Summer begins as my exchange draws to a close

I'm finally done with school!  I got out last Friday.  The last few days didn't really seem like the 'last days' of school.  More like regular school days!  Everyone had been warning me about all the crazy stuff that might happen (that happened in the past) like pigeons getting let loose in school and people bursting into classes and singing.  Instead, it was pretty calm.  There were some people dressed up, such as some in tennis clothes who came into our class and danced, and then later they played tennis in the courtyard using benches as a net, but other than that it was a normal day.  I ate at school for the 'last time' Thursday, then ended up eating there again on Friday.  Friday my final class got over at 10, but I stayed with friends, ate at school, and then stayed a little longer to copy some videos from theater class onto a USB stick.  It was very different from home, where everyone leaves ASAP after the final bell!  Then Friday night my class got together one last time.  We went out to eat at an American Restaurant (yes, that exists!) and it was really good!  I practically started drooling over the menu.  Their big thing was bacon burgers (because bacon is practically inexistant here) but they also had lots of other yummy, American things.  I had a chicken quesadilla and it inspired me; tonight I'm making quesadillas for my host family.
 
In the last week of school, there was a magician who came one day in Philosophy class.  He showed us lots of his tricks and he showed us how some of them are done as part of the course on Illusions.  Most of the time, even after he showed us what he was doing we still didn't catch him in the act!  It was really cool.  Unfortunately for my class though, that was the only lesson we got about illusions.  Guess what one of the subjects was for the bac? 
 
Wednesday afternoon, I took the train to Grenoble to meet up with Sophia.  It was really great to see her!  We ate at her host sister's (for the week) house, and then went to a mall.  We were with all of the other girls in her class and their host sisters at first, or rather for the tram ride to the mall, and then we split off and did our own thing. 
 
Since then, most of my friends have been studying for their Bac, which started Thursday.  I've been keeping busy though, doing stuff around the house and around town and seeing certain people who either don't have final tests or who manage to take a break.  I've been grocery shopping with my host mom, hanging out in town with a friend, then we made supper at his house, reading, playing piano.. pretty basic summer stuff!  Yesterday I was shopping with a friend, and we were going to go to her house and swim afterwards.  Instead, it started raining really hard and it ended up raining all afternoon.  But that's okay, we still had a good time. 

Two weeks from today, I'll be getting on a train to go to Paris, and the next day, I'll be home.  So, I'll see you all very soon!
 
 

A busy week!

Hello everyone!  I've had a busy week, if you couldn't guess from the title.  Last weekend I spent the night at a friend's house, and then Sunday I went to a volleyball game.  It was France vs. Italy.  (France lost).  My volleyball team was there to place people in the arena.  We got a special tee-shirt and everything!  And then we got to watch the game.  The organizers brought the placers (my volleyball team plus the boys volleyball team, plus a bunch of other kids) snacks during the game.  Some people had 3 packs of cookies, others 1 pack and a banana.  I got the banana.  :(  After the game, we stuck around to help take down the volleyball net and floor.  Yes, we took off the floor!  The arena is usually used for handball, so they had layed down a plastic flooring system for the game.  We also got to get autographs from the players as they left, and at the very end (several hours after the end of the game; there was a lot to take down!) there was a 'cocktail' with appetizers and desserts.    When I got home that night, I had a nice dinner with my host family because it was Mother's Day. 
 
This was the week of the theater performances for my school.  Monday night, I went to watch the junior's, and then Tuesday, it was the sophomore's and senior's turn!  We got the whole afternoon off from class and we rehearsed and hung out in the actors' lodges.  That was fun!  But towards the end of the afternoon, we started to stress a litte bit more.  We've only been learning our texts since about 2 weeks ago, and last Friday, 4 days before the show, was the first time I acted out my whole scene!  The show was called 'From the loss of control to Craziness' and it was composed of lots of scenes from different plays.    I play an amnesic who comes home from the hospital and doesn't recognize his wife or his appartment.  In the end it went fine; nobody forgot their lines! 

Wednesday afternoon, I went to a friend's house.  We ate spaghetti and then later, more people came over.  They wanted to sing the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, to make a CD to send to their friend.  I filmed!  After we watched 2 movies to get in the spirit for the bac tests in a few weeks.  They're old movies, from the 80s and 90s.  The first one's about people who take the bac for the 5th time, and the second one's about a boy who insults his teacher, thinking he's finished, only to find out that he has to present his oral reports to that teacher a few days later. 
 
