School, Dance, Food, and Shoping

09/19/2016-09/25/2016

Lyon Street Food Tokens 

This week was filled with school, some dance, a lot of food, with a little shopping.

This week was the start of the Chocolate Jelly Project.  The goal of this project to evaluate the process and change it to be more efficient and sustainable.  My group was the only group to complete to whole process (there are three groups).  We made 110 packaged products of 120 grams a piece.  For those in the states it is about the size of a Tillamook yogurt container.  My part of the production line is the dosser.  The dosser is what dispenses the correct amount of product in to its packaging.  For the report at the end, I am in charge of the dossing part of the write up.  I have to think of any way possible that my step could be improved to be more efficient or sustainable.

 In my Sustainable Development class this week we listen to a Ted talk about the trinity of sustainability (Economy, Equity, and Ecology).  The presenter also talked about ways that we could easily change our habits to help improve the environment.  The most interesting topic she talked about was The Over Shoot Day.  I had not previously heard of this day at all.  On this day we have used up all the earth can sustainably produce in one year.  This year it was August 8th.  I can't remember the name of the Ted Talk, but it was really interesting to listen to.

Pot Stickers

This week I went to two different performances for the 17th Biennale de la Danse.  The first performance was called Are Friends Electric, choreographed by Yuval Pick.  It was a contemporary dance with 6 performers.  It was kind of weird, but interesting.  Each dancer had a different relationship with the other dancers.  The music changed between a metronome, talking, and music.  They did this cool thing where each performer counted in a different language.  I believe they spoke in English, French, German, and Spanish.   The second performance I went to was called Auguri choreographed by Olivier Dubois.  The performers were from Ballet Du Nord.  However, this was one of the most boring performances I have ever had to sit though.  I paid to watch professionals literally RUN AROUND THE STAGE!!!   It might have been better if I knew what the story, or message they were trying to express.  This performance was the fourth performance in the choreographers project.  So maybe if I could have seen the other performances it would have made more sense.

My Falafel

This Weekend there was a Food Truck Festival!!!  It was a smaller version of the food trucks in Portland.  I went with Clara (a friend from school).  We had a day pass, so we started with lunch.  For lunch I had the Falafel, and Clara had some BBQ Pork.  It was so good!  The Falafel had hummus, tomatoes, pickles, mint leaves, these fried balls of herbs and something else.  For dessert I got a fried macaroon.   I also had this hard cider called Appie.  It was a bit sweeter than ones I have tried in the states, but still good. Then we took a break to go shopping, and came back for dinner.  For dinner I had pot sticker (they called them dumplings).  I had four different types of pot stickers (fish, chicken, vegetable, and pork).  Clara had this noodle, vegetables, and sake vinegar dish.  It was delicious as well!

I had fun shopping with Clara in between meals! We went to H&M, Levi, and this travelers store.  I got some winter cloths from H&M, but the best purchase was from Levi.  I finally after 4 months of searching found a new belt!  Who know that to find a 2 inch plain belt I would have to go to an American store in France! At the travelers store I found something that I want before I come home.  They have a coffee mug with the periodic table on it!

On Friday evening my host family prepared a meal that showcased local food.  I had snails, Pâte de champagne (a mix between meatloaf and sausage), four different cheese, and yogurt with strawberries.  I liked the snails, they tasted like steamer clams with butter and garlic.  The  Pâte de champagne was good as well. I tried three of the four cheese, because one looked a little blue.  The yogurt with strawberries was delicious.  I tasted almost like strawberry cheesecake.  Everything that I ate that night was delicious, and I would eat again!

Snails 

First Bite of snails

SPOILER ALERT

Next week I am going to Italy for an industry tour of four different food companies!

