#christinaliu

[umichenginabroad]

Au Revoir, A2

I’ve only spoken French ✨in the wild✨ once before in my life, as in, held a conversation in French with complete strangers. Let me tell you: this was significant departure from the textbook dialogues I had with fellow high school classmates that were more incoherent mumbles and nervous laughter than anything else.

But this time around, I was no longer a pretend waiter in a make-believe French café that only existed in my French book, instead, I was now a very real someone who had just gone through security at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. There was an item still on the conveyor belt from the family that went before me, and the conversation went a little something like this:

Me: Pardon ! (Excuse me!) Stranger: ? (?) Me: Est-ce que c’est votre ceinture ? (Is this your belt?) Stranger: Non. Merci (No, thanks) Me: De rien! (It’s nothing)

Even though this 5-second conversation happened about two years ago now, it’s come back to the forefront of my mind as I prepare for my travels out to France. What if I accidentally leave something behind somewhere in Charles de Gaulle, Lyon St-Exupéry, or any of the countless train stations I’ll be travelling through: Lyon’s Part-Dieu, Paris’s Gare de Lyon, Nice’s Gare de Nice Ville, or Marseille’s Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles. Would I even know the French words for all of my belongings—if I lost anything, how would I be able to describe it?

I’ve been brushing up on as much French as I can, with the help of a friendly lime green owl (read as: Duolingo). There are several words in French that appear in English. You’re probably familiar with food such as “croissant”, “baguette”, “éclair”, etc.  Some of these words translate in interesting ways: “croissant” translates to “crescent” alluding to the shape of a particularly buttery and flaky pastry...but croissant is also an adjective meaning “growing” / “increasing”… so if you’re a bakery that’s doing your best to translate your baked goods, you end up with this:

(courtesy of /u/NiceInformation on Reddit)

But I digress. In these last few days I’m spending state-side, I’ve been hastily wrapping up everything I can possibly take care of before I leave for 4 weeks. So far, I have...

Spent about 10 hours in my ceramics studio to get my work to a point where they’ll be stable for the time I’m gone (this means hastily finishing my pieces and bisque firing as many as I possibly can)

Cooked the remaining ingredients in my fridge into stir fry dishes or funky casseroles so I don’t have too many leftovers, and whatever I don’t end up using, I’ll pawn off onto my roommates.

Taken some graduation photos while the weather was still somewhat pleasant. Let me tell you: I have never been more skeptical of the Ann Arbor weather forecast before this past week. Apparently 40% rain meant torrential downpour scattered between light sprinkles, while 30% chance of rain meant nice pleasant sunshine, who knew.

Had two separate dreams where I had forgotten essential belongings for my trip—in one dream, I forgot my passport, outlet converters, an entire suitcase, and even somehow ended up at the wrong airport I would be departing from. In another, I managed to remember my suitcase but forgot my smaller duffle bag which I guess had important things in it.

Given my herb saplings to a friend or particularly benevolent coworker…because I definitely can’t trust my roommates with keeping them alive

Attempted to make ISO standard A (or maybe B?) paper sizes cooperate with the printers on campus without any proper PDF editing tool—it was hard, but I wanted to have a paper copy of my train tickets in case my phone died or something went wrong

(if you’re thinking “where’s the packing?”, it’s because I haven’t packed yet 🤫)

In the days following my spring commencement ceremony, I’ve been feeling such a chaotic mix of emotions. Relief, stress, dread, nostalgia, anticipation, anxiety, more stress, more dread, maybe even some excitement if I really try and look for it. I’ll worry about the whole “how am I going to be a real person???” thing when I get back from France. For now, I’m just feeling ready.

A+, (<- not my GPA, not even remotely close, but just a cute abbreviated form of “à plus”, aka “until later!”)

Christina Liu

Computer Science BSE 

Entrepreneurship at INNOV@INSA

Lyon, France

[thejamesonworks]

RCA student Christina Liu was a recipient of our “Form & Function” bursary and has been at the studio working on her ceramic project. Find out how she’s going.... 

“My project is coming along nicely! I started by doing some sketch modeling on the plaster lathe, playing with the dimensions and proportions of a simple bowl form. However, there is no way to achieve a perfect spiral by hand on the lathe, so to begin realizing my actual design, the next step was to draw the bowl in a 3D rendering program called Rhino. After many hours of tweaking and figuring out the best way to draw the design, I finally settled on this new and better version of my spiral bowl. 

I sent the computer file to a 3D printing company to print out a model of the spiral bowl in plastic, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Now, I have to make a plaster mould from the plastic model so I can start slip casting the bowls and see how well the design translates into clay.”

[luainui]

[umichenginabroad]

Les petits choses

The little things.

I've come across several little lifestyle differences in the time I've spent in Lyon (and briefly in Marseille and Nice as well) that I felt would be worth sharing. I’ve lived my entire life in the states, and there are some things I’ve gotten very used to that I realized I had taken for granted.

Crosswalks.

I've come across two very unexpected differences in the crosswalks and crosswalks signals I've seen:

The light to indicate pedestrians have the right of way switches immediately to the "No, don't cross now" sign. There's no blinking, there's no countdown, there's no kind of any advanced warning for "Hey, if you're walking, please stop now"

With the lights that I've seen in the States, I've noticed that some traffic lights in sync with crosswalks turn yellow with the countdown, whereas others don't turn yellow until after the countdown is over. As in, a pedestrian "Walk" signal for a road that runs east to west would, typically, be green at the same time as a green light for vehicular traffic along the road that also runs east to west. But when the countdown reaches 0, the traffic light would either be yellow, or red, and you never really know. This has made for some very confusing times where I couldn't actually tell if I could cross the road or not, but I would like to further research the effects of a countdown vs. an immediate "Don't Walk".