Thursday was a national holiday for the Assomption, and we had Friday off too to make a long weekend.  Friday I went to the amusement park Walibi, which was really fun.  It's about an hour from town.  The morning weather was grey and not too hot, and there weren't that many people in the park.  It worked out great for us, because we didn't have to wait very long in line!  The park wasn't very big compared to the ones I've been to at home, but we still had a good time.  There were two small roller coasters, a drop tower, and a couple other little things.  Also, there was a water park with some slides and a wave pool.  The sun came out just as we were heading back towards the rides. What luck! 

All in all it was a good week, that passed much too quickly!  Now there's only one more week of school.  Don't worry, I'll make the best of it!

Easter break, and back to school again

Hello everyone!  Today I've got good news and bad news.  Let's start with the bad news, because the good news is far more interesting and this way you can all be looking forward to that while I tell you about my bad luck.  For me it seems like a very big difference into home (meaning my little town of 300 people) and my host town (being a city of 50,000 plus suburbs).  At home, I don't own a bike lock and I've never locked my bike to anything, ever.  Here, I do have a bike lock, and I never leave my bike anywhere without being attached.  However, this is not enough.  Can you guess where I'm going with this?  Yes, my (or should I say my host brother's) bike was stolen yesterday.  I left it by a community building, the same as nearly every morning for the last 8 months, but when I came back all I found was a broken lock on the ground next to the bike rack.  It's rather upsetting.
 
And now for the good news:  I once again had a two week vacation from school!  The Easter break was the last one, until I get out of French high school for good June 10th.  The first week, I went out with friends and generally took it easy.  With some of my friends, we had an American party.  It was supposed to be a superbowl party, but since we missed the superbowl by a few months, we watched the Longest Yard instead.  We also ate hamburgers with little toothpick flags in them and had macaroni casserole and American desserts.  Note: Macaroni casserole doesn't work all that well without corn casserole.  It's edible, but the noodles don't really get cooked..  I also celebrated Easter!  I went to church, and a family invited me over to eat with them so I wouldn't be alone all afternoon (my host family had tennis).  It turned into a really good day. 

For the second week of vacation, I went to the French Riviera with my host family.  We drove down, and it took about 5 hours through the beautiful French countryside.  I was so tired that I didn't get to enjoy it very much though!  We were in a resort called Belambra, which had activities during the day and at night for my host sister and I.  They were pretty fun usually, and we had a good time with the other teenagers that we met.  One of the morning activities was kapoeira, a Brazilian martial art, and it was really fun.  Another morning there was volleyball, and at the end, we played a game:  A boy and I against everyone else (7 or 8 including the adult leader) and my team won!  One night there was karaoke, and we sung a little.  I learned some new French songs!  There was a group of German students there and some of them sang with us.  It was cool.  Vacation wasn't just about staying in the resort:  we also went visiting!  We went to Cannes (a week before the Film Festival!), Menton, Nice, Grasse (world capital of perfume), Biot (glass workshops), and St. Paul de Vence.  I'm having trouble getting my pictures online, but don't worry, you'll see them at some point!
 
This weekend, I had my last YFU weekend.  It was awesome, as usual!  Saturday we did a 'via ferrata', which means 'railroad' in Italian.  It's kind of like rock climbing, except we're always attached to iron cables that are strung along the cliffs.  It was pretty scary at times, but I really liked the challenge of it.  That night we ate spaghetti, which I haven't had in a very long time, so it was delicious!  The next morning we had sessions of talking about what we'll miss, how to say good bye to our new lives in France, and how to go about going back.  Once again we all brought desserts from our country.  It's funny: at the first reunion, EVERYONE had a nice traditional dessert; at the second one, a few people forgot; and at this one only about half of us had a dessert.  I brought peanut butter cookies.  I had to go to two different stores to find the peanut butter!  The cookies turned out great though and they were well-received by all the hungry étrangers! 
 
That's all for now, talk to you soon!

