Meeting new people.. Its what Erasmus is all about really

Saluuuuuuuuuuuuut :)!

Ok so today was a dreaded day at the beginning. If you read my post on the french subjunctive you’d know why! So I had two exams today one that went fantastic and the other not so good which involved translating a text about google and android in competition with Apple. However it was speaking and i kinda didn’t get it finished in time. OOOPS!

Anyway after that I decided to go to the gym to only find that it wasn’t open today (in France sometimes places close for lunch breaks when the owners feel like it or in fact sometimes don’t open at all!!). So it seemed like it was going to be one of them annoying days! However that was not to be (haha sound like Shakespeare or something there) as me and my two roommates decided to attend an “Erasmus” evening which involved us speaking to the French students who are coming on Erasmus to Ireland next year. At first I though “ugh the absolute effort of this” but when we got there it was far from “an effort”.

The French people who are coming to Ireland next year are really  really nice!! Of course they had millions of questions to ask and unfortunately the answers they received didn’t really make Dublin sound any better than Lyon but it’s not my fault I love it here :P. Its brilliant though how they were so interested in the alcohol aspect of Irish culture. We Irish folk really have made a name for ourselves in the Drinkolympics ;).

What was also great was no matter what comparisons we made between Lyon and Dublin , be it culture, transport, nightlife etc , and no matter how much better Lyon sounded, they were just so excited and delighted to be going somewhere new for a year to meet new people and to do new things. They kept asking about the beautiful scenery in Ireland that they have heard so much about which surprised me because i didn’t know that people complimented Ireland for other than their potatoes and Guinness :D!

Sitting there talking to them, I realised that this is what it’s all about. Meeting new people getting an insight to what people from a different culture think about your culture or even their own.

For the whole year we turned our nose up at these kind of nights, which involved meeting future Erasmus students , purely due to the fact I think that we are just jealous of them , knowing that they will have next year what we have now. But if you’re going on Erasmus or in fact even if you’re not but nights that involve meeting people from different cultures exist near you, then go!!

They are great craic I tell ya!

latersss dudettes 😉

Underdogs rising to the challenge

Hey folks 🙂

Ok so today the result in my basketball match you could say inspired me to writing this post.

Here in Lyon basketball is huge along with soccer and rugby. When i started playing basketball in France back in September i really had no idea what to expect. I had just finished my season in Ireland’s premier league of basketball , The Superleague, and now i was about to play basketball in The Rhone Alps premier university league. For those of you who aren’t too up to date on your French geography, The Rhone Alps is a Province and Lyon is just a part of this Province.

Going into todays match we (University of Jean Moulin Lyon 3)  had played 12 games and only lost 2. Therefore we are quite high in the league table , 2nd or 3rd i think. The 2 games we had lost previously were to an Engineering university in Lyon called INSA. Todays match was again against INSA but not the team we played before. It was their 2nd team who from what i heard had a few injuries thus had some of their 3rd team listed on their squad. As you can imagine we were not exactly fearing this game and in the long run i actually think that having zero fear and zero anxiety contributed hugely to us losing.

When i was getting changed on the side of the court, a friend of mine (who is also on an exchange here in Lyon from Wales) walked in and asked me what i was doing there. Turned out that he was on the opposing team which i was excited about because we had always been talking about basketball and how we love it etc and now we were finally going to see each other play. But, what struck me was , before we started warming up he jogged over to me and in a very low voice he whispered “you are going to have no problem here”. Of course me being the over confident guy i am, i ran over to my team mates and started telling them in French how my mate reckons we are going to have no problem at all. This i can put my hand up and admit was a terrible idea because my team just got so relaxed , the warm up lost its intensity completely and my teammates were laughing and joking a little more than what they usually would. We of course were thinking about to how the 1st team only beat us by 4.

So the game starts and all i can say was the other team were like Bulls which wasn’t great for us at all considering the ball was red. The whole team giving 120% chasing every loose ball , attempting to get every rebound and most importantly they were making their shots!

 

40 minutes later, the buzzer goes and final scoreline shows us losing by 3 points. As you can imagine they were delighted. I would of been to. My team and I however hung our heads as we walked off. It was the most frustrating game of basketball i think i ever played and only have myself to blame.

Anyway what i am basically getting to with this post is that today really made me realize that just because a team looks like they have already won on paper DOES NOT mean that they are going to win. FACT!!! If this was the case sport as we know it would not exist. Losing today taught everyone a lesson on the court, it taught us that we can’t ever approach a game like we did and it taught the other team that impossible is nothing.

8am starts should be made illegal

This is one thing i will never understand about the French or any other nation who insists on doing it. Tomorrow morning i am due to start my classes at an insane time of 8am and what i find very funny about this is i only have to start at 8am once a week whereas the majority of French students would do so 3-5 times a week. But what has me pondering is do we actually absorb any information or learn anything at 8 o clock in the morning? The reason i question this is , in every 8 o clock class i have gone to since i have arrived in Lyon i have struggled to pay attention during. Actually, saying struggled is giving myself credit where it is not due. I cannot pay attention, purely because i have not woke up by the time the class has started, or in fact ended.

Some of you reading this may be thinking that this is not a worthy topic to be complaining about but when someone is put into a routine that is completely out of the ordinary then obviously they are going to struggle a little. On top of 8 o clock starts classes run right through till 8pm. Now this is describing the possibilities of a full time student and not a student studying at night. I personally think this is mental! In the university i am in at the moment in Lyon, if one wanted to study French translation and do Spanish classes it would mean that they would have to begin at 8am on Tuesday and and finish up at 8pm! This is also assuming that they are studying no other subjects which of course is not the case as you would not obtain the sufficient credits to pass the year.

You know what baffles me even more about this? I am probably part of maybe something tiny like 5% of the students in the university complaining about the early starts, which i really cant understand. I have a French friend who lives just outside of Lyon (roughly one hour and ten minutes). Now for this person to come to university, they have to leave their place at 6.50am (say 6.40am to be early). To leave at 6.40am (being reasonable) , you would have to wake up at 6 am. Looking at the previous day , she didn’t return home till 9.15pm becasue she studies spanish and unfortunately for her she had work to do for her 8.am class the next day. She also needs time to live her life , have a bit of dinner and have some time to herself. Going by recommended sleeping hours per night, being around 7 and a half, she has 15 minutes to have dinner, do some homework and relax. How can someone concentrate after so little sleep and so early in the morning?

So heres me complaining about having this once a week in comparison to some French students who have this 5 times a week!

Am i being unreasonable or would you agree that whoever sets the class times thinks that French students literally have nothing better to do but learn?