The lights for cross traffic (e.g. traffic lights for cars) aren't actually visible from where you're standing at the crosswalk, as in, they're "in front of" the crosswalk, from the perspective of the driver or tram conductor or what have you.

Almost every traffic light I’ve seen has been on a pole along the right-hand side of the road--they do drive on the right here!--and I’ve noticed that most actually have two lights: a slightly larger light on top of a pole, and a slightly smaller one a bit below it. I can’t really imagine what these could possibly be for...maybe one for lower, bicycle or motorcyclists, and a higher one for truck drivers?

After doing a bit of reading into this though, my frustrations have clouded my judgement on one important issue: by having the signals on the near side of the crosswalk, this prevents drivers from blocking the crosswalk or otherwise stopping much further than they should. I can name one intersection in particular in Ann Arbor where I’ve seen drivers often stop completely beyond the white line--Observatory and Geddes, the one not too far from Stockwell--oftentimes at the expense of a bus or truck being able to move through.

--- For the past couple months, I've been reading a bit more about accessibility (especially designing for those who have low vision and/or those who are hard of hearing, but there is obviously much more to differently abled people than just those traits), I've noticed a couple things here,  especially at train stations, airports, and subway platforms.

This was along a train station platform in Lyon St. Exupery, guiding riders back from the trains through the doors to the main station hub

These were inside Gare St. Charles in Marseille, creating a pathway from one of the exterior doors to the stairs up to the main boarding/waiting area of the train/bus station.

They're for people with low vision or who otherwise would rely on a white cane more than their eyesight when walking around, and while some people I've met have argued that France isn't accessible at all, I do want to commend these little details in these spaces. The trams I've used have had visual and auditory indicators for the tram's next stop, lights and sounds for for when the train's doors are about to close or open, etc.

I’ve seen little bumps on sidewalks back at home, especially when the pavement slopes down toward a crosswalk, but I have yet to seen such a thorough implementation of other textured pavement patterns back at home. One thing I found interesting though: I have yet to see any braille.

--- And speaking of accessibility, I've yet to see anyone using under-the-shoulder crutches that seem so common back at home. More often than not, I'd had seen forearm crutches, like the ones on the right of this diagram here:

Picture credits to this article on Walkeasy, where you can also read more about the (physiological, stigma, and cultural) differences between the two styles: https://walkeasy.com/blog/walkeasy/forearm-vs-underarm-crutches

There was an interesting line from this article as well:

“Short-term users [in the US] perceive forearm crutches as being used only by those with a long-term physical challenge, hence want to avoid the stigma — the exact opposite perception exists in most other countries.”

This was true for me, the first time I saw other students on campus using a forearm crutch, I figured they must have had some really serious long-term injury, but I soon I realized that they were simply dealing with an injured ankle or something a bit more manageable than that.

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

P.S. One more little thing! I had talked a lot about accessibility and a11y-related topics, but onto sustainability: since writing my last post that briefly covered this topic, I had noticed a couple other things around campus and in everyday life. There’s a recycling container for batteries right by the main dining hall on campus...

...a recycling... container of some sort... for markers and other plastic writing utensils, located conveniently by one of the bathrooms in the library

...and even a little message on my own toothpaste tube that says “Remember to turn off the water while brushing”. I think these serve as friendly (but perhaps also slightly self-contradicting) reminders to be conscious of the small, mundane parts of our everyday lives.

[umichenginabroad]

Halfway through

Our first week and a half of class flew by, and we're officially halfway through our program! I haven't mentioned a single word about our curriculum, so I'll get right on that.

For this particular program, INNOV@INSA, we have two different "tracks" -- one that focuses on project management, and another that focuses on building IoT devices (read as: arduinos with a bunch of sensors and bluetooth communication devices slapped onto it.) I was really torn between the two tracks, but I eventually chose the IoT one.

We've mostly had our IoT class every morning from 9am-12pm, which has usually been just a lecture. In the 8 days of class we've had so far, we've had 7 different professors, which has made for an interesting classroom experience. Some of the lectures we've had so far have resembled the entirety of 370 squished into a 3-hour lecture--we blazed through all of the components of a CPU, calculated the power consumption of a given sensor in various states of activity, and we've learned about different properties of networks and network signals.

We were recently given an Arduino Uno to toy around with, and we were encouraged to travel around campus and Lyon to collect data with the various sensors that were soldered onto it.

A couple of our lectures have been in this room, which is already decked out in a bunch of sensors, but I don't think we're allowed to use any of this data for our own project :(

...

In addition to our technical class, we're all enrolled in a French language class, a cross-cultural awareness class, and then a class that focuses on the industry and society in and around Lyon.

I've really enjoyed our French class so far, I was initially worried as it is our only class taught in French (which makes sense, as the best way to really learn a language is to hear and speak it), but our professor has taken a very creative approach to some of our lessons. Some of us were more novice speakers while one student has French-speaking family members and is almost fluent. During our first class, our professor roughly gauged our vocabulary by asking us to pretend we were parents trying to pacify our imaginary toddler's never-ending curiosity.

