Moving In

I had a great Christmas here in France. The biggest difference, apart from it being my first Christmas away from home, was the focus on the food! Not to say that we don’t eat well during the holidays in the US, but here in France I spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the table with my host family’s family. On Christmas Eve my host mother’s mom surprised with what was possibly my favorite gift- the most beautiful red hand-knitted scarf and hat that I’ve ever seen. For the benefit of my host sister’s three-year-old nephew who was staying with us, on Christmas Eve we put out our slippers (instead of stockings) for the Père Noël to come and fill with presents.

The day after Christmas I spent packing because on the 27^th I moved in with my second host family. In the last four months I have managed to accumulate two suitcases worth of winter clothes and more stuff. In fact I felt especially bad when my new host dad unsuspectingly tried to pick up the suitcase that was filled entirely with books. (I have now realized that I may have to be more selecting when people are kind enough to offer me things like an immense dictionary as gifts).

Having carried all my luggage up two flights of stairs, including the book suitcase, my new host family showed me to my bedroom at the top of the house. I am now moved in and perfectly happy in my new host family. Besides my host parents, I have a host sister who is the same age as me, and a host brother who is a few years older.

Today I plan on familiarizing myself with the neighborhood, and continuing to settle in with my new family. I'll try to promise a more detailed post soon!

I hope that all of your Christmases went just as well, love from France,

Elizabeth  

Christmas Time

Merry Christmas Eve! It is the morning of the 24^th and I’m taking spending a nice long morning still in bed.

Oh dear, I just looked at the date of my last post- the time passes so fast. I haven’t written a thing for a solid week and you know what that means- I have been very, very busy and it’s time for a long and detailed post telling you all about it!

Saturday I had class in the morning, including a test. At least it was a test on a book that I really enjoyed, but you could almost hear during the scratching of pens how aware the whole class was that the rest of the world was already on vacation…

So after the test I came home for lunch and my host family got ready for Papy’s birthday that night. At 80 years old he is a spry and good humored patriarch for my host mother’s expansive clan. On the two hour drive to the family farm my host sister, who has her permit, managed to deftly navigate some pretty nasty sleet, which is the closest thing I’ve seen to snow here yet. It looks like this year is too warm to hope for a white Christmas. When we got there it was 7:00 and the party didn’t really start until 9:00. We only left at 2:00 in the morning. I think that Christmas Eve dinner should be the same, but since I’ve been warned this time I’ll try to take a nap this afternoon.  The whole family was there, filling the barn-turned-party room (complete with kitchen, lighting and plumbing). Late that night between courses my host sister and her cousin managed to find his saxophone and cajole him into treating us to an impressive jazz performance.  Another highlight was show he put on, dressing up as an old-time peasant of the region and regaling his family with funny old anecdote in berrîchon, the traditional dialect of the region of Berry (where I am). I didn’t understand a word, as hard as I tried, it seemed like everyone else found it really clever. As we were leaving, he translated it for me; it involved a very clever pun about a farmer’s donkey and a farmer’s wife which I don’t think I would be able to translate.

Sunday I morning I spent sleeping and Sunday afternoon I spent with my third host family. We visited a tiny village which was decorated in Christmas lights fit for a king. After admiring the tiny shops (and candy shops with all their best Christmas goodies on display!), we went to a salon de thé and enjoyed a nice cup of tea against the cold. That evening I learned crêpe-making techniques from my future host dad, and we all had crêpes for dinner.

I am always, always impressed by host wonderfully warm my future host family is and the rest of the evening was spent perfectly together in front of the fireplace.

Monday I did absolutely nothing. I am serious when I say that my neck was sore by the end of the day from not moving. This was because I hadn’t really stopped moving for the last couple of weeks and was starting to get sick. So Monday was an excellent day for catching up on all of the rest I needed. I did, however, pull together a PowerPoint presentation on American holiday traditions for the Rotary Christmas dinner Tuesday night. Thanks for the pictures, Mom!

