A quick trip to the prison

I have decided that I won’t talk about the Stage (the language intensive program) on here because it’s not fun and it is unnecessarily frustrating. I would prefer for this platform not to solely be for me complaining. That’s done better in person with animated gesticulations, excessive eye-rolls, and sarcastic intonation.

Instead, I want to talk about visiting la Prison Saint-Paul. The Saint Paul prison is a historic radial plan prison, like Eastern State Penitentiary, that first opened in 1865. The prison closed in 2009 and a new prison was constructed outside of the city. Note: research in the United States is limited. I found way more information in France. Why? I don’t know. Maybe some of these websites only work on French servers. Why? I don’t know. If you want to know my sources, leave a comment and I’ll make an edit.

So while I was French Googling the prison, I found out something that made me sound like the beginning of “Thriftshop.” The Catholic University in Lyon has acquired the site from the local government to…

…create a new campus.

I’m sorry, what?

After reading this, I booked it over to the prison. I got a little lost on the way but a very nice French family helped me navigate the Perrache train station. You literally have to go through the entire station (which has stops for the tram, the metro, the train, and the super-fast train). It was a big train station. From the stairs in the way down, this is what I saw:

I know, right? I walked around the entire perimeter and took as many pictures as I could.

I was incredibly surprised by the amount of demolition. I would think that in preserving the building they would, you know, preserve the building. From what I've seen, it looks like they are keeping the parts of the building that were important for their architecture. All of this is very reminiscent of when people in Philly wanted to revamp ESP after it closed (not that I was actually there. I just scanned the documents). The only difference is that the University and the city are acting on this.

Which makes sense for them if you consider the concept of patrimoine. Why would the government want to keep a building full of dark history? It serves no positive purpose, save for the architectural innovation of the radial plan. I wonder if I would still be having this self-righteous attitude if I hadn't worked in a prison historic site. I wonder if I would have known it existed.

I have more work to do. The archives are right by there and I could find some more stuff online.

What I really need to do is find someone at the University I can talk to. Mackenzie in a Catholic school. That will be interesting.

First few days of the PRUNe Stage

Okay, no I am not on a theater stage or going through  a stage (or so I believe). I am in a two week language immersion program sponsored by Lyon 2 (the university).

On Monday...

I had to take a language placement test.
Not. Fun.
It was like taking the SATs all over again. There was a poorly written reading comprehension (there was I double negative...I can't...) and an essay prompt that didn't not lend itself to complex answers.
SHOVEL PLEASE!
I completely made stuff up. Like actually. But the language construction is what's important. But in the end, IT DIDN'T EVEN MATTER. Earlier in the spring, we signed up to be in different programs, and we were all ready in those programs so I don't even know.

On Tuesday...

I had my first class of the stage (the a is pronounced like the second a in garage). I'm not sure how I feel about it. My teacher is very expressive and really wants to help us, but at the same time, I don't really understand the purpose of her teaching methods. We did some exercises that forced us to speak, which I totally understand and appreciate. But then she taught us how to take notes. I take after my dad in not liking it when someone tells what to do. I know how to take note. Don't tell me how to abbr thngs. I have my own system. How about instead, tell us how lectures are conducted and so that we can alter our own note taking methods. After a frustrating three hours, during which I felt like I didn't understand anything that was said in French (i.e. all of it), I sat along the bank of the river and read. I am reading Nana now and it is a little hard. And by a little, I mean I have to look up words about 7 times per Kindle page. My host mom told me that people in France call young women a "nana" in the same way that we (as English speaking Americans) call young men "guys." And I people watched. Man, that was fascinating. But people don't take too well to being stared at. Oops.

Renata was on her way back from a run when she spotted me. Photo Cred: Renata

This is for Michael B.

On Wednesday...

Arrived just on time for class because I can never leave house on time. The exercises today were based on the topic of our program, A historic portrait of Lyon. The big key word of the day was patrimoine (English link on the side) which translates to patrimony. Not that that was helpful. I really did not understand what patrimoine meant. We talked around it a lot, mostly about UNESCO preserving French cuisine, which I don't fully understand. 

Our group and two others went on a tour of Lyon, but really only went to Fourvière, which is this giant hill that overlooks all of Lyon.

Big church!

A recreation of the top of the Eiffel Tower to offset the overwhelming religioness of the church 

Our guide is another professor. She was so fascinating. She was talking about patrimoine and what thing should be passed down and preserved. Btw, I was still confused. I was the very last person she asked about what should be preserved and I was the first person who asked what does patrimoine means. What was really frustrating was that people were give stereotypical answers that showed that they didn't really understand what patrimoine meant, or at least it didn't encourage further conversation.

