Continued!

Bet you didn't think there'd be pictures, huh?  Well, here they are!  These go with the post before this one.

Who new that the sound of the mountain was actually cowbells??

That's my city, obviously.  And it was a game day, obviously!



This is that spinning bouncy house thing at the fair.

Almost 3 weeks in??

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."  -Bertrand Russell

Hello everyone!  Let's see.. where to start.  I've been in school two full weeks now, and overall it's been a good experience.  I manage to understand nearly all of the history and most of the philosophy.  English is good too.  It was my favorite class for the first few days, but now my favorite is history.  We're studying the Cold War, which included a lecture on American culture :) which was interesting.  Since I studied the Cold War at the end of last year and I consider myself kind of an expert on American culture, so far it's going good!  As for literature.. the rest of the class read the Odyssey, by Homer, over the summer.  So I'm playing catch-up and trying to understand the teacher's really fast lectures on the Trojan war and I have no idea what else.  But it's getting better.  To summarize, school is sometimes hard but usually manageable.

Last weekend was a busy one.  Saturday morning, my host family and I drove up into one of the mountain, where we hiked an hour both ways to the top.  At the top, there's this huge cross that looks over the town.  The view, and the trail to get there, were amazingly pretty.  Although on the trail, I was mostly focused on my feet because it wasn't an even path and it went up and down a lot, with lots of rock to maneuver over.  After the mountain, we came home and ate. 

Then I went to the Fair of Savoy to meet up with a couple girls from my school.  We walked around, and that was pretty much it.  It was a little like a state fair, but with more vendors and less 'stuff' to do (like shows or magicians, etc.)  There was only vendors, a judo demonstration, and a spinning bouncy house.  (Picture a slow tilt a whirl, with a jumpy castle on it instead of metal seats!)  The other, main attraction was the exhibition, this year focused on Japan, which was actually pretty cool. 

When I came home from that, I went almost immediately to meet my ride to a Christian youth group.  It's made up of teens/college students from lots of different churches in town.  It was interesting and fun.  I'm going to continue to go there Saturday nights when I don't have other things to do.  At the end, there's always cake. Yum.  I love cake! 

Sunday noon, we went to a picnic at the tennis club.  Lots of good food there, too!  It was partly a potluck, but the families mostly ate things they had brought for themselves.  The dessert was shared though, and it was awesome!  Fig pie (which is good), chocolate cake (brownie cake), and cake of Savoy, which is a light yellow cake that is sugary and very very good. 
If you haven't guessed, the area I live in is called the Savoy region, fyi. 

Also Sunday, I went to the movies with some girls from school.  We saw Tamara Drewe, which is a British movie.  It was in English with French subtitles (their idea, not mine!), and since it was kind of a 'specialty' movie, it was in a small theater.  Seven rows, no previews, no ads before the movie, no popcorn.  The movie was okay.. funny at times but the characters weren't very likeable!  Maybe it's a British thing.  Who knows? 

That's all for now.. A plus tard!

First day of School!

"Nothing grieves a child more than to study the wrong lesson and learn something he wasn't suppose to." - E.C. McKenzie
This didn't exactly happen to me as in the quote, but I was almost in the wrong class!  Here the Premiére (Junior) class starts in the morning the first day, and the Terminale (senior) class starts the afternoon.  So this morning Lou took me to school and we went inside to try to talk to someone about my complete lack of a Spanish level sufficient to be in 3rd year Spanish (what the 1éres do).  It was a mess and we waited for people who weren't coming, but finally we found someone who was able to tell me "No, sorry I can't help you with your 1ére Spanish problem, but it doesn't matter because you're in Terminale!"  So we left.  We did some errands around town and then had to go exchange my 1ére books for my Te books (you have to buy schoolbooks here)  Originally I had been given the list of Te, but we thought it was a mistake and so bought the 1ére books instead.

Anyway, after waiting around a few hours and eating lunch, Lau took me back to school and we still couldn't find a person to talk to, so she left and I sat with some girls I met yesterday in an assembly.  There was a lot of quick French that I got the main idea of, then we went to classrooms by class.  The Te L (litterarie, it's my division of the grade, we mostly study French Litterature, languages and Philosophy) are a class of 30, containing 4 exchange students: me, Mexican and Brazilian boys, and another American girl.  In class we got our schedules of classes (it changes every day) and wrote down some important dates in our calendars.  Maybe an hour or two later, school was over!  I talked to someone about my Spanish class (turns out I don't have to take it), and then..