Tuesday I finished my Christmas shopping and preparation in town, and Tuesday night was the Christmas dinner. The president’s wife who is also a member of the club asked me to prepare something for the club, so I was ready with my presentation mentioned above and in costume (as all guests were requested to be) in the only specifically ‘American’ clothes I had, a cowboy-esque outfit with a borrowed cowboy hat. The dinner was delicious, the club was as bright and convivial as ever, though this time in costume, and I got a ‘Joke a Day’ Calendar in the gift exchange. My presentation also went well; I even succeeded in getting the club to join me in a rousing chorus of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ at the end. Since the biggest traditions are the same (Santa Claus, the tree, gifts, seeing family) I highlighted the other holidays leading up to Christmas which aren’t celebrated in France: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah (though my family isn’t Jewish we usually celebrate one night at a friend’s house). I also shared family traditions such as getting the tree in the forest and the traditions of hanging stockings, rather than putting slippers under the tree, and sending Christmas cards.

After the dinner I went home with Rotarian and his wife, who I have already mentioned spending a weekend with. The plan was to stay with them and their daughter for a few days, which I was very happy to do, since I’ve come to consider them as a fifth family!

Thursday we spent together, braving going into town with their daughter despite the rain. When I came home and the mom saw the state of my boots (which had already been showing show where, but completely fell apart in the rain) I was whisked away shoe-shopping and presented with a brand-new pair as a Christmas present despite my protests and attempts to pay. We ate that night at a kitschy and cute restaurant with an impressive variety of baked potatoes.

Thursday was busy but wonderfully so. I spent the morning with the same family, come home to drop off my things and took the bus into town to see a movie with a friend from school. We saw ‘The Lady’ and it was absolutely excellent, I highly, highly recommend it. I have always found An San Su Kyi a fascinating and inspiring figure but was never familiar with her story, and found the movie extremely well done. The friend I went enjoyed it as much as I did and would like to show me some well know movies by the same director, Luc Besson, who I had never heard of before, but is a well know French director. Right after the movie, I left the theater which is located in town and walked to the building where all the Rotary clubs in Bourges meet (it is also centrally located and wasn’t far). There, I had been invited by another club to their dinner so that I could talk with their outbound student for next year. She is French and will be leaving for Taiwan next year, but since this club isn’t currently hosting any students, the president wanted me to come so that we could meet each other and talk. It was another nice dinner and I traded contact information so that we can stay in touch before and after we leave at the end of the year.

Friday I spent once again with my third host family. Everyone, including their son who is studying in Switzerland was home for the holidays. We went shopping for their Christmas dinner, made a spice cake (which was good despite accidently adding black pepper instead of nutmeg) and spent a nice day together. They were thoughtful enough to give me an apron for Christmas with my name embroidered on it with the French spelling (an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’) and a tiny French flag in the corner. I absolutely adored this gift.  I also borrowed a book from my future host sister which I can barely put down, Les yeux jaunes des crocodiles. Friday night I came home in time to have a family dinner with my host father’s brother and his family. They stayed the night on their way to Christmas with other family members.

Tonight, being Christmas Eve, is also the four month anniversary of my arrival in France. After the family left, we have had the rest of the day to relax before leaving for Christmas Eve dinner at an aunt and uncle’s house. Four months in and I’m not even homesick any more. I’m really starting to have a place here and I already know that it’s going to be difficult to say good-bye to the people who I know here.

Hugs and kisses to everyone at home, I’ve been thinking of you all and I wish a very merry Christmas.

Vacation Tomorrow

Is there anything as nice as being snug in bed when a storm is really howling outside? Or anything so difficult at getting out of said bed? Well, ok, probably. But it still felt like the most impossible of tasks this morning. It was an impressively stormy day, though- I saw at least one tree and two umbrellas broken by the wind.

One event worth note for this week is that for the last week, my school has had a student-run music festival running in their auditorium. The performers were all students who gave concerts during the lunch hours, and it was a really great way for a event to be run- very laid back and without a lot of fuss or build up. That said it may have just seemed relaxing since for the first time in a while I wasn’t on the organizational side of a school even- and I’d forgotten how much I liked it!

I did have a good day, though, as it was (for most people) the last day of school before vacation. Two of my teachers passed around a box of chocolates for the class and I also received by grades for the first trimester. They were forwarded to me by my counselor after he received them first… and at the same time as he forwarded the transcript to the rest of the club too! So in short that’s what it means to have a counselor who is a teacher with direct access to the office. Of course, he only forwarded my grades on as a sort of congratulations, since my transcript had good reviews from my teachers.

Though I have a test tomorrow morning I am looking forward to vacation starting right afterward- I should get a chance to relax before moving house and will also get to spend time with my wonderful third host family in addition to my wonderful first and second host families. Who says that I’m missing out on the holidays with my family- at last count I’ve already got three!