So a dialogue would go like:

"Hey papa, why are bridges suspended over rivers?' "To let boats pass underneath them." "Hey mama, why do old people lose their hair?" "Because being bald is fashionable"

and so on and so forth.

...

Our cross-cultural class also had a really interesting first day, the professor presented a generic stock photo that I'm having a lot of trouble finding, so imagine this:

A person is sitting in what looks like a chair with an attached desk inside a room with other similar types of chairs. No one else is in the frame, and on the desk are a pile of papers, a pair of eyeglasses, and the person's gaze is directed downward, presumably at a phone in their hands.

Our professor asked us to describe the scene. Some students stated more objective facts ("she is sitting in a chair", "she's looking at her phone", "she's inside a building", etc.) while others stated more subjective interpretations ("she's not paying attention to class", "she's cheating on her homework assignment", etc.) It was an interesting conversation that highlighted how easily people can infer intent behind behavior, some of us have mentioned that French people have come off as rude because they stand "too close" (a relatively subjective term) or they don't say "excuse me" when squeezing by (also a more subjective and/or culturally-influenced behavior).

...

I'm excited to see what the rest of the program has in store, but we're just beginning a 4-day weekend and school is, for now, the last thing on my mind.

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

...

P.S. For those who have done a little bit of coding, and are familiar with the increment operator (e.g. “++”), there have been a couple French programmers who took it upon themselves to try and write the expression “a++” (e.g. incrementing a variable named “a”) in the most ridiculous ways possible. The site is read from bottom to top, and it starts off relatively tame, with “a++”, “a += 1”, and “a = a + 1”, but then quickly devolves into code that looks like an ASCII camel. 

[umichenginabroad]

Confluence

confluence - noun con·​flu·​ence|\ˈkän-ˌflü-ən(t)s,kən-ˈflü-\

Definition of confluence

a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point ex. a happy confluence of weather and scenery ex. a confluence of cultures

the flowing together of two or more streams, the place of meeting of two streams ex. the Mississippi River's confluence with the Missouri River the combined stream formed by conjunction

Or definition #3:

a district in Lyon that has historically served as an important industrial/commercial area, given its close proximity to a river that eventually leads out to the Mediterranean, and has since been rejuvenated with millions of Euros to be the epitome of a smart and sustainable city for years to come. According to their site, this area focuses on establishing a better green/park infrastructure, enhancing public transport, encouraging technical environmental and architectural innovation, and will eventually transform the motorway into a more calm urban boulevard. (Spoiler alert: not all of this has happened just yet, but in my opinion, there is quite a bit that has been done already)

Welcome to the Confluence.

Let's start with the mall: it looked nothing like any other mall I had ever seen, and somehow managed to be an open and closed space at the same time.

I knew that this district would contain some really modern architecture, but this was beyond my expectations for such a commercial space.

I'm not sure if you could even call this an open-air mall, although it did rain later in the afternoon and the rain made its way onto the ground floor of the building (building? maybe I shouldn't call it a building), so maybe that counts for something. It was beautiful seeing the interior lit up with soft, overcast natural light, but I'd imagine during the darker winter months, it'd probably look a bit more bland or maybe even a bit spooky.

We also stopped by the Musée des Confluences, just one tram stop away. It had three temporary exhibits, one on insect life, one on facets of Japanese culture, and one on death (and what it could mean to be immortal).

The final sentence of this placard got to me: "The impression of freedom [in video games] is false, since players are guided within a scenario designed for them, and that always ends in the same way -- game over."

The death one was certainly the most intriguing to me. I remember a friend of mine would always joke during our middle school days that one day he would discover how to live forever, and how awesome it would be to be able to have the time to do anything and everything. There was an interactive exhibit where professionals of various backgrounds (medical doctors, lawyers, sociologists, etc.) gave their thoughts on what it means to die and what the implications of having a society that lives forever are. The interesting thing to me was that it wasn't immediately clear if they were talking about a society that stayed at age 100 forever (with all sorts of chronic diseases and expenses to consider) or a society that stayed relatively healthy forever.

In my opinion, this was probably about twice the size of the entirety of UMMA, but some of the other folks I traveled were commenting on how it was one of the largest museums they've been in. Either I didn't do a very good job at looking at the exhibits, or I've spent way too much time at, in my opinion, absolutely gargantuan places like the Chicago Institute of Art and the Met in New York City.

But there was a really beautiful view of old and "new"/current Lyon from a little balcony on the rooftop

And there was also an ONLYLYON sign, where a couple of us took silly photos.

Dinner for today consisted of a banh-mi sandwich I got from a little eatery on the top floor of the mall, where I then sat on some chairs along the terraces to admire the view. I've been trying to get better at speaking more French and unfortunately this evening,  apparently I was functioning on auto-pilot. The conversation like this:

me: (fr) Hi can I get a banh-mi? server: (fr) Are you eating here or would you like that to go? me: (fr) That'll be all [I was expecting the server's reply to be "Anything else?"] server: (en) No uh, is this to go? Or for here? me: (en) o-oh.. to go... thanks...

woops. Maybe one day I'll manage to hold a conversation in French long enough where it won't default back to English, but today is not that day.

