Memories and New Experiences

These past few weeks have been routine and semi-busy since I am in class for most of the day. Classes are still going well; this week is the last week for many of the students in my class, so next week I will have many new students to get to know. It will be interesting since I feel like I am just starting to get to know some of the people in my class. On Thursday the 18th the whole program had a picnic for everyone to get to know each other. It was fun, but it started to rain, so we didn't stay for very long. Then on Friday the 19th I visited some museums by myself: Musée de la vie Bourguignonne, Musée d'Art Sacré, and Musée de Beaux Arts. All three were very interesting, and very different from each other. The first one was a little scary for me because there were mannequins that looked very life like, and I had a flash back of being in the wax museum in Texas in the President's room when the power went out just like in the scary movies. Thankfully, the power didn't go out this time and if it had, there wasn't any music playing to do the scary winding down when the power goes out. I ran into some people from my French class at the first museum, which was a fun surprise. All of the artwork was beautiful in each of the museums. Then on Saturday the 20th some of us Augie students had a BBQ with the Brazilians in our classes, which was really fun. There was a lot of good food, and we had to speak in French since we don't know portuguese and only a few of them know a little english. We had a great time eating, talking, and listening to music as well as each other talk in our native language. Then I went to the movies with a few other people from Augie: we saw Marius, which is a love story—Marius has always loved the sea, and he falls in love with a woman named Fanny, and it is sad and good and girly. Then on Sunday the 21st the Augie group went to Annecy! We spent five hours getting there (with an hour break in Lyon) and when we got there another Augie, French professor met us at the train station. We walked around and had lunch and went by the lake and just enjoyed the beautiful city. While we were there, we took a boat tour on the lake for 2 hours, and it was just the most amazing scenery with the mountains surrounding the lake. It reminded me of how great our God is that he created the mountains. It was a wonderful day of breathtaking views, but when we were leaving there were some problems with the trains and we were delayed 40 minutes in Lyon and didn't get home until 1am. Then we went to class on Monday, which was hard after not much sleep.

The quaint courtyard in Musée de la Vie Bourguignonne

Me facing my fears of the mannequins in the museum (thankfully they were only on the first floor, so I was fine on the second and third floor looking at art and displays of different stores).

Musée d'Art Sacré

Interestingly, they had modern and traditional religious art next to each other.

Me inside the Musée de Beaux Arts, there were many different styles of art from different time periods.

Annecy!!

There is a beautiful park that we sat in before our tour.

Beautiful mountains

An old castle that we had to walk up hill to see

Beautiful Lac d'Annecy and mountains

On the tour boat

This mountain is called the sleeping Indian although it is a little hard to see in this picture. On the right of the picture is the "head and feathers" and on the left is the "body" lying down.

The group in Annecy, our professor's hometown!