Waiting for Vacation

I really haven’t been keeping up with blogging as well this month as before, so there are a few things which I should probably catch you guys up on. Number one is the holidays (meaning vacation!) are approaching quickly which means that with my general yuletide joys I will also be moving. That’s right, I change house exactly two days after Christmas which is coming quickly. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ve been really lucky with my first host family, but I also get a really good feeling from my second host family, as much as I’ve seen them. And this being the second time around, it will certainly be easier learning to fit into a new family. In addition, they have already hosted one exchange student before so I think that it should be easier on both ends to accustom ourselves to each other.

Really I think that from here on out my exchange is just going to get better and better… I don’t want to jinx myself- but the days where I’m homesick are already rarer (though they were never constant before), and once the holidays are over I think most homesickness will be pretty much gone. I also am at a level of language that makes communicating really natural, which is one of the biggest barriers to overcome on an exchange year. I am also finally broadening the group of friends who I also see outside of school. The effort that goes into meeting people really does pay off, even if it just takes patience!

Today after class I spent the afternoon at a volleyball tournament, in which each participant paid a two euro registration fee all of which went to a Restaurants de Coeur, a soup-kitchen organization. My team came in dead last, but I still had a lot of fun and slowly but surely improving. By the end of the year, I’m sure I’ll be able to play volleyball like you wouldn’t believe!

I should really sign off to do my homework. We have a test on Saturday in Literature on an excellent piece of historical fiction called La Princesse de Mantoue  which is set during the Italian Renaissance, so I’m going to see how much of that I can reread tonight.

Weekend Trip

My last post was a week ago, and during that time nothing much really happened.

Well… except for this.

Oh yeah and this too.

But since I live in France going to Paris for the weekend is normal… Right? Well ok, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being able to visit the City of Lights just like that, especially when said lights are magnified about a hundred times for the Christmas season. Take for example, the Galeries Lafeyette:

This spectacular display, among others, was seen during our decorations tour by car, which was simultaneous mixture of awe-inspiring holiday spirit and life threatening traffic. But to tell you about the whole weekend, I suppose that I should start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).

We left early on Saturday morning (at 7:30) for the three hour driving to Paris. My host family, like many people here, doesn’t visit Paris often as it’s far enough that you can’t just visit for the day. So it was an exciting visit for them as well as me, to show me the city at Christmas time. We got into the city at about 10:30 and spent the morning on a whirlwind tour of all the sites by car. The traffic of Paris has all the aggressive pedestrians of New York and all the congestion of LA- with tiny cobblestone streets and scooters.

Paris really is a beautiful city. The two cities I have spent the most time in are San Francisco and New York, so my expectation of a big city is above all a place of sometimes hectic energy and eccentricity. It is not to say that Paris lacks in energy of eccentricity, but it maintains certain stateliness at the same time which was totally new to me.

We spent the morning on the Champs Elysées, admiring the high prices and general ‘classe’ of the area. One interesting thing was the Abercrombie store on the Champs Elysées. In France, Abercrombie is an extremely expensive and classy brand. (So is GAP. It makes me feel so high class to realize that the clothes I wore all my childhood are considered almost designer here.) The Abercrombie store Paris has one key attraction: the real-live male models who are key to this brand’s marketing tactic, and are willing to take pictures with the adoring girls who wait in line to get into the store. Thankfully I was saved from spending my time in Paris waiting to set eyes on said models by the length of the line, with a wait-time of over an hour and a half (there were two models we saw by the gate. I am sorry to announce that they really are that good looking in real life, plus way taller than you would expect). Here is the line, longer, by the way, than the wait to see the Mona Lisa:

Dropped out things off at a charming and small hotel, and bought sandwiches for lunch before going shopping. I was pleased to do the classic Parisian activity of shopping and succeeded in finding two new pairs of pants. After our shopping trip along some of the main streets of Paris we left for dinner at a tiny Italian restaurant before the play we had tickets to.

It was ‘théâtre du boulevard’, a small modern comedy production in a charming, tiny theater. There were four actors who carried the show and they were absolutely hilarious. The premise was a woman, just engaged, who invites her three ex – ‘great loves’ to dinner, and their colliding personalities results in hilarity. Here's the inside of the theater:

After the show ended it was late but we took the opportunity to drive through the streets of Paris and see the Christmas lights. In this instance pictures speak louder than words, but before I post them I would like to list the other aspect of driving through Paris which I have already alluded to. During the weekend we almost crashing into : 1 bicyclist, 2 cars, 1 moto, and several pedestrians. But considering we survived the traffic I think we can deem the weekend a success.