First Week of Class

09/12/2016-09/18/2016

The Rhône with the Musée des confluence

This week was the first week of classes for my module.  I was very surprised to see that Clara was in the same module as me.  Clara was an exchange student at OSU last fall.   The first classes were just an overview of what to expect for this semester and meeting the people in my class.  Here are some of the highlights:

1. We are going on a 4 day trip to food companies in Italy
2. We have to do a book report (Mine is on women in large companies and the struggles they face)
3. We would be doing one big group project to look at how to make a process more sustainable.
1. The drying of Cocoa beans (I got this one)
2. Making a process in developing  countries to process insects
3. Something with a soup company
4. Working with making processed whole eggs

The majority of work done at this school is done in groups.  This is very different from what I am use to at OSU.  It is also interesting that everyone is invested in the group and contributes equally.  

We did this exercise on the second day called "crashing on the moon".  This was to show that we do better in groups than by ourselves.  The exercise had us rank in which order we would bring different supplies to meet our other people on the moon.  Then we compared our ranking and our group's ranking against NASA's ranking.  Then we counted the difference between our ranking and NASA's and the difference was greater between my ranking, then the groups ranking.  We also worked on different problem solving techniques and each group had to do a presentation on two of the different techniques.   My group presented about the 5 Why's and Brain storming.

We started a large group project this week that will last for the next three weeks.  We started working on a case study that our teacher actually encountered in a company that he worked at.  The problem was that were to many workers for the product we were making.  There were questions for each problem that came up in the transition for the company.  Our assignment was to think of the solutions, and other problems that could arise.  We also had to do mock interview for a production floor manager.  Then next week we have to give a 15 minute on how our "hired" person would fix the

Lunch/Dinner with my Sis

inefficiency of the company.  These groups will also be the groups for our trip to Italy, and the write up for it.  

On Thursday I had to eat dinner alone... However I used Google Hangout to chat with my sister while she ate lunch at school.  It was fun to chat with her.  

On Saturday I had a fun day exploring with Rachel some of the historic places in Lyon.  We went and got a tour of the Opera, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Musée des Confluences.  At the Opera we got a tour of one of the performance stages, the dance rehearsal room, and a music rehearsal stage.  

Me in my Dancer Joe costume

 To get to the ballet rehearsal room we had to climb a TON of stairs!  That aside, it was breath taking once we got to the top and could see the view. The Hôtel de Ville was so beautiful on the inside.  I thought it was funny that each room what color coded.  The view the hotel had was cool as well.  We ended up being at almost the same level as the ballet rehearsal room at the opera.  Go to the Musée des Confluences was great, and I think I will need to go back another time.  There we went to see this thing on the history of dance.  This was an audio guided tour.  The head phone set would pick up the audio at each of the station you were at.  I thought the station about the dance style Voging was cool.  The dancer that was talking about history of Voging.  He explained how the style that started on the streets, and started to perfect the "twerk".  The translation for this was funny.  He also talked about how it was developed in clubs and has gradually transitioned to the stage.  Another part of the dance exhibit was participating in a creative exercise called Dancer Joe.  There were 15ish people and we all wore hats and trench coats.  Then there was a recorded voice that told us what to do.  Our performance was recorded, and then shown along side the actual performance.  They also had musicians with a dancer do a short performances in the hallways.  There was a contemporary dancer with a bassoonist, and a hip hop dancer with a violinist. There were a ton of different exhibits to see, and all really cool.  There was one on shoes, Antarctica, our origin story, animals, and different death rituals from different counties.  

This week has been super fun! Next week I am going to be going to two different dance performances that are a part of dance festival.   

View from the Opera's ballet rehearsal room

Couldn't help it!

Hôtel de Ville court yard 

The ball room in the Hôtel de Ville

View of the Opera from the Hôtel de Ville

The red room in the Hôtel de Ville

A dance performance at the Musée des Confluences 

 

Integration Week

9/5/16-9/11/16

Hotel de Ville

This was the first week of my senior year of college!!!  This week I started at ISARA with just the other international students.  There are about 20 of us this year spread out in the three different options (VITEA, Agroecology, and SDFI).  I am in the SDFI option. This week comprised of a lot of french lessons, and a tour of Lyon.