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

[umichenginabroad]

Bienvenue à Vieux Lyon

We had most of the day to ourselves last Saturday, the 18th. The only thing on our agenda was a tour of Vieux Lyon in the afternoon, and so my roommate and I spent the morning walking around a couple of the neighborhoods around our campus. I was determined to find some "brioche aux pralines" (or "praluline" for short), which is a Lyon specialty.

I had a napoleon (or "mille-feuille", lit. "1000 sheets") for breakfast, it was definitely on the sweeter side, but they're one of my favorite pastries so I couldn't pass up the opportunity when we walked by a pastry shop with these in one of the neighborhoods near our campus. 

We went to the mall (yet again) just because we were a bit short on time for our last visit, so we wanted to take a more thorough stroll through the place. Our first stop: McDonald’s. As you may or may not know, American fast food chains have slightly more localized menus in various countries. This means:

They serve macarons (for just 1 euro!!) alongside several other pastries far more exquisite than you’d find at home.

There were also several kiosks where you could order food, so you wouldn't even need to talk to anyone! Although these seem to be getting more popular in the states as well, so maybe these aren’t so special anymore.

At 2pm, we made the trek from campus to Hôtel de Ville (a tram stop just on the edge of Old Lyon), and we crossed a beautiful bridge over the Sâone river to our destination for the afternoon. We walked through incredibly narrow streets, and as it was a relatively nice Saturday afternoon, there were a lot of other tourists and locals checking out the area.

There must have been some funky medieval festival going on, because we saw a lot of musicians/performers dressed up in costumes, as well as the occasional small army marching through the narrow streets.

And I found Pralus, the bakery that created the first brioche aux pralines. We didn't have enough time to purchase them then and there, but boy did I really want to :(

We then walked toward a funicular at the edge of Vieux Lyon to check out a basilica that overlooks most of the city.

Finally, we ended up in Bellecour.

This was a large plaza, with a couple statues of Louis XIV, and we all parted ways at around 5pm. A few of us went to find a place for dinner, but most of the eateries didn't actually open until 7pm.

So we settled for an Italian place near the plaza, much to the disappointment of our INSA buddies. (But hey, if we were to stick to a more authentic French eatery, we would have had to wait 2 more hours. It was either this, or the McDonalds across the street)

I think there was a birds’ nest wedged in between the roof of the awning and the window of the store, because birds wandered around the restaurant throughout our meal. No one seemed to notice or care, aside from a family that came in later whose daughter was over the moon with meeting this new tiny, feathery, friend.

After dinner, I just called it a day and went straight back to the dorms. We had our first day trip, where we were bussing two hours out to Annecy, and I didn’t want to be too tired for what looked like one of the most picturesque cities in France.

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

[umichenginabroad]

My first full day at INSA!

On Friday, I joined my INSA buddy for breakfast and boy was I glad that she had suggested we eat at 7:15am, the tiny eatery was empty enough that the two of us could go at a snail's pace so I could comfortably figure out how the breakfast line worked.

The options  were relatively basic, bread, plain yogurt, various little packets of jam and Nutella, and some fruit. There were also some drink dispensers, for hot drinks, milk, fruit juices, and ol' water. Speaking of water: while the tap is safe to drink and sinks are obviously everywhere, I noticed there was a distinct lack of drinking fountains on campus. I haven't seen /any/ in my time here.

After breakfast, I made a quick shopping trip to a store about 5 minutes away to grab some various items I'd need for the dorm (tissues, toilet paper,  dish sponges, etc).

I noticed cars parallel parked in between tree fixtures, which I guess is one way to prevent the problem of That One Guy who takes up two designated parking spots, and it also took us ages to find out where the store actually was.

The grocery store, Carrefour, also had these shopping carts/baskets/basket-carts, which were really convenient

We quickly scurried back to campus with an armful of items because there is a bag tax here--plastic bags cost an additional 5 centimes. Most of the people in the checkout line were quite prepared with bringing their own reusable bags or just simply using an empty backpack, and at around 10am, we began our tour of campus.

Not only were several buildings in the process of being renovated, but there was a bunch of construction along the roads, and preparations being made for a campus-wide event this weekend. It's almost like I never even left Ann Arbor 🙃 All of the buildings were of similar shapes and colors, with the main exception of a bright [Ross-]orange building that had a giant traffic cone in front of it.

there's a PokeStop for the cone in PokemonGo, and it’s dubbed the “VLC”, presumably in honor of the video streaming application 

Once our tour and brief orientation session wrapped up, a couple other exchange students and yours truly briefly went to a mall in Part-Dieu to do some shopping.

Lyon has been coined one of the smartest cities in France, and the way tech has been embedded into facets of everyday life, like this funky tram map, has been cool to see. Now if only our dorm could have WiFi...

There were a couple familiar stores, mostly those that sold cosmetics. I specifically saw Sephora, M.A.C., L'Occitane, The Body Shop and I smelled also found a Lush store. I stopped by a tiny food stand to grab a quick bite to eat, and I thought I held the conversation in decent French, but upon getting my card back from the cashier and receiving my food, she said "Thank you" in English, which caught me by surprise. I was genuinely worried that my French was so bad she resorted to using English. When I had paid for my groceries in the morning, the card reader initially had a display in French ("Insert/Tap your card", "please wait", etc.), but the "Remove card" message was in English. Maybe there's something embedded in my card that somehow affects the language of the card reader? And maybe that’s how she knew I wasn’t French...