Our guide said that patrimoine is a ministrative decision to preserve public culture (and I am using culture as an all inclusive term for language, food, work methods, traditions, etc). Patrimoine provides an official history (which is a scary concept). This idea of stopping time and preserving what remains started with the 3rd Republic, as a response to the mass destruction of the old regime of the French Revolution. Just so you know, this is a real thing that still exists and there are like 15 people that decide what gets to be kept as French culture. Yeah. I know.

This is where the annoying stereotypical answers come in. So many of them came from Americans. Without any explanation, the idea of patrimony didn't make sense; literally, I couldn't even comprehend or grasp that idea. What makes America unique is the individualistic nature of its history. Its history can't be decided by a few people (hence so many editions/varieties of textbooks and the abandonment of history textbooks in college) but is a collective memory that is enriched by everyone's personal story. Thanks to Meg for having this conversation with me on the way to the mall.

Back to the church. What's interesting about it is that it was built in 1870 and is an aesthetic mix of gothic, byzantine, and roman architecture. It's a physical representation of the church's decline of power (institutions that need to prove their power proves that they don't have it). She pointed out, as noted in the pictures below, the lack of images of God, Christ, and stories from the Old and New Testament. Yeah. It's a church and doesn't show anything about the birth of Christ. In a church dedicated to Mary. The mother of Christ.

Think about that.

Yeah, those candles are the colors of the French flag...

The artists copy and pasted landmarks from a different hill and put them on this one. The image you are looking at is the hill you are on.

WEEPING ANGELS IN THE CHURCH

Battle scene in a church? That happened in the 1500s? And that dude is not God or Jesus but the Pope

Oh yeah, and that's Joan of Arc

These images are all very political in nature and are representative of a selected collective French/Lyonnais identity and history. And then my camera died so I don't have any more pictures of our trip.

We then went to the roman theater, which is also on the hill. It is super cool and super old and completely reconstructed because the real ruins were torn down in the 1930s because they weren't the ruins of the amphitheater! Yay patrimoine! Nevertheless, the theater is a representation of the importance of Lyon as the largest city in roman Gaul and the ideology of preservation in the early 20th century Lyon. And back to the church, the amphitheater was to be reconstructed in the first place because Christians were killed there, which marks the beginnings of a Christian presence in Lyon. We learned about two out of three laws that were set in motion to preserve historic sites, such as Vieux-Lyon (yeah, they wanted to tear that down), and the resulting gentrification of those parts of town to finance the restoration.
After our trip, Meg and I sat down and had a tarte au chocolat and it was just like eating straight up fudge but better. And oh yeah, there was cacao powder on top. We then went to Carrefour in the GIANT mall (which is actually a really nice mall). Allison called it the Target of France. It was crazy in there because of all the back to school shopping but I got all the stuff I needed (expect a lunch box). Meg and I got lost on the way back, kind of. I like to think of it as an adventure.

This is the church and the tower from the kitchen window at night. This is picture does not do it justice.

Best wishes!

Penn-Lyon Orientation Day Two

This post was for August 31, 2013

From Orientation Day One

I slept in later today because 1. I stayed up later and 2. I thought I would have plenty of time to get ready. False. My easy morning turned into a rushing out the door. On my way to the second day of orientation as I was heading down quai Claude Bernard, some lady asked me for directions. The best answer I could come up with was "I don't live here." Awk. The other weird thing that happened was I was still wlaking down the street with the school in sight, when I saw two gardeners loading something in a truck. I said "Bonjour" and they responded with the equivalent of "Helllllooooo~!" So naturally, I was internally freaking out. I got to the classroom and told the other Penn students what happened and Meg said "Yeah the French don't smile or say hi on the street. They think it's really weird and creepy" (That was paraphrased). I was just trying to be polite! It's really hard to resist the urge to smile and say hi. It's so instinctual.

At 11 AM, we went to the library for a tour. It's new so it's super high tech. The check out machine for books is crazy (see below)! You just stick the book in, it sees the cover, you swipe your card, and then you're done. It's a lot prettier than Van Pelt but significantly smaller. And yes it has cool technology but you have to use machines (that don't take credit cards without the chips or puces in them) to put money on your student card to print and what not.

View from the fifth floor

For lunch, we stopped at a really cute café of which I completely forget the name. I had a jambon-fromage sandwich.