We even took a spin by the Moulin Rouge before going back to the hotel and falling straight asleep. That morning we had a lovely breakfast of croissants and chocolate croissants before leaving for a walk around the Latin Quarter. The walk was self-guided but we followed directions from a tour my host mom had found online. It started at a place which you might recognize. It was in a Disney movie, I think…

I was magnificent to see Notre Dame in person. If I had been impressed by the Cathedral in Bourges, it was nothing compared to this cathedral of such incredible awe. On the same walk we passed by the Panthéon, the Sorbonne, and got a feeling of what the student’s quarter is like. It was more quirky and interesting than the other sections of Paris I had seen so far and may have been my favorite part of the tour. (Note: wereing a beret is not stereotypically French in France. Berets are warm and France is cold.)

We had lunch a Corsican restaurant in the Latin Quarter, which was very good and warmed us up enough before going to the Marché de Noël which is an open air market, the largest in France along another section of the Champs Elysées. It was charming and seasonal, the air was bitingly cold and as we passed by the stands we caught smells of Christmas trees, hot onion soup, pastries, and roasted chestnuts. The artisan crafts were from around the world and there was even a big screen of Santa, live from the North Pole, where children at the market with their parents could speak into a microphone and talk with him. I bought something for my host family, and my first roasted chestnuts. They were delicious, but more than that they held the heat, so that the very act of unshelling them warmed up my fingers.

We left not too long after to get back home before it was too late. It was really an excellent, excellent weekend.

A conversation

While I was at my Rotary meeting tonight I had the following conversation:

Me (in a whisper): Why are they talking about Spain?

Rotarian 1: Do you want to go to Spain?

Me: What?

Rotarian 1: Hey Alain, can she come to Spain?

Rotarian 2 (my counselor): Yes she’s coming. Elizabeth, do you want to go to Spain?

Me: Uh, okay. I mean, yes. Yes, please… Wait, when are we going to Spain?

Rotarian 1: It’s for a week in April.

Rotarian 2 (with a wink): We’ll excuse you from school. The club pays for the trip.

Me: Wow. Ummm… wow. Thank you. (Looking for another better way to say ‘thank you)… Thank you!

Rotarian 2: C’est normal*

I love my Rotary club. I love this crazy and amazing year.

*this is difficult to translate directly; it means along the lines of: ‘of course,  it’s to be expected,  don’t worry about it,  etc.’

In other news, last night I helped my host family put up the Christmas tree and made them pancakes with maple syrup for dinner. The maple syrup was from the gift exchange this last weekend. They liked it, but were surprised when I suggested making eggs to go with it, since it put salty and sugary on the same plate. Good things we didn’t have any bacon on the plate to mix with the maple syrup!

Rotary Inbounds Weekend

I just got home from a great Rotary weekend with all the inbounds in the district as well as several rebounds (meaning French kids who have already spent a year abroad with Rotary).  I’ll give you a run down of my last week, since my blogging pace continues to lag, and I just have to make up for it with long entries.

Last Sunday I spent selling Sapins de Noel (Christmas trees) with Louison (who was in Peru last year (and a few Rotary members as a fundraiser for efforts against illiteracy. Afterwards I went to Louison’s house for lunch and the afternoon.

Monday night I went with my host family to go see the movie ‘Time Out’, which was decent as movies go. What I’d really like to see is ‘The Lady’ so hopefully I’ll have to time sometime soon, maybe during winter vacation in a few weeks.

Tuesday was the monthly Rotary dinner which was delicious as always. Since I’ve only just been able to get this blog to let me post pictures again, I’ll put in a picture I’ve been meaning to share with you for a while, of the room where the meetings are held. The building is hundreds of years old, and the flags on the wall are from other Rotary clubs whose members have visited or been visited.

Wednesday went smoothly, as usual.

Thursday, my badminton practice saw continued improvement. I’m getting better at all the sports I’m doing, but I think that my learning curve has been the steepest with badminton.

Friday was school and rugby practice, as normal.

So yesterday, Saturday, is where things really got interesting this week. I had class in the morning as usual, where the teacher told me that I had done well enough on the essay/exam that he was going to start grading me like my classmates for the second trimester. I find his class really interesting and well done and was pleased to have made that much progress.

After class I caught the bus home with Laurie, who had had a class-