I've been here just over a week. Crazy, huh? Since my last post I've been pretty busy. I spent a lot of the week exploring Lille even more and I must say, I love it here. It's such a cute city and I love the lifestyle. I may just be in my "honeymoon" phase but I really am enjoying myself! On Thursday I went to an orientation for international students at the Universite Catholique de Lille. It was three hours long but it was a good way to meet other international students. There were students from everywhere - Canada, America, Norway, South Korea, India, etc. It was neat to see the levels of french that people had and to see that there were other people in the same boat as me. Unfortunately, I was the only international student there who is going to ISTC. I'm fairly certain that there is only two of us this semester (me and a guy from Quebec). I think I'll find out for sure on Tuesday when my classes start, je ne sais pas! After the orientation, me, two people from Alberta, a guy from Quebec, and a guy from Hungary all went sort their French phones out and then we went to a little cafe for supper. It was the first day that it was rainy AND windy. It was SO cold but the rain didn't last long. On Friday I slept in as I had nothing planned and then me and 3 other Canadians went to a house party. At the Universite Catholique de Lille, they set international students up with a French "buddy"who can show them around and help them out with whatever they need. Since they don't do this at ISTC, the other Canadians invited me along so I could get to know some more people. I was nervous going to the party because I was scared that everyone would only be speaking French. Luckily for me, it was a mix of both French and English. Everyone was extremely nice. There were people from France, Canada, Hungary, Korea, Belgium, England, and Slovakia. Whenever someone has a party here, each person brings something to drink and then everyone just ends up sharing it all which is nice. I stood around and talked to many different people for about 4 hours when it was time to go home... or so I thought. To my surprise, I found out that 2am is generally when people go out to the clubs here. At home, we usually get together around 9pm and are back in bed by 2 or 3am (generally). Here, that's just when everyone is getting started! We ended up going to a club called Smile, but me and the other Canadians only stayed for about 15-20 min because we were exhausted. For the most part, you don't have to pay cover here so we didn't feel too bad about leaving so soon. One girl from Alberta lives in the same residence as me so we walked back home together and when we got back into residence there was a group of people in the foyer. We asked them if they were just getting in but, of course, they were just heading out. I'm going to have to get used to the late nights here. Looks like I'll be napping after supper until 9pm haha. On Saturday, I met up with two Albertans. We had lunch and then walked around Vieux Lille. It is so cute! It has all cobblestone streets and old buildings, it makes for great walking and great for window shopping! After that we met up with another girl from Alberta, a guy from Belgium, and a girl from England to have some McDonalds (weird choice, I know). We then decided to go to a bar called "Les Pirates." During the happy hour for beer, you can get a large glass for beer for 2 euro 50 and for the "aquarium" happy hour, you can buy a fish bowl (literally) for 15 euros. It's nuts. There ended up being a big group of us there from Canada, Belgium, England, France, Korea, and Hungary. At around 1:15am we decided to call it a night, which was early for a lot of people. Today, me, two other Canadians, and a girl from England went to the market they have here 3 times a week. You can pretty much buy anything at this market, it was a lot different than I imagined. There were fresh vegetables, toiletries, blankets, clothes, shoes, craft supplies, etc. You could buy stuff to make at home or to eat there. I bought a baguette, some potatoes, and naan bread with melted chocolate in it. Yum! For the rest of the day I spent my time napping and watching movies. It was nice to have some down time after two late nights. This week should be good because I have my first day of class and there is a HUGE sale on everything here on Wednesday, I can't wait! More details soon!
Bisous!
No comments:
Post a Comment