In the afternoon, we had a cooking demonstration + apéro* planned from 2:30pm through about 8pm. An English teacher at INSA joined us for the spectacle in order to translate instructions and general comments that chef Dominique had made. We helped peel some asparagus, but after that point, chef Dominique and his assistants took care of the rest (with the exception of one student volunteer piping the whipped cream on the strawberries).

The menu for tonight consisted of:

cured ham, asparagus, and some very-well seasoned mayonnaise/hollandaise sauce

broccoli, small potato pancakes, and duck served with a vinegary-orange duck-based sauce

some cheese (I didn't take a picture of this, but I assure you, you will see a lot more photos of cheese)

freshly cut strawberries that were macerated with sugar

That was all happened Friday, and next up: Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon--a very beautiful, colorful, historic, and cobblestony part of Lyon about 20-25 minutes away from campus)

a+,

Christina

Computer Science

Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA

Lyon, France

Two fun facts because I forgot some in my last post, thanks for sticking around:

"prendre l'apéro" - "to have an aperitif" is the literal translation, where an "aperitif" would typically refer to a drink consumed before a meal, but this was a whole ordeal where we had some kir, savory finger food, and of course, the food that we watched the chefs prepare in the kitchen. It was delicious, so far, I've been fairly impressed with the food here, and Lyon is living up to its name as the gastronomic capital of France.

AND

Most, if not all, plastic water bottles I've seen with the smaller caps snap open/close, instead of being a screw top. This is supposedly an intentional design to prevent the caps from getting completely lost, and the Carrefour store also had several different kinds of recycling bins, including one dedicated to bottle caps. It’s interesting to see this much consideration toward bottle caps, now if only I could find a recycling bin on campus...😬

[umichenginabroad]

Arriving in Lyon

The 30ish hours from May 15th 6 9am EST/3pm CET (Central European Time) through May 16th 4pm EST/10pm CET were the most exhausting 30 hours of my life. I set my alarm for 6am because I (foolishly) thought that would give me enough time to take care of everything I needed to take care of before I left for 5 weeks. Spoiler alert [quite literally]: it was not enough time, I ended up sleeping in until 9am, and I only later realized I had left my milk in the fridge, so I'm in for a lovely surprise when I return.

At 11:32am, I left from the Ann Arbor Amtrak station toward Chicago Union Station, and the time it took me to finally arrive at the airport extended by about a full hour because of train delays on both the Amtrak and the Blue Line from Union Station to O'Hare. 🙃But then my flight out of the states was delayed by two hours, so I guess it all worked out...?

This particular 8-hour flight (or 10-hour flight, if you include sitting around for two extra hours) could have gone better, I sat next to a baby that constantly cried, so I didn't get much sleep. But at least this meant I was awake for our two in-flight meals, and handful of other snacks. The in-flight entertainment system had this fun tiny remote, and I didn't realize the lightbulb button was to control the seat light (I assumed it was to adjust the brightness or something) so my poor seatmates had to deal with that nonsense in the dead of night.

Once we landed, it was just a matter of getting to Lyon. I thankfully didn't deal with any more delays, and instead I just wandered around Charles de Gaulle for several minutes to figure out where my train arrives, only to learn the specific platform isn't announced until just before the train pulls into the station. I boarded a OUIGO train, which was decked out in bright pink and blue colors, and then dozed off as we traveled through the French countryside from Paris to Lyon.

I probably saw more cows in this particular train ride than I have in my entire life, which certainly makes sense given the country's fondness for cheese.

I found the architecture at St. Exupery--the train stop a short ways outside of Lyon proper--to be quite beautiful. I had two more transfers left before arriving at the campus, one onto the Rhonexpress, just a short shuttle/tram service between Lyon Part-Dieu and St. Exupery, and then one on the city's tramway from Part-Dieu to INSA.

At about 5:30pm CET (11:30AM for the folks back home) on May 16th, I settled into my rudimentary room. There's no WiFi in the dorms, but there are ethernet ports and we also got basic blankets and pillows. There was a fair amount of storage in the room, with drawers underneath each bed, a closet right next to the door, and even a weird ceiling basket in case you need to stow away even more things. A tiny bathroom, an even tinier kitchen with an itty bitty fridge and an absolutely miniscule icecube tray.

I was also greeted with this little sign on the toilet:

Which translates to: "Where are you going to be next year?"

"Back home with mom and dad", if you flush using more water, or "At INSA", if you flush using less water. This certainly reminded me of some of the toilet handles I’ve seen on campus at Michigan, but this featured a lot more guilt-tripping.

By about 7pm, almost everyone from the study abroad program had arrived, and we got to meet some of our INSA buddies! We were all paired with a student studying at INSA to help us get a lay of the land (e.g. apparently the on-campus eateries are only open during normal meal hours, so goodbye 3pm lunches and 9pm late night snacks). We spent the rest of the evening eating at a burger place near the campus, I tried to order my food in French only to realize I didn't properly understand the various options that my meal came with, so I enlisted a buddy for some help translating (and ultimately: for some help ordering as well). When it was time to pay, we went to the register on our way out--which was a bit unusual, I've never had to do that at a bar or sit-down restaurant back at home--and then we all parted ways for the night.

