crashed out. Traveling around in buses (cars too, but less so) has the unfortunate effect on me of making me car sick, which really exhausts me. The next day we had a fresh start with a nice breakfast before heading to see some chateaux in the area. We were supposed to go on a boat tour along the Dordogne river, but apparently the river was too high, so it got cancelled, which was pretty lame, but we wandered around the village, parts of which were build into the cliffs, so that was pretty cool, despite the cold and almost raininess. I think the best part was the break dance party we had in the middle of the street and rocking "All Star" (which may be the ultimate song on the soundtrack of my generation) on our way back to the bus. We also had a big fancy delicious lunch...basically there was WAY too much amazing food over the course of the trip...I'm definitely going running tomorrow. Once we got back to the hotel, there was more food and then there was a sort of dance party, which my friends and I opted out for because we were exhausted, so we played Apples to Apples in our PJs for a while before going to bed.
The next day (aka Monday, aka yesterday), we hit the road early and went to Lascaux II, which is a facsimile of Lascaux, which are some of the oldest and largest prehistoric cave paintings. The actual cave was severely damaged because of all of the tourists and the introduction of carbon monoxide and oxygen and molds and fungi, so they closed it in the 60s and created Lascaux II, which opened in the 80s. It's kind of lame because you know you are looking at relatively recent paintings, but they did a really good job of recreating that cavey feeling, so it was actually a really cool experience. At least I really enjoyed it and was thoroughly impressed by these massive paintings of different animals that show a distinct artistic organization and it's quite clear that they are there pretty much simply for their artistic value and not so much as a means of communication or some other utilitarian reason. The only thing that was kind of unfortunate is that I got the sense that quite a few people in the group were like, "why are we here? This is lame." The sentiment is understandable because we had to leave the hotel at 8:45 am and then we got there and ended up having to stand in the cold for like 30 minutes because of some apparent miscommunication, and then on top of that I think a lot of people were having trouble following the guide's explanations in French. Whatever, though, I thought it was really amazing. So there. After Lascaux we went to the Prehistory museum (aptly described as "a lot of rocks" by this guy Clément) and then hit the road for another ridiculously long bus trek back to Lyon.
Oh, and somewhere in there there was Easter. The extent of my Easter celebration this year was saying "happy Easter" to Kate, the girl I was sharing a room with, eating some chocolate eggs, and spying on little kids on a chasse aux oeufs from the chateau we were at in the afternoon, through binoculars, to a chateau on the other side of the river, where we had been that morning, which is very gardeny, so it was a good place for an egg hunt.
And now it's Tuesday night and I really should be trying to get ahead in my homework because I have quite a few things that need doing over the next week or so, but I think I'm going to go to bed so that I can get up and go running in the morning and maybe do some grocery shopping and then buckle down for the afternoon and make a concerted effort to get some stuff done. Especially since my friend and I are thinking abut a short weekend trip somewhere this weekend.
Tada! Hope you aren't bored to death...or overwhelmed by my crazy nonstop lifestyle. I'll not to go 2 weeks before I update this business again.
Gros bisous et Joyeuses Pâques (Happy Easter!) à tous! (ok, a little belated, but I was sending out the Happy Easter love on Sunday too).