School in France

Hello!  This week I had another Bac Blanc.  It went pretty good, or at least I think so.  We'll see what the teachers think!  Today in English the test was 3 hours long and I was done after about 1.  I didn't think about doing it in French until after I had already started, and I hadn't talked to the teacher about it so.. I did it in English.  Really easy, except for the translation part!  In history/geography it went pretty good-it's the main thing I have to study for.  This time we didn't have to learn the maps, just 7 or 8 different chapters that we would have to write an essay about.  The choice ended up being between 'Russia, a State in Recomposition', and 'The Mediteranean, an interface between the north and south?' I took that one.  In Philo my essay question was.. I don't remember, which is sad since I spent 4 hours writing about it. 

Anyway here's some pictures of my French school work, and I figured now's a good time to tell about school in France!


Philosophy notes about Culture



School in France requires spending hours after hours listening to the teacher, writing down every word that he or she says. Well, not every word, but the written down things are dictated-no notes just as summaries!  Basically, it's like everyone writes their own textbook with the teachers' words.  Nice long phrases in nice long paragraphs.

The 4 books we studied in Litterature

Since I'm in Terminale L, I have 4 hours of lit. class per week. Throughout the year we study 4 books, that every TL in the country has to read.  I'll admit-I didn't read the Oddysey in French, I read the abridged version.  It was at the very beginning though!  I've read the other ones, but I'm not done with the Memoires of Charles de Gaulle.  They're really really long and boring at times, but I don't complain about them as much as many French people I know since I don't have the pressure of possibly having to write 2 essays in 2 hours on the subject.

One of the dozen maps: this one's the Mediteranean zone

In Geography, we learn things and then we make maps about them.  We've covered the US, Brasil, Russia, Japan, Asia, Europe, the Mediteranean, and globalisation.  For the test, they have to do the whole legend and then fill in the map, from memory, being given just the title of the map.

More philo notes

Homework in France consists mostly of studying the notes we took, and doing some essays.  In my class we almost never have homework to do for the next day, except when the philo teacher tells us to read something for example.  Most of the time we get essay subjects at least 2 weeks in advance.  Everything's really planned out and structured-no 5 paragraph essays here!  In philo, there's usually a thesis/anti-thesis.  In history and litterature, there's a structure of big parts and sub-parts, usually 3 of each (3 big parts and 3 sub each). 
Tests are either maps (in geo) or essays to do in class-never multiple choice questions.  Once we had a test with actual questions in litterature-once in 8 months!  French people mock our American True/False and multiple choice questions.  Secretly, they might just be jealous.

On that happy note, happy Easter! 

J'adore la France!

Exchange people talk about the curve that most exchange students experience.  At first everything's shiny and new, so it's super fun.  Then that wears off and you get homesick.  Then everything goes good til about January, when you hit a low point again.  When spring starts, everything's great until the end of the year.  I personally am a great model of this cycle.  I don't know about the start of the year, but January and early February were really hard for me.  At the mid-year orientation, they told me (us), "T'inquiète pas, don't worry, in March everything will be better, you'll see!"  I remember thinking.. "March?  March is soooo far away!"  But here we are, and sure enough I'm having an awesome time now!
 
The weather's getting nicer, I'm going out with friends more, everyone's in a better mood.. it's all good.  It's the season of Carnaval, which is around Mardi Gras.  It's not the same thing as New Orleans though!  There is a parade, which was last Saturday in my town.  You know that Fountain of Elephants that's in the picture?  Well,  an actual elephant walked in front of it!  It was awesome.  I watched the parade with friends, and then afterward there were some little things to watch-like the tightrope walker (video on facebook is a friend of mine who got pulled from the crowd into the air.  We didn't know about it because she wasn't with us for a few minutes, we turned around and she was there!) and a giant thing that got burned.  Then yesterday, I went to the Carnaval in Annecy, which is a Venetian-style carnaval.  Annecy is really pretty to start with because there's canals, a lake, and pretty old streets, but it was made even cooler by the fact that people in masks and fancy costumes were just walking around, posing for pictures and just looking cool.  Unfortunately it was rainy, but it was a good day anyways. 
 
Yesterday there was a volleyball tournament.  We won!  There were 8 teams and 2 of the games we won really easily-we kind of stood around and let the serve make all the points.  Speaking of volleyball, we're doing volleyball in PE class now!  That means that finally, we're done going to the pool to swim.  Last week it was nice out, so with some friends we ate lunch in the park next to our school.  It was great!  I've also gone to a town by my town with friends and we laid out by the lake and got McDonald's ice cream and cotton candy.  They didn't have Oreo ice cream, but there was another chocolate-like flavor called Daim.