So much had happened in my last day in America/first day in France, and this was only just the beginning. Our classes don't start until Monday, and the time in between is dedicated to various campus/city/French activities. I'm writing this particular post 2 days later (obviously), so coming up soon are stories and pictures of the historic parts of Lyon.

a+,

Christina

Computer Science

Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA

Lyon, France

[umichenginabroad]

Some retrospective thoughts

I landed in O'Hare on the 18th, and after getting over the initial waves of "oh I can read all these signs now" and "how does the Chicago public transit system even work anyway?" and "Why is the Red Line 15 minutes delayed?? This is awful", I finally got around to reflecting on the time I spent in France.

If I could potentially misuse this particular French word, I felt quite enchanté by the life I lived in France. Enchanté - as an adjective, can translate to enchanted or delighted (e.g. "an enchanted forest", "I am delighted by this sign"), but it's also used as a greeting or a response to an introduction, like a single-word form of "It's a pleasure to meet you". So that's what I'm going for here, it's this simultaneously delightful experience coupled with the fact that it was my introduction to this country that I've only viewed from the outside.

Yet in spite of the never-ending onslaught of unfamiliar sights and sounds, something about my time studying abroad in France felt almost like home. I think it's some mix of "wow there are so many elements here that are a byproduct of a culture that has had centuries to become established" and "man I wish the lifestyle I grew to adopt here was one that I could bring back home with me".

Especially over my last year in school, I've been passionate to learn more about cooking and sustainability (and, of course, how to cook more sustainably). It's been quite heartbreaking reading recent news about how recycling plants have just ultimately been sending their materials straight to landfills anyway because of the cost increase in properly cleaning their recyclables, and I found myself keeping an eye out for what sort of city services were offered by the places I went to in France.

For example, take this recycling bin (bins? small dumpster?) along the streets of the 13th arrondissement of Paris.

Not only am I ecstatic about the fact that there are these public bins just along the road, but it's also very cool to see how the individual compartments are divided into categories for different materials. Glass, plastic, metal, paper, cardboard, and even clothing and shoes are all accounted for, and there are cute little designs on the sides as well.

And on the topic of gastronomy, if you were sitting here thinking "I don't know much about France, but I'm sure they have good food", you'd be right.

I had booked an AirBnB experience with a pastry chef in France, and not only did we make an excellent pair of lemon tarts in her itty bitty tiny apartment, but we also had some time to ourselves to chat about her experiences living in Paris, working in a Japanese pastry shop, and living abroad in Japan for some time.

Part of the reason I had gone on this study abroad program in the first place was because I wanted the opportunity to get to know some French students on a personal level, but I was also grateful to have the experience to chat away with someone with a slightly older perspective and background. Looking back at the weeks I spent in Paris, I probably would have done a few things differently, but it was a lovely time while it lasted and I'm hoping to travel back to Europe again sometime in the near future.

In the mean time though, I'll be brushing up on my conversational French, because one of the more embarrassing things that had happened to me while in France was how much I struggled with ordering food at fast food joints. (Which is also something I struggle with here in the states, what makes a menu item a meal? What comes included and what costs extra? And why does everyone else here already have their order completely memorized???) The employees would often switch to English as I mumbled my way through my order, and I didn't have the confidence to tell them that the language wasn't an issue, I just had no idea what I was doing...

Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

[umichenginabroad]

And that's all, folks!

This week was an absolute whirlwind of activity. Monday was a holiday, which meant no classes...but also no real way to do anything else exciting because several businesses were closed or had reduced hours, it was rainy, and just kind of a dull time overall.

On Tuesday, it had kind of collectively hit all of us that the end was nigh, and so we celebrated by going out for dinner despite the fact we still had meal swipes left.

Dinner ft. ramen and a really funky spoon

One thing I had noticed during my time here is the popularity of being served coffee after meals, especially dinners. When I had first heard "Would anyone like coffee?" after our empty dinner plates were taken away, I was imagining a typical 8oz cup (or larger) portion of coffee, similar to the amount that you'd get served in a coffee shop. But no, these were much smaller portions served in tiny espresso cups. After looking into this phenomenon a bit more, I learned that coffee actually helps with digestion and, as you'd expect, the caffeine also helps keep you awake--keeping that food coma feeling at bay.

So seeing a large coffee dispenser nestled behind the sushi bar took me by surprise, the stainless steel looked almost anachronistic next to the neutral beige and tan tones from all of the bamboo and wood paneling. One thing I've noticed about most of the sushi places I've come across here is that eel (aka "unagi")  is relatively uncommon, I've gotten so used to seeing eel being used in several different types of sushi rolls in the US, I had just assumed it was one of those other universal constants.

Wednesday was quite the day, we had found out about 20 minutes into our first "class" that our professor had actually left for vacation, and a couple of our other professors (we've had about 10 so far) scrambled together to make some semblance of a class period for us. At this point in the program, we were making some finishing touches to a project that we were only assigned about a week before, so the professors just opened a room for us and then carried on.

Thursday was our last day of class! It was quite the adventure, we started off the day with a presentation about our final project, and for anyone who has ever tried to do any sort of a live demo in front of an audience, you might be able to picture how this presentation went. (Thankfully, we saved the demo for the end, so we were able to adjust it as needed once we realized nothing was going quite according to plan.) And then we went up to le Tour Oxygène, one of three skyscrapers in the city of Lyon.

Where we had a little celebratory banquet complete with lots of fancy finger food and, as you’d expect, plenty of fancy pastries.

There were also a bunch of macarons being served at another table

The room had a mini "Only Lyon" sign too! (See also: the much larger one from my post about the Confluence)

And last but not least, here's a fun family photo of the 4 of us from Michigan!

