26 juin 2010 samedi
I decided to head this blog with a little map of France, showing where these last two weeks have taken me. I am a bit impressed with the magnitude. In two weeks time, I have been no more than 15km away from the borders of both Spain and Germany, and a hop, skip, and a jump away from Switzerland. In the words of my father dearest—we’re quite the troopers as travelers.
Anyhow, I’m currently in Lyon, staying with a good friend, Soufiane. Again, I have little to report, but I’ve been happy here thus far. I’ve always liked Lyon—even though it’s the second biggest city in France (after Paris, and slightly before Marseille), it has a wonderful small city charm. The Saône and the Rhône, running parallel through the heart of the city, frame a quaint neighborhood, punctuated by bridges of all shapes and sizes. The people here are welcoming and kind, and although they have a strange taste for beef/calf meat of all shapes and sizes, I’ve certainly never gone hungry, despite my own personal aversion to meat.
Yesterday, Soufiane had to work until 5:30, so after he picked me up at the train station during his lunch break, I relaxed at his apartment for a while, then took the metro into town. I’m easily amused—give me a river, a book, some iced tea, and a shady spot on the banks, and I’ll be happy. Sunshine does wonders for mental health, despite my utter exhaustion from traveling so much.
After Soufiane got off work, I met him downtown, and we headed across the Rhône to get a drink before dinner. As I’ve found often to be the case, we ended up talking about politics and current world events and whatnot. Soufiane is originally from Morocco, and his family still lives there, so his perspective on certain world events (ie: Israel/Palestine relations, immigration in France, the United States’ foreign relations in the Middle East, etc) is certainly unique, and speaks strongly of an opinion not often expressed in the United States. I learn so much here, from all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds. I like that. For dinner, he took me to one of his favorite restaurants, where he knows the workers and whatnot. After having slept less than two hours last night (Julien and I stayed up waaay too late talking), I completely crashed after dinner, and so we went back to his apartment, and I slept straight away.
I’m now on my way to Avignon where I’ll actually start to work after two wonderful weeks of vacation. I honestly haven’t a clue what to expect. The kids are certainly energetic, but they seemed relatively well-behaved despite their giggles and excitement. More news when I have it. Wish me luck . . . I’m about to become a nanny. Bring it on.
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