My host parents are really involved with their tennis club, and right now (all this month) there's a big tournament.  So we go to the club a lot to eat croque-monsieurs (hot ham and cheese sandwiches, but better) and watch the games.  Last weekend there was a 'soirée cards' and so I was there playing cards all evening.  It was fun and there were some people my age!  We also played a round of hide and seek in the dark around the tennis courts.  :)  Then this weekend, there was a soirée wii, with wii games like Just Dance, wii sports, and Mario Kart.  There's a foosball thing in the clubhouse, so we played that too! 
 
I've been doing lots of other stuff, but that pretty much covers the important parts.  Hope you're all doing well!

La Turquie!

Hi everyone!  As you probably know I spent a week in Turkey, you might even have already seen the pictures.  It was a really good trip and everything went pretty much smoothly.  I say 'pretty much', because the first day we had two flights, one directly to Turkey and the other one to the city of Izmir, and after the first flight custom's took so long that we missed the second one!  There happened to be 40 extra seats on the next plane an hour later, so it worked out okay.  We stayed three nights in the first hotel, one night in the second and two in the third (at Istanbul).  The hotels were nice and they all had nice buffet restaurants filled with awesome Turkish food!  Actually most of the meals we ate were at buffet-style restaurants.  One of them had little flags that they put on each table to show where the tourist groups were from.  Our table had a French flag on it of course, but all the flags were sitting on top of the buffet and the Mexican exchange student helped himself to a Mexican flag for the table.  Then we got one for us two Americans, and then the Brazilian for himself.  It was sweet! 

We spent most of the first four days visiting historical (as in ancient history) sites.  They were really beautiful and pretty interesting.  We also went to a store that sells Turkish spices, teas, and candy things.  They had samples of everything and it was so good!  My favorites were the apple tea and the sesame something or other (pâte de sesame in French, Halva in Turkish)  We had a tour guide who explained everything to us and was with us all five days.  Pictures speak louder than words, so here's some examples:

A library

We saw tons of theaters!

The site of some of my favorite ruins, built right into the mountain rock..

..and not far from this calcium formation thing, called the 'Cotton Castle'.

The St. Sophia, a 1500 year old church that got turned into a mosque.

The Grand Bazaar

Then Thursday night we arrived in Istanbul!  We had some free time in the immediate area of our hotel, but it wasn't very 'touristy'-there were lots of clothes shops but they were wholesale, and to buy anything you had to buy at least 3 of the same exact thing.  Mostly we just walked around.  Friday morning it was rainy and cold, but we visited a palace, the Blue Mosque, the St. Sophia church, and a few little places anyways.  Then, Friday afternoon, we were free in the Grand Bazaar, a big covered marketplace with more than 5000 little stalls!  There were lots of counterfeit stuff (sunglasses and tee-shirts/sweatshirts mostly).  I didn't even know that there were counterfeit Aeropostale sweatshirts, but you can buy them in Turkey!  Lots of the French bought them because there's no Aeropostale, Hollister, etc. here.  They also had lots of more Turkish looking things, like necklaces with the Turkish eye (blue and white circles), scarves, and things like that. 

Throughout the week we spent lots of time in the charter bus-most places we went were at one or two hours from our hotel.  Between hotels 2 and 3, we had about 6 hours total of driving that day!  It was okay though because we played cards, talked, played the Question Game and Who's Who (everyone tries to guess what person they're supposed to be using yes or no questions).  It was fun and the games lead to lots of laughs!

Every night at the hotel, we had a quiz game to review some of the things we had seen during the day. Each time the game was organized by a different class.  Certain nights, we played a game afterwards (the people who didn't want to go right to bed), and one night, I taught a cheer to everybody!  That was cool.  It was one of the quarter cheers, the one where usually we do a flip at the end. 

So in general, Turkey was amazing!  I got to see lots of new things and also meet some cool people who go to my school.  Going in I only knew two French people and the 3 other exchange students, and now I know.. lots and lots of the people who went! 

Nothing out of the ordinary..