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

P.S. I'll be spending the next couple days between Paris and Gentilly! For those who don’t know, Gentilly is a commune that borders Paris, and it’s one of the closest to the city center--it takes about 20 minutes by RER to make it to the Louvre, which isn’t bad at all. It’s time for my next big/small adventure as I continue exploring France on my own, and here are some sneak peaks:

The closest shopping mall to my hostel is, more or less, entirely underground--and you best bet I followed directions on Google Maps only to be completely lost when all I saw was grass.  

You can see in the reflection of windows in the second picture that I was standing on a sidewalk that bordered a patch of grass, it was beyond confusing.

Later in the day, I stopped by the Louvre, but as I had only an hour or so before it closed for the day, I didn’t bother going to see the exhibits this time around. (But I do hope to see some pieces later, especially the Nike of Samothrace!)

[umichenginabroad]

More Miscellaneous Musings

This is sort of a continuation of my last post “Les Petits Choses”, which was a small collection of smaller cultural/lifestyle differences I’ve noticed during my time here, and today I’ll be talking about three more things: service culture and some of the changes I’ve noticed in small talk, time and how it’s measured, and security in retail stores.

Service and/or small talk culture when making purchases.

I'm not sure if I've just gotten far too used to the stereotypical "Midwest Niceness", or if this is actually indicative or something more cultural on a national level. I could also just have a really poor selection bias, as I'm comparing my experiences here to the very, very few times that I've had to make purchases in stores back at home. I've usually used self-checkout machines whenever I can, but in the times that those weren't an option, I can recall times when the cashier has greeted me with "How did you find everything today?", "Did any of our staff help you find what you needed?", or other such small talk.

That's never happened here, and purchases I've made in-store usually consist of a hello, a transaction, and then a goodbye. It's very short and to-the-point, and I'm personally a big fan. I also didn't notice any of the "Hi, what can I help you with?" pestering while you're shopping, and in one store I was in (Orange, one of the cell service providers here in France) even had this unspoken, almost invisible line where people queued up if they wanted to be helped, while the rest of the store was open for customers to just shop around without an issue.

This difference in service culture and the level of socialization is especially apparent in restaurants and other eateries, because the federal hourly minimum wage in the US for employees that receive tips is just over $2, so for US servers, their earnings are mostly made of tips, which can lead to more frequent check-ins at tables. Here, the minimum wage is much higher, so you don’t really tip (aka paying even more than what the bill amounts to, because technically the bill already includes a tip) and it can even be seen as rude, because it implies you think your server doesn't make enough money. So here, waitstaff don't stop really by the table unless they're actually doing something: taking orders, bringing food, clearing away dishes, etc. Based on my very limited experience shopping, maybe this more distant employee-customer social behavior in restaurants carries over to retail stores as well?

---

It’s time to talk about time.

Calendar weeks are slightly different from what I'm used to as well--weeks begin on Mondays, not Sunday. We got a calendar of events and classes for our program on the first day, and I've had to do a little bit of mental gymnastics to remind myself that the right-most day in a given row is not Saturday, but indeed Sunday.

The most interesting revelation surrounding this was the fact that another European student was asking us which day of the week we consider to be the "start" of the week, and I couldn't really decide. As in, if someone were to say to me "I'll see you at the start of next week", I generally default to thinking of Monday, but I don't know if it's because I associate Mondays with the start of a week, or if it's simply because I associate Sundays with doing nothing.

But either way, if I were to picture any given week as a series of 7 days, the first of those 7 days would always be a Sunday, and all of my calendar applications reflect this as well.

(As an aside: you might notice that noon is written as "12am" on the calendar, this is also apparently a thing in France: noon and times that take place during the noon hour are still considered AM, and PM times don't start until 1. I couldn't figure out why, because a conversation about this with a French student devolved into "AM/PM is so confusing, we should all just use the 24-hour clock!") --- But back to the topic of retail stores, I've seen a handful of stores take note of customers with bags. The Carrefour Market near campus has had a dedicated security guard posted at the entrance/exit who has seemed to just keep a lazy eye on everyone in general, and I've noticed a couple times that cashiers themselves have asked customers to open up any bags on their person while paying for their groceries.

It seems like they're very conscious of people running off with unpaid merchandise, and it certainly helps that the little gates that lead into the main store area generally only open one way (e.g. you can't exit the way that you came, and in the case of the Carrefour Market near campus, the only way to exit the store is by going through a checkout lane. Or by looking like a fool by climbing over the gate, and then attracting unwanted attention.)

Yet the bag check seems more cursory than anything, there was one time I had my backpack full of clothes I had packed for a weekend trip, and the security guard at a larger Carrefour in a mall in Nice had only opened it enough to really get a good look at what was on the surface. I'm curious to know why these security measures are taken, since they don't seem particularly thorough, but maybe it's just the illusion of security (and, of course, having actual people on-hand in case there is really suspicious activity) that makes all the difference.

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

[umichenginabroad]

Dining Halls at INSA

It's been a while for me, I'll be honest. I hadn't stepped foot inside of a dining hall in about two years, and my first experience with dining hall food was Bursley. Before the renovations. I've purged those days from my memory.