This is ISARA

On Monday we all met each other and played a name game so that we could meet everyone.  The majority of the international students this year are from Brazil!  I had one of the Brazilians as my partner for the week.  His name is Antoine. We also got an introduction to what being a student at ISARA would mean.

1. ISARA is a private college
2. They expect us at our desk at least 5 minutes before the class starts
3. All of our classes are MANDATORY!!
1. if we need to miss a class due to an illness we have to have a medical certification
2. if we miss for personal reasons it must be pre-arranged and approved with the professor
4. My class schedule changes every week
5. NO eating is allowed in class

Some of these will take a bit to get use to, but all thing said and done it is not that big of an adjustment. 

Figs are the Croix-Rousse market

On Tuesday we had an all day walking tour of Lyon.   The tour guide for this trip was our french teacher from ISARA. We started off in front of the Hotel de Ville, and walked up to a farmers market on the Rue de Croix-Rouse. On the way up to the market we saw this super cool mural on the side of a building.  This mural is of famous french people in the windows.  We went up a tone of stairs to get the the market, and one of the starts was painted with bright colors.

 Finally we made it to the market. At this market there were a tone of produce sellers.  I talked with this one guy who was selling peaches and nectarines all in French.  I had stopped by his booth because the nectarines that he was selling were so BIG! I talked to him about Oregon, and Astoria.  By the end of the conversation he ended up giving me the nectarine because I had a "Beautiful Heart"  After the market we went to a park to eat.  Our french teach bought us some french cheeses to try, some baguettes, and some sausage.

The next stop we made of to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière.  I had been to this church last week, but this week I got to go inside.  It was so beautiful inside.  There were different pictures and statues depicting different stories in the Bible.  I did feel a little awkward because people were in the church for religious reasons and then there were people like me just walking around and taking pictures and reading the stories for the different statues.  After that we went through the gardens of the church, which lead us back down the hill and to another church called Saint-Jean.  At this church there was this super cool star chart clock.  The hands of the clock depicted what starts or planets would be in the sky on that date.  I am not sure how accurate it was, but it was cool.

 On Wednesday and Thursday we just had french lessons.  On Wednesday we had to do presentations about something on the tour on Tuesday.  Antoine and I did our presentation on the framers market.  It went as well as it could with only having 2 hours to prepare.  We also split off into groups based on out french levels and discussed some of the history of Lyon, and what ideas we had about Lyon/France before coming here.  We had a bit of a story time when our teacher talked about the festival of Lights that happens in December.  The summary of the story is that the people of Lyon were sick with the plague and they prayed to Saint Mary to heal and protect them.  Then they were healed!  To give thanks they would bring statues up to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière.  One year the weather was so bad that they could not do it in September, so they moved it to December.  However, when the day came in December the weather was bad too, then just before they were going to cancel the weather cleared and they were able to celebrate. After this the people of Lyon started to put little candles in their windows.  Then in the past 15ish years the festival has grown to what it is today.

Friday was an unexpected field trip into the French alps.  I wrote a bonus blog about it, so go check it out!  I had so much fun getting to see all the cheese and cows!

Group photo at the Confluence 

On Saturday I hung out with a girl that I met at church, her name is Rachael.  Rachael is an intern with a nutrition lab in Lyon.  We went to this music/dance/food festival in the center of town called Musiques du Monde.  We got there just in time to see a parade of the different countries.  Each country had their flag, followed by people play native instruments, then people doing different dances from their counties.  It was super annoying that they don't clear the streets for a parade because people kept walking in front of me while I was trying to watch/take pictures.   Then Rachael and I went to meat up with some other people form the other Oregon group. We then went on a boat ride to the Confluence, which is the point where the two rivers in Lyon meet up and become one river.    We took a group picture in front of the Lyon sign.  There we met a group of German students studying in Lyon.  They were hilarious to talk with.  They were really interested in Portland and all the weird stuff that happens there.  They also talked about Trump, and how at this point they believe that anything can happen (it was awkward).  Also one of these student was rooming with one of the other international students that I know from ISARA!  Small World!