Ham, butter, and camembert

During lunch, David got a text saying "Bonjour!" from an unknown number. He texted back saying he didn't have the number, who is this. The number responded "Maman" which is the French version of Mom or Mommy. It was not his real mother nor his host mother, and he responded as such. She replies by calling him. Hence the confused face from David.

He stayed on the phone with a woman insisting his number belonged to her son. It did not turn out well for David or that woman, but it was thoroughly amusing to Nicole, Kelsey, and I.

Class after lunch is always so hard. You have a food baby and it's hot and all you want to do is go to sleep...and that's what I did. Sorry Barbara! I passed out sleeping for like 10 minutes with my head on the table. Whoops, #sorrynotsorry.

Outside of Building K at Bron

Today we took the tram to the Bron campus, which is a 30-45 minute ride away. With my luck, I will probably have all of my classes there despite how I'm only 15 minutes from the Bergès de Rhône. It is a pretty big campus, but it is so far away from everything else. All the buildings look super industrial, but not in a good way. The inside looks like what high schools are supposed to look like or something from Grand Theft Auto or Tony Hawk.

Alpes!

Mountains!

Bron is really far away. We had to take the tram there and back.

I came back home and took a nap because reasons. I went to a little convenient store/market thing to do shopping on my own in French for the first time! major struggles with the credit card machine. Also, I had to pay 15 cents for my plastic bag.

Art and Olga ade dinner. Olga made a Russian salad for the starter. It was called an Olivier salad, but Russian restaurants that serve to tourists call it Moscow salad. It had cucumber, egg, and ham and was held together by mayo. Art made an Armenian dish with egg and green beans. Both were really good. I supplied dessert: Oreos (Thanks Erica!). What was the most memorable was that I had a wine that I really liked! Looking a the bottle, I can't tell what it is called but it's a red wine. I have tried a bunch of whites but without any appeal. This was the first time I drank a wine and Actually wanted to finish it!

Rabiâa (my host mom), Art, Me, and Olga

Best wishes!

Penn-Lyon Orientation Day One

Oy vey.

After a good night's sleep, I woke up early for my ten o'clock rendez-vous at Lyon with the other Penn kids in my program. And yet, I still managed to leave later than I wanted to from the apartment. Quel suprise. I did manage to finish The Help. What a superb novel by Kathryn Stockett. It's really astounding (and disgusting) that only 50 years ago it was okay and acceptable to completely disregard the humanity of a person because of their race. For people who claimed to be Christians, they seemed to have forgotten the adage "Treat others as you want to be treated." That's something I will probably never understand.

We all met at the University, which is only 15 minutes from my host house, and finally got to met each other. All of us were weary from travel but were fortunate to get real sleep at our host houses. Barbara, our coordinator, led us all up-stairs to a classroom where we spent the majority of the day, learning about the school, classes, the two-week intensive language course for all exchange students (I have a test on Monday! #dying), course selections, and other things like that. Basically, all the stuff I tune out and wait for my friends to explain (Kyra, where are you?!). Barbara says it's not as confusing as it sounds.

We sat outside in a small courtyard for lunch, where we got to hang out and get to know each other more. I had a tuna sandwich. I always forget that tuna is not always made the way my mom makes it. There was too much mayo (I am so not a mayo person) and hard boiled eggs (blech). But I tried it! There were chips, cookies, and apples, so my pickiness didn't make me go hungry.

We met again after lunch, but everyone was falling asleep and zoning out. At the end of the day, we walked down the quai to grab some drinks. I had jus de pomme (apple juice, which is pronounced "ju" without an "s." The waiter teased me about that) with some other Penn students.

Victoria, Meg, and Shiro

Le Rhône river is gorgeous! The water is so blue and it smells like the sea. I felt so happy being by the water. It was nothing like the Schuylkill.

Les canards (ducks!)

Meg snapping pics for her blog meginlyon.wordpress.com

Hey Mom, don't we have these at home?

We ended our time together by getting the necessities: phones that work in France. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I had to be a real adult and make financial decisions on my own. That was weird. But I got this bad boy. Kickin' it old school.

Old school flip phone with no side volume buttons. Word.

It was just Rabiâa and me for dinner, but that was really nice. I felt a little silly at times, completely blanking on words and such, but I really got to talk and discuss my interests. We talked about history, The Help, prisons (more on that later!), and what family means and what being a person means.

Segue!

After reading The Help, I realized I should only read things in French while abroad. I get too comfortable in English. I downloaded some French books to my Kindle fo' free! Thank you Public Domain. I got 

• Les fleurs du mal by Claude Baudelaire
• Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Nana by Émile Zola

And a snuck in Shakespeare's sonnets becuase I couldn't help myself.

