Hello!

Let's see. It's been over a week since I wrote anything. I'll try to remember what I've been up to.

I've been enjoying the snow a lot. Last week I went sledding a few times, which was lots of fun. Andrew and I climbed to the top of this big hill behind the train station and sledded down part of it in garbage bags. Linnea and I also built a snowman in our backyard. We named him Philippe. Our landlady thought we were crazy. (We might be crazy, but it was still lots of fun). Now all the snow melted since it's been in the 40s and 50s - it's like spring, it's just still January. The weather here confuses me. Even though the snow was pretty, it's a lot easier to get around now that it melted. No more slipping on ice everywhere because the city ran out of salt.

Last Wednesday, I went to Lyon with Emily and we met Megan (English assistant from Canada who lives in Lyon). We walked around the old city and then we had a real French lunch. It was delicious. We had quiche Lorraine and salad, and then some lamb dish, and then this chocolate mousse cake thing for dessert. It was great - 3 course lunch menu for under 20 euros. After lunch, we walked around some more and shopped a little bit. There are these huge sales (les soldes) in all French stores right now. They're all getting rid of their winter stuff, so everything is at least half price. It's fun to look around at everything. I managed to find jeans that fit and some t-shirts, so that was nice.

On Thursday, I went to the Bourgoin-Bucharest rugby game with Hannah, Terry, Andrew, and the 2 Italian assistants. Bourgoin won and it was a fun match to see. They got completely covered in mud because the snow had been shoveled off the field and it was raining. It looked like it would have been fun to play.

This weekend there was some European rugby tournament, so I watched more rugby at Andrew's (he has a functioning TV, unlike us). We watched Clermont (some industrial town in France) beat the Ospreys (from Wales) and then on Sunday we watched Toulouse beat the Harlequins (from London?). It's nice that rugby is on TV here at reasonable times so that you can actually watch it without having to stay up until 3am. I'm going to miss that when I get back to the US.

Today, Linnea, Ellie and I went to Lyon to wander around and check out the soldes. It's nice to leave Bourgoin and Lyon is a fun city to walk around. Now we're back and just relaxing for a while. Linnea and I are going to try to make orange chicken stir-fry for dinner. (Linnea got an easy dinner cookbook for Christmas and had decided that she needs to learn how to cook. So she's making one recipe from the book each week.)

Work has been fun. I played food bingo with some classes and get to do more of that tomorrow. Oh, and I got into the U of MN and Wash U in St. Louis for law school. That was exciting news. And that's about it.

Bye!