Hi!  It's been a while since I've written, I guess.  Or at least it seems like it!  Not much big stuff has happened, though.  Mostly everyday stuff!  I've had plenty of homework, took the final test in swimming (not sure how I did, but I'm sure glad it's over!) and went out with friends a bit.  In my last post I talked about the Bac Blanc, and it turned out not as horrible as I thought it would be.  The philosophy went good, and I think I actually prefer the 4 hour time limit to a dissertation we do at home-at least in the test, after 4 hours it's done, and there's no need to keep saying 'I'll finish tomorrow.. Just one more thing to add..So maybe the next day..' etc.  Not that I would ever say things like that!  I got pretty awesome grades in all the subjects, if I do say so myself, so I'm pretty happy about that.  Not to brag, but I had the best history grade in the class!  (15/20).  Not sure how that happened..
 
The weather's been really good-it's actually kind of strange.  It hasn't snowed since before Christmas, and the last week or two it's been almost warm-in the teens (celsius) most afternoons and at the breaks, we sit in the sun in our sweaters but no coats!  But yes, normally in France in February, it's winter.  It'd actually be nice if it snowed though, because it's not very good for skiing and with the vacation coming up, I want to go skiing!
 
Speaking of vacation, I'll have 2 weeks with no school after a week in Turkey.  So I'm going to go 3 weeks without school!  It's crazy for me, but in France having at least 2 weeks of vacation in normal for every time there's a vacation.  It's been 7 weeks since Christmas and my classmates will be in school this week, meaning 8 weeks between the two vacations.  I didn't really notice it, but for them it seemed super long since usually it's only 7 weeks at most between the 2 week vacations.  During the vacation, I'll be in and around my host town-no big travels with my host family.  I want to go visit some of the other cities around me, like Annecy, Lyon, and Grenoble.  I'll get to see some friends and some of the other exchange students!  As for Turkey.. I have mentioned that I'm going to Turkey, right?  I'm leaving Sunday and I'll be there til next Saturday.  We're visiting Istanbul (1 day) and the Egéen Coast (not sure how to write the name of the coast in English..)  There's one girl from my class who's going, and the 3 other exchange students in my school.  I also know a boy who's going, but the rest of the group of 30-40 students, I don't know yet. 
 
One Sunday afternoon I went to a game of handball with my host family.  I really liked it!  Handball is played for 60 minutes and it's like a cross between basketball and soccer.  Sort of.  I don't know how to describe it, but there's a little video on my facebook if you want to check it out!  It's exciting to watch because it moves fast and there's a lot of points.  The final score was 33-35 after 60 minutes I think, and each goal is worth one point.  The atmosphere in the arena was really good.  Everyone had these giant fan-type things (big piece of paper, folded accordian style and held at one end) that you clap against your hand to make a loud noise.  It was sweet!  And my host town's team is the best in the whole country.  2 or 3 of the players are on the French national team, that just won the world cup of handball.
Later that week, a Wednesday, I went to a soccer game with my host sister.  There's a French Soccer Cup, which every men's soccer team in the country can participate in.  It starts out with the little teams against little teams, but since all the divisions are together it's possible for the little teams to work their way up.  My host town's team is doing really good-they're in the quarterfinal and have been beating really good teams!  So that was exciting.  We won!  During the vacation there'll be another match, and I'm hoping to go see it.  This one's at Grenoble so that there's a bigger stadium.

There's some English correspondants (like an exchange student, but just for a week or two) that just came to our school yesterday.  I went up to talk to one English boy, and even though I talked to him in English.. he might possibly think I lied when I said I'm American.  :)  I said things like "And you?" which is okay in French but sounds awkward in English, and things like that.  You can't blame me though, I had spent all morning in class and reading in French!  I've been meeting a lot of English-speaking people lately.  A couple students studying abroad that I randomly came across downtown who were talking English, that I started talking to, and a girl in my bus who I didn't know I knew (apparently we ate together at school once.  I didn't remember.. ) who, when I said where I was from, got all excited and said "I speak American!!!" and so for the rest of the bus ride we talked 'American'.
   By the way, a lot of people say things like that-'I speak American' or when they talk about the US, they say that they speak American over there, not English.  It's odd. 
Have a good week, Happy Valentine's Day! 

Hey, let's go to Switzerland!