I walked to Centre Ville (the downtown area) with the other exchange students.  We walked around and looked at stuff and spoke French.  It was overall a good day! 

By the way.. my class schedule is excellent.  No math or science all year, and 3 days I start school at 9.  Wednesday I have 2 hours of class and the day is over.  Monday I have about 2 hours for lunch!  :)

A plus!

I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read on the train. 

Oscar Wilde

Hello from France!  I arrived in Paris Thursday morning and stayed in a hotel there until Saturday afternoon, mostly in a hotel with the 70 other exchangers in France (7 Americans).  There we spoke a little French but nearly everyone had better English than French.  It was cool meeting people from 30 countries!

Then I took the train to my Chambéry, where my host family lives.  They speak nice and slow for me, so I can understand quite a bit.  Salomé, my host sister helped me unpack and they showed me around the house.  My room has its own little balcony.. It's awesome!  Here's what I see looking out the door:

The next day we went to help a friend move to a house 200 km away (very close; we carried a few things there by hand!)  That afternoon we went to the tennis club for a bit to watch and meet friends.  I made my first French friends there.. 2 girls, aged 3 and 6.  They made dirt tea for Salomé and I and stuff like that.  Little kids are the same everywhere I think:   :)

This morning I slept in a bit; then the girls of the house went to play tennis for a while.  It was really hard!  This afternoon we are going to downtown to buy school things and see the school.  Salomé's also, because she's changing schools.  C'est tout pour maintenant!

 

14 hours.. Yep, panic!

Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave. ~A.A. Milne

Okay, this is it.  The next time you hear from me will be from across the pond, around the world, in France.  Today was a bit stressful trying to finish packing and all the little things that still needed done.  Tonight we're having spaghetti bake as the last 'family meal' for a while.  :)  I'm really gonna miss Mom's cooking!

I need to leave the house for the airport around 4:30 in the morning.. so by that count I'm less than 12 hours away!  Hopefully I can sleep tonight..   Anyways, just wanted to say hey one more time before it's bonjour!

I'll see you all soon!

2 days.. should I panic now?

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. ~Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie

Yesterday was a long day.  First church, then helping finish lunch, then family started coming.  It was fun playing an hour or two of Apples to Apples with the family, because it gave me some good memories from the day as opposed to just goodbyes.  Later in the afternoon friends and those people who are so close they could be family, but are not, came over.  Thank you everyone for coming!  It was a good day, but I was pretty drained by the end of it. 

It seems unreal that I will not see most of these people again until next July.  They are all so much a part of my life that it just doesn't seem possible!  Saying goodbye definitely made this experience more real to me, probably because nothing real and worthwhile is 100% good.  Now I really believe that in 48 hours, I will be in an airport in Denver.  It's not just a dream anymore!

Here's what today holds:  packing, finish cleaning my room out, going to town for lunch with dad (and an errand, but that's not important!), and maybe visiting grandma.  Busy busy!

3.5 days.. Not that anyone's counting!

 "It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome."

 -William James

Hello all!  As I hope you know, I leave this Wednesday.  Since I leave my house around 3:30 a.m.. my official count is going to be 3.5 days.  I meant to post something when I hit the month mark.. when I got to single digits.. a week.. but I didn't and now here we are!  This whole summer has gone so fast.  For me I guess it's still summer, because although my town's school started last Wednesday, I haven't been going.  Friday I went to town with my parents and we ate lunch and went to Wal-Mart to get food for when the family comes.  It was odd being virtually the only teenager out and about!

Everyone is asking if I'm ready to go, if I'm nervous, if I'm excited.  It's hard to answer because I don't know how I feel exactly.  Or rather, I don't simple words for it.  I want to go, of course I want to start this adventure and face the new challenges.  At the same time, I want to stay here just a while longer.  Getting ready to leave definitely makes me realize how much I love my family, friends, and home and how much I'm going to miss it.  I knew it would be hard to leave my family, but it seemed a bit unreal and hard to wrap my mind around exactly how hard it's going to be.  It takes time to realize that yes, this is actually happening.  I'm ready for it, though--I accept the challenge and I'll make it through.

That's all for now!