Then finally today (Sunday), I am spending the day resting and getting ready to start classes tomorrow!

one side of the Mural

The other side of the Mural

One of the keys to the mural

The other key to the mural

The colorful stairs up to the market

The nectarine I got from the market

Basilique Notre-Dame Fourvière

The inside of the Basilique Notre-Dame Fourvière

The star chart at Saint-Jean

Bonus Blog: Fromangerie

9/9/2016

A man made lake for the hydroelectric dam

So this is a bonus blog because so much has happen this week that I needed to break it up into parts.  So this is about an awesome trip to the Beaufort France that I got to go on.  The OSU college of Ag has a summer course where you spend two weeks in France (one week in Lyon, one week in Paris).  Due the awesome resident director who set it up so that I could join the group for the day.  

So it was a super beautiful bus ride up into the French Alps.   It took about 2 1/2 hours to get to the Beaufort Cooperative.  When we first got there we noticed a vending machine out side the building.  Well it turns out that this vending machine gives you wedges of Beaufort Cheese!  Once inside we got to talk to the head of the cooperative.  He told us about the process from the farmers all the way to their stores.  The cheese freak in me was so stoked at seeing this production floor.  They had this great automated system, since each wheel of cheese ways 45 kilos each.  They have a conveyor belt and machine that flips the cheese, and then loads it back on a rack so that it can be flipped again later.  Each wheel is flipped 5 times over the next 24 hours.   After 24 hours the cheese is taken to the Caves to age for a minimum of 5 months and up to one year.  There are 7 cooperatives in the region that sell real Beaufort Cheese. All together they make 5,000 tons of cheese!  However, even thought each of the cooperatives sells the same type of cheese, each one has a bit of a different flavor profile.  To be considered Beaufort cheese there are several regulations that must be met.  The first is the farmers can only use two different cow breeds (I can't remember exactly what they are),  the animals must be kept in one of 3 valley.  The cows can't be fed more the 25% of imported food.  Most farmer grow their own food for their cows. 

I asked the head of this cooperative what they do with the whey.  He said that they will extract the fat and turn it into butter,  concentrate the serum and make milk powder, then anything left over gets turned into methane gas.  They also make their own rennet and yeast for their cheese.  

We then got a tour of the aging caves.  They have a robot that grabs the cheese, washes it (salt water), and returns it to the shelf!  They had one of them running while we were there, and it was cool to watch.  I believe that he said that their caves hold 32,000 rounds of cheese (it could be all the the cooperatives together).  After the tour we went for a tasting.  There we learned that the winter and the summer cheeses are completely different from each other.  The summer cheese is different because the cows are in the alpine pastures, and eating a variety of food.  Then in the winter they are just eating hay, and not able to graze on their own (mostly due to the snow).  After the tasting we went to have lunch on one of the cow farms.  Pierre and his wife were very gracious host, and they even invited me back to their house while I am staying in Lyon.  

After lunch we went to the farmers cows, that were up in the alpine pastures.  All of the cows have bells around their necks.  I didn't actually think that the "cow bells" was actually real/used.  We got to see how they are milked using a mobile milking station.  It was so cool, the cows just lined up to get milked.  The farmer in charge of the cows said that they follow the snow melt up in to the Alps every spring.  They heard the cattle up the roads, and through the town.  They stop for a couple of  days at different altitudes to let the cows get acclimated.  

Overall the trip was super fun! For me I really loved seeing all the cheese in the caves, and then getting to pet/see a ton of cows.  