Yesterday I went to Geneva Switzerland with a German exchange student that I know (Christian).  We had a  YFU reunion last weekend, and I was like hey, let's go to Switzerland!  Originally we would have been 3, but the other girl (American) ended up having something to do with her host family.  Christian came to my town Friday, we hung out in town for the evening and then early Saturday morning we left for Geneva!  It was about an hour and a half of travel on the train.  When we got there, we walked a ways to get to the Palais des Nations, an area that includes the seat of the UN  (didn't get to go inside but had a hundred or more flags to see in front!), some other fancy buildings, and the Intl. Museum of the Red Cross, our destination.  We spent some time there, and it was pretty interesting.  Afterwards we took the tram into downtown and managed to find the St. Pierre's (Peter I think..) cathedral.  It was pretty from the outside like the other buildings in 'Old Town' Geneva, but not as exciting inside.  We walked around some more looking for food and then we found a nice little restaurant right on the edge of Lake Leman (Lake of Switzerland).  Had some pizza and then set off again!  It was hard to be ready to leave the restaurant, because it was SOOO cold outside.  Really, very cold!  We walked to the Museum of Art and History, then to an old house called Maison Tavel that was actually tiny and took us about 245 seconds to visit.  Walked through a couple stores, and then we took the tram a little ways to try to find the Museum of Ethnography (Geneva has lots of little parks to visit, not just museum, but it was so frozen that the museums were a much better bet!)  It turned out the Museum was closed, and has been for a while judging by the walls and construction around it.  Instead we went to Starbucks and kept warm for the hour before it was time to go back to the train station to head home.
 
Funny story. Starbucks was packed, it was hard to find a place to sit.  Finally we were able to sit down across a table from a man and woman speaking Greek (don't worry, we asked first!).  We had been talking English, well, Franglish since we mixed French words in every few sentences, all day.  All of a sudden the couple across from us started talking English.  Okay, whatever.  A minute or two later though, they lapsed into German!  Now they were just showing off, I figured.  Of course Christian understood everything, and he looked up and smiled at the guy, who then realized he could understand.  He told me later that, in German, they were talking about how it's so hard to know what country people are from-trying to figure out where Christian and I were from.  So we started talking to them and they were really nice.  The woman is Greek, and she knows English and some German.  The man was German, and speaks English, French, and some Greek.  It was cool to talking to them, and it just goes to show, you never know who you might meet!
 
Let's see, what else is new.. This week is going to be a busy or at least mildly stressful one, because we have a Bac Blanc at school.  The Bac is the big set of tests at the end of high school to see if you have to redo the year or if you pass/graduate.  The Bac Blanc is a 'practice' test, but we still get graded on it to see how we're doing.  Here's my test schedule:  (you may want to sit down..)
Monday: 2 hours of litterature in the morning, 3 hours of English in the afternoon
Tuesday: No school for the students to visit colleges
Wednesday morning: 4 hours of philosophy
Thursday: 4 hours of history/geography, and then regular classes in the afternoon
Friday: regular class
Written out like that, for you it probably doesn't sound that bad, but these tests are all written.  No multiple choice or fill in the blank!  For lit. I'll have 2 questions to respond to in 2 hours, philosophy is one dissertation in 4 hours, history is 2.5 hours responding to one question, and then 1.5 hours filling in a map completely from memory on a subject like the Mondialisation or the Superpower of the US.  For the map, we don't even get the legend!  It's up to us to remember everything that should be on the map, and then to fill it in.

After this week though, I'll be halfway through my exchange!  That's why I had the reunion last weekend-it's the 'halfway and it's still hard' moment.  Don't get me wrong, there's people who are having a peachy time and everything's great, but most of us have little bugs we still are working out.  The reunion was good because it made us realize, it's NORMAL, there's others with the same kind of issues!  So that was reassuring.  We also ate good again!  The Americans didn't represent our desserts very well.. There's 3 of us in this area, 1 brought her dessert, 1 forgot to make a dessert and bought a French one, and I made apple crisp but then forgot it in the fridge.  My host family got to eat it though!
 
The weather last week was really good.. not too cold, not rainy.  I think I made the mistake of telling someone from home that 'the weather's great' because the last couple days, it's been freezing!  It was really windy at Geneva and in addition to the cold, it was unbearable to stay out in the cold.

That's all for now, talk to you later!