For your procrastination pleasure, (you know who you are), here is the blog documenting my venture 19060.8 km from home in the land of the French, as I study […] at Universite Jean Moulin in Lyon III for the semester.
Arriving in Paris at 6am on the 30th of December, I was dropped into my hostel where over the duration of my four days there I would share a dorm with people from Brazil, the Dominion Republic, Peru and Mexico. This was a great place to meet people and I managed to see the majority of the tourist monuments, sites and activities in Paris with different people, despite the freezing weather.
New Years was spent with Ayla, Franklin from the Caribbean and Bruno from Brazil, we drunk our 2euro (my cheapest find thus far has been 1,45 euro) bottles of wine in the hostel then made our way to the Eiffel Tower for the countdown, followed by drinks in a nearby bar.
Soon it was time to head to Lyon, which was a bit hit and miss for a moment but successful, for after 2hours on the TGV I arrived in Lyon. Here I am living with Abby who studies in Auckland, in our residence made up of our two bedrooms, a bathroom and a tiny kitchenette. It is about 5min walk to the metro and 20min walk to our campus, the Manufacture des Tabacs [an old tobacco factory], where after our two week introduction I currently have one lecture on Monday, Wednesday and two on Thursday. It looks to be strenuous!
Thus far I have eaten an unprecedented number of sandwiches, taken 8 days to work out how to top up my phone, dropped one item under a speeding metro, discovered Lyon has a great love for Irish bars (so.many), slept two nights under my jacket, had three days of French university, fry-panned one cake while celebrating the french day of Epiphany [no oven, wasn't overly successful], avoided the incredible amount of admin etc that French seem to consider normal, and started to explore the beautiful city of Lyon where I will live the next six months. Watch this space!
