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!