Best wishes!

Finally in Lyon

It's like a dream being here. I can't quite explain how weird it is for this experience to be a reality

Allison and I left Dublin relatively on time. My carry-on was just over the 10 kilo weight limit (22 lbs) so they had to check my bag. Fortunately, it was free! Thank you Aer Lingus! We left at 12:10 Irish time, as captain Tom Brady was saying, and the flight took two hours. It was so interesting hearing all the different languages over the intercom. Everything in English was followed by an Irish translation, but the flight attendants' accents were so thick, Allison and I had a hard time figuring out which language they were speaking. We met a very nice elderly Irish couple on the plane that insisted we visit Ireland. We saw them multiple times in the airport and kept having to say hello and goodbye.

Allison and I took the tram called the Rhônexpress to the center of Lyon. Everything was going great: Allison and I were one of the first to get our luggage, we got some cash, we bought our tram tickets, and then I tripped on one of my suitcases and fell flat on my face. In front of everybody. Well, I never said I was graceful.

I arrived at my host family's house without a problem. Fortunately there was an elevator in their building. I really wasn't feeling like carrying 70+ pounds of stuff up the stairs. Rabiâa is my host mother and she is wonderful. Olga is my Russian roommate for a few more nights. She is studying French here for the month of August. Art is also here for August. He is Canadian and studying theater. I am so grateful for them. I am constantly surrounded by French. I don't mind messing up in front of them because they are in the same situation as me, but I still have to speak French. I get so in the mindset that sometimes I accidently think of titles or sentences for the blog in French!

The most exciting part of the day was dinner. Rabiâa made fish and a pasta side and...salad. With dressing. One of the promises I made to myself was that I was going to try different kinds of food, even if I thought I didn't like it. So I had some salad. And you know what? It wasn't too bad. (Cue the angelic voices).The greens weren't bitter or too leafy, but nice and fresh. The dressing added an unexpected flavor,the key being it wasn't too vinegary. I still like the original flavor of food without any flavoring, but I didn't find myself only eating it to be polite.

I took a nap after dinner, being thoroughly exhausted. Eight hours of flying on four hours of sleep is pretty taxing for one person, then add layovers and different languages and it becomes a stew of incoherence. Olga came back into the room as I was asking up from my nap. At first I couldn't believe it. It really felt like I dreamt it all, like when she came back, it was me changing from one dream to the next and that I was going to wake up at home in my bed. But it was real. It is real. As soon as I was conscious enough to recognize that, an overwhelming sense of dread washed over me and my first thought was I want to go home. But I am here for the long haul and I think I will be just fine.

...And Away We Go!

Thoughts from Places (Dublin Airport)

The view from our gate

It's about a quarter past ten here in Dublin, Ireland. Our flight to Lyon isn't until 12:10 local time. It's still 5:00 AM in Philadelphia. On the bright side, everyone here has Irish accents and it's fabulous.

The yesterday started off looking like this:

But thanks to the magic of Space Bags (seriously, those things are fantastic), I fit all my stuff into one check in bag (46 lbs!), a carry-on, and a backpack.

This is all very strange. Monday night, I finally came to terms with the fact that I am going to live in a foreign country for four months. I had a strange dream during Savasana (the last pose in any yoga routine, laying on your back) where my mom and a family friend dropped me off at the airport and bid me goodbye. When I came out of the pose, I knew I was ready to go.

Allison and I met at the gate together and had pizza for dinner

Also, I saw a guy cleaning the airplane's front window. I feel like that job is akin to window cleaning in how brave/crazy you would have to be.

This is the first time I am traveling via air on my own  (pretending he's beside me...). Normally I travel with my mom, and she deals with all the logistics and stuff so all I have to do is just be there. The moment of realization for me was when we were taking off from Philly. Mom doesn't do too well on planes so I hold her hand and talk to her. As the plane started to move, I looked around, waiting for the take off routine, but Mom wasn't there. So I kept reading on my Kindle. I think the guy next to me would have felt uncomfortable if I held his hand. His girlfriend would not have been happy.

The six hour flight had us arrive at 8:15 local time, so I probably had about 4 hours of sleep. It's not too bad though. They served us breakfast and I couldn't help but laugh

Top o' the Muffin to You!

I decided to have a real breakfast at 4:25 Philly time.

Yogurt with strawberry and granola, and tea

I find this whole experience to be quite amusing in it's ridiculousness; but I am incredibly thankful for it. And also The Help, which I am reading, otherwise I would be incredibly bored.

Best wishes!