For those who are in a similar position, or maybe for those alumni (hi!) who are reminiscing on their own dining hall memories, here's roughly how it worked at Michigan:

There are three different types of on-campus currency that were relevant to meals: Dining Dollars, Blue Bucks, and just some number of meal swipes (and for most plans, this number was also bundled with a number of "guest swipes"). On campus, there were a couple different places you could get food outside of the dining halls (such as Panda Express) as well as little convenience store-type places where you could purchase food as well as other things (think U-Go's in Pierpont, the Blue Apple in Bursley, or Victor's in MoJo). When paying at one of these stores, you could use either Blue Bucks, Dining Dollars, or just ... normal dollars... And the difference between Blue Bucks and Dining Dollars was that Blue Bucks could go toward on-campus non-food establishments as well, like the Barnes and Noble stores.

But back to the dining halls: because meals were tallied with just swipes and not individual item prices, no matter where you ate, you'd just swipe in, grab your food, and stick around for (more or less) however long you'd like.  (You could also pay for single meals,  [https://dining.umich.edu/meal-plans-rates/single-meals/](https://dining.umich.edu/meal-plans-rates/single-meals/) , but I don't think this is particularly common among students) Some of the dining halls had more restricted hours, but most of the larger ones were just open from roughly 7am all the way through 9pm.

That's not quite how things work here.

At INSA, there aren't really any on-campus eateries aside from the dining halls, so the whole Blue Bucks/dining dollars thing doesn't apply here.  You also pay once you have a trayful of food, it's not quite the same as Michigan where you just pay to be able to enter the dining hall. There are also some restrictions on the amount of food you can get, I've yet to really understand it, but it's something along the lines of "two smaller dishes (where smaller dishes are a salad, dessert, fruit, or warm side dish) and one larger meal", and there are some restrictions on what you can place on your larger plate that I have yet to figure out.

You could enter the line multiple times but our cards function a bit differently for our program, and no one seems to be able to explain how exactly they work, because it is slightly different from how meal plans for regular INSA students.

As for the food, it's usually been quite good! There was one time they served a hefty slice of lasagna alongside some of my favorite desserts (the zig-zaggy pastry here is a millefeuille, also occasionally called a Napoleon), and I got a tiny corn salad placed into a carved out tomato as well.

All of the dining halls have these water pitchers, which students fill up at little water dispensers to bring back to their tables. Some dining halls have other beverages as well, like coffee or juice, but at least one of the dining halls only has water as a beverage. At first I was a little confused by this, but it made sense after some time because the cups in the dining halls are actually quite tiny, and it makes sense to be able to just bring a pitcher of water back to your table for everyone to use whenever they'd like. And I think the act of sharing something with everyone you’re eating with is a really nice bonding experience, even if it is just water

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France

[umichenginabroad]

Grocery shopping and shopping bags

A little bit about me: I grew up in the suburbs, where it was common for everyone to have a car, pull up to a grocery store, use shopping carts (or occasionally, small handheld baskets) to carry items around the store, and then either roll the cart out to a car at the end of the shopping trip, put your items in your car, and then (ideally, HOPEFULLY) neatly return your cart to a little corral that took up one or two parking spaces throughout the parking lot. All of the grocery stores or supermarkets I grew up with only had one floor, because there was more than enough land to expand horizontally rather than vertically. (I didn't see my first escalator within a Target until I was 19, which was in the heart of Chicago)

Some immediate things I noticed from the shopping/walking around I've done at Carrefour (with the larger store about 10 minutes from campus, the the Carrefour at Part-Dieu, Confluence, and then one in a shopping center in Nice as well):

Bags are bigger here, both the plastic ones as well as the reusable ones made of slightly heavier material. The plastic ones even seem to be made of more durable material (think the kind of plastic you'd receive from a bag when shopping at a store like H&M, rather than the almost transparent bags you'd find at Target or stuck on a tree along the interstate). If you've ever been to an IKEA and know what I mean when I say "those blue IKEA bags", the reusable ones are about that large.

In fact, I think most students have used the reusable shopping bags in lieu of a dedicated laundry bag. These mesh bags, or even just foldable hampers, were one of those quintessential college student items that I just assumed was a universal constant. With reusable bags this large, it makes sense that maybe these students wouldn't feel the need to go out and buy some other container just for their clothes. (The little white mesh bag on the left-hand side of the photo is my laundry.)

There are so many different kinds of carts! I had written a bit earlier about this, but now that I've visited several other grocery stores (and as a result, seen several other types of carts), I wanted to talk about this again. The store near campus has almost "suitcase-like" carts, a tall basket with two weeks on one side and a handle that extends so you can pull the whole thing behind you. There are others that have larger shopping carts, with a small coin/token deposit you use to unlock the cart but also to, seemingly, incentivize you to neatly line up the carts when you're done--you can only get your coin back if you stow the cart away in a line with all of the other carts at the entrance to the store, because the "key" to unlock your deposit would only be available from another cart (I believe you could use the key from your own cart, but I guess shopping cart anarchy doesn't run rampant here.)

There was also one style I saw in Nice that looked like these:

Except the cart didn't have the wire baskets, and instead, you'd a hand basket on the top and/or bottom. To me, this seemed like a really convenient way to carry two basket-worth of stuff, you weren't taking up an entire aisle by carrying your baskets in your arms, and this little fella would also be easier to maneuver than a larger cart. (I'm admittedly not sure if these also had a tiny coin deposit, but maybe they do!)

a+, Christina Computer Science Entrepreneurship with INNOV@INSA Lyon, France