Beaufort cheese vending machine

This is me in one of the caves

Beautiful scenery while traveling

This is a painting in their store

Cow Selfie

mobile cow milking station

Exploring Lyon

08/28/16-9/4/16

View of Lyon from Fourvière

My first week in Lyon had been great!  I had two great flights and a train ride to get me to Lyon.  On my train ride from Paris to Lyon I met this wonderful family.  The mom was actually a Food Scientist that worked at a pasta company.  I got to color and chat with one of her daughters about dogs, horses, and dinosaurs.  The mom and I talked about my school in Lyon and Oregon State University.  My host Mom, Laurence met me at the train station in Lyon, and we went to my new home for the next three and a half months.

I have gotten to meet everyone in my host family.  Laurence and François are my host parents, and then their three daughters Camille, Valentine, and Constance.  They are all very nice and want to talk with me.  I also have had fun with their dogs Honey, and Brooklyn.  It has been fun to use french commands with their dogs! It has been really warm this week, and my family has a pool.  I went swimming with Brooklyn, however she would get scared and then try to use me as a flotation device.  This was not going to work for me since their pool gets up to 6 ft. deep!

On Tuesday I had the option to go on a guided tour of Vieux Lyon with other students that were studying in Lyon.  It was all in french, so it was a bit difficult to understand but it was still cool to see everything. We started at a Cathedral that overlooks the rest of Lyon called Fourvière.  I have not been inside, but the outside was beautiful.  From there we traveled down hill from the cathedral, and saw a roman amphitheater.  It was so big! Our tour guide had pictures of what it use to look like before some of the structures were destroyed.  It would have been do cool to have gone and seen a play there!  As we made our way toward the banks of the Saône.  We got to see some cool architecture.   After we were done I got to take the public transportation for the first time by myself, and it was way easier than I thought. There is two buses that I have the option to take from mt house to Place Bellecour (a plaza with metro and bus stops).  Which makes it super easy to get around.

The next day all the Centre d'Oregon students had a orientation meeting to go over final rules, and set up our bank accounts.  It was most of the day, but we got done early, so I was able to go and get my french phone set up with a group of people!  It was supper nice to have the graduate assistant with our group to help with setting up our phones.  I also got to get the numbers of other girls in my group!  Also I finally was told what all the green medical crosses ment.  P.S. They were not dispensaries, they were like Rite Aid or Walgreens!  A highlight of my day was taking the bus back home, and having a car run into the side of the bus right next to where I was sitting! No one was hurt.  The bus just had a small dent, but the other car had its passenger side all bent and smashed up.  I was a little scared at first because everyone was shouting in French and the bus driver didn't say that we needed to stay on the bus or get off.  Fortunately another bus came by and picked us up.  Apparently this is something that never happens in Lyon, so yah for me!

This week I have didn't have any school related meetings, so I went to find the school and time how long it will take me to get there in the morning.  To get to school I have to take a bus, two different metro's, and then walk a couple of blocks.  In total it takes me 50 minutes to get to school.  Taking the metro was new for me, but after using it just once I have gotten the hang of it!

Another part of town that I have explored in Parc de la tête d'Or.  I went there with another girl from the Centre d'Oregon group.  There is a zoo in the park which was great to go and see.  It was outdoors, and they had a savanna, monkey, lemur lagoon, and reptile exhibits.  We then walked around the lake, which was way bigger than we thought!  There was an island in the center of the lake with a statue that was called the island of remembering.  However, the entrance to the lake (which went under the lake!!!) was closed to the public.


The food so far had been great! I had this diner that was chicory wrapped in ham and then had a Swiss cheese sauce over it.  I have also had a chestnut moose, that is so so so good!  For lunch one day we had grilled ham and cheese, but here it is called Croque-Monsieur.

I now can't wait to start my week of orientation at ISARA tomorrow!!  Wish me luck :)

Fourvière

Roman Amphitheatre

Roman Amphitheatre

wooden terraces on apartments

A zebra a the  Parc de la tête d'Or