On the other hand, how can you not love a country/school system that has handed me another five day break immediately after a week-and-a-half long one? I lucked out in that Veteran's Day falls on a Thursday this year, so since I never have Wednesday or Friday classes, it translates into a five day break. Of the past three weeks, I have had three days of work... pretty sweet. Of course after this week there will be no respite until Christmas break, so all of you who get days off of work/class for Thanksgiving can gloat while I toil away.
Sadly I am too low on funds to do anything with my mini-break, so while Fanny jets off to Austria I'm going to be sticking close to Feurs, with maybe a day-trip or two to St-Etienne. Something else to look forward to (or perhaps "dread" is the more appropriate verb here) is a 10.6k race tomorrow morning that I've decided to do with the running club in a nearby town called Bonson. From what I hear, Bonson falls in the same flat plain that Feurs is in, so it should be a nice, flat course!
If all else fails, I can always hang out with this guy I saw perched on the windowsill the other day, though he probably won't be very talkative. With Fanny gone and the school being closed, this place can feel pretty desolate sometimes, so I think a trip or two into St-Etienne is definitely on order for the weekend. This is also as good a time as any to crack into my totally legitimate, not-at-all-bootleg-from-a-side-street-in-Jordan Rosetta Stone CDs and see if I can't learn a few German words before Christmas. I haven't bought a ticket yet (though I really should because they're only going to get more expensive), but Fanny has invited me to Germany with her for Christmas, a prospect I'm really excited about. She lives near Dresden, which after doing some research I discovered is only about an hour's train ride away from Prague, so there are some very cool travel ideas developing there.
Last Saturday I went to Lyon with Fanny, and we explored the giant Part-Dieu mall next to the train station before heading over to the apartment of Christian, another German assistant, for dinner (homemade spaghetti bolognese, yum). This dinner was with the same group of German assistants we ate with on the last voyage to Lyon, so hopefully we can get a regular schedule of dinners going! They're all really nice and made a strong effort to speak French or English all evening, even though I was the only non-German speaker there. Fanny and I tried to offer up a dinner in Feurs, but something makes me think these Lyon assistants won't take us up on it...
On Sunday Fanny and I met back up with Christian and Inga at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (Fine Arts Museum), where once again I was thankful to have brought my old UGA ID with me. No expiration date means I still pass as a student and get in for free! After the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay in Paris, Lyon's museum wasn't overwhelming but still nice to wander through on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It's got a couple Rubens paintings and a few lesser-known Picassos, but sadly for Lyon I think the Paris museums have a monopoly on the more popular paintings. Fanny and I had an early evening train back to Feurs, so after the museum we stopped by a café (above picture) to pass our last hour in the city.
I've grown terribly addicted to a drink called café viennois, a half espresso (actually spelled "expresso" in French, which Brooke might be pleased to know :), half (or obscenely more than half) whipped cream concoction that can't be anything but terrible for you. To the left is one of the more ridiculously proportioned café viennois that I've had (this one's from Paris), though I assure you I polished it off with only the slightest bit of a struggle.
Au revoir for now!
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