Le jour de la Bastille / Adventure 2

Monday wasn't particularly special. There was class in the morning and then later in the day I got a migraine... so I didn't do much other than get 11-12 hours of sleep. But... Tuesday, the 14th, was Bastille day!

Bastille day is a holiday here, so I didn't have school. It is a celebration of the storming of the Bastille in Paris during the Revolution. In the morning I worked a it on my hw, but then I called Megan to see what the girls in my program were up to for the day and they were at the train station to go to Vizille. I hurried over to the train station and we caught the 11am bus, rather than the 10:40 one since I couldn't make it there in time.

So we were on the bus and it paused at a weird location, but then drove on. As time passed we got a little worried. We were pretty sure we had passed through Vizille. 10 minutes later the bus stopped, it was the end of the line... we weren't in Vizille... We talked with the bus driver and he was extremely calm, not that I was panicking, but he just wasn't remotely worried about the situation. He dropped us off at the Chateau de Vizille where we had meant to go...

Vizille is a small village about 30 minutes from downtown grenoble. L'assemblie de Vizille was the start of the revolution in 1788. The planning for the first meeting in Vizille took place in a building in Grenoble that I've put pictures up of. But this was the location of the official start of the revolution. Le Chateau de Vizille is a museum now for the revolution. At noon we got into the museum, we were a little confused because signs in front said it wasn't open on holidays... but it was.

It was closing for lunch in 30 minutes, but we started going through it anyway. It was rather cool. We saw some interesting things, but then it was closing so we left. Claire and Mallory really wanted to go to a lake or go swimming or something. They were thinking that maybe we'd just grab the next bus and head back right away since there wasn't a lake at Vizille like they had thought... Megan and I were a little surprised.

I needed to get lunch, though the girls weren't too hungry. So we hunted out a place (not much was open). By the time we had found a place, Megan and Claire were getting a little hungry so we all ate lunch. After lunch Megan and I wanted to finish the museum and Claire and Mallory wanted to take a nap in the parc until we were ready to leave.

Megan and I had thought that we were almost done with the museum, but we were wrong, very wrong. It turns out the museum was a lot larger than we thought it was. The farther we went into the museum, the more interesting it got. The most fascinating part was a special exhibition (une exposition) on Corday et Marat. It was really interesting. It was weird that neither Megan nor I knew anything about either of these key players in revolution. It made me really excited for my history class in the fall, though it won't quite go all the way back to the revolution...

After we finished the museum, we ran into one of the people in charge of excursions at school (there was an afternoon excursion to Vizille that said to bring your swim suit...). I talked with Vincent and he said that if we wanted we could join the excursion for going to the lake, though we would have to pay a little bit. We found Claire and Mallory and told them the news.

While Claire and Mallory continued to rest under a tree in the park, Megan and I went and walked around the parc. It was gorgeous, almost like a dream. But we didn't get to enjoy it too much, since the bus was leaving for the lake soon. So we went back to where the excursion buses were and it turned out that Mallory and Claire went to the lake and Megan and I stayed at Vizillle. The amount of money we'd have to pay to go to the lake for an hour or so was more than it'd cost to go there for the whole day... and Megan and I were both game for hanging out in the parc more.

Megan and I ended up sitting under the trees in the park, dangling our feet in the stream and chatting. It was really relaxing. I think I need to spend more time like that, not stressing and be super relaxed. After about an hour or so we went to where we thought the bus would be eventually. We really didn't want to miss the bus, and since the schedule was weird due to it being a holiday, we didn't want to take too many chances.

Just before six we started asking around about the bus... There had been a special event at the Chateau in the mid-afternoon to evening time and a number of respectable looking people about. I was all up for just asking a few people if they were heading towards Grenoble and if so, could we have a ride, at least to one of the tram stops... But Megan was a little hesitant. We finally asked a woman that had been working in front of the Chateau all afternoon about the bus. She wasn't sure if it was going to be coming, but she was heading to St. Martin d'Heres about 30 minutes later and said if we still hadn't found a bus she'd give us a ride. She said there was a tram stop right next to her appartement.

Well... we were still there, so we got a ride from her. It was awesome. We talked in French the entire way back. She is working on her masters at Grenoble in tourism (I had no idea that was a major). It turns out that her appartement is like a 2 minute walk from my house. When we got closer to her appartement she invited us over to have drinks. We went up to her appartement and had some water with a little licorish sirop.

We met her appartement mate, Terry. He was really funny. When we arrived he was very confused and awkward. Merium (?) introduced us and he said very awkwardly in perfect english (with a french accent) "I am sorry that I am naked." It was hilarious. He was in workout shorts and wasn't wearing a shirt, he seemed much more at ease after he put a shirt on. Megan and I stayed for maybe 20 minutes talking a bit with them, there were definitely some awkward pauses.

After we left, Megan and I were really excited to have just had a successful French encounter. Our French was adequate and we had a real conversation with a real French person! You'd think that'd happen more often, but it doesn't seem to. It was really exciting. I showed Megan how to get back to her place since we were right next to my house and she'd never been there before.

Later at night I went out to Parc Paul Mistral to see des feu d'artifice (the fire works). We weren't in the best location, but it was still rather amazing. There is this huge tour (tower) in parc Mistral that looks like it's an ancient monument of some sort. The fireworks were shot off of this and around it and the whole tour was lit up with blue lights. The music they played was really sort of hilarious. Imagine this: Gorgeous, traditional looking architurely beautiful tower lit up in blue lights with fire works going off all around it with.... doomsday music.

The sheer amount of people there was crazy. Before the fireworks (I got there an hour early), people were setting off there own little fire works. It took a bit before I stopped jumping at every one, but it was very dangerous looking. People were setting off fireworks right next to areas were people were sitting on the ground... But it looked like everyone was having a really good time. After the fireworks, Rachael and I met up to walk home together.

Today, I had class this morning and didn't do much of not this afternoon. We got another student in our house today, so all the rooms are full. She's another student from Rachael's program. Her first homestay had a surprise California trip after the first 3 weeks and then her second homestay had a cat... and she's allergic. Now she's here with us. Should be interesting.

At dinner, Americans outnumbered the French... which was funny. We talked about all sorts of things which was pretty cool. There was a little about politics, some about education, and then a game... The game was Ni Oui Ni Non. You're supposed to have a conversation without using oui or non. It was hard. Then I mentioned the question game and that started a round of me against Phillipe and Rose (not fair!). I lost, but it lasted longer than Ni Oui Ni Non.

That's a fair summary of my last few days... so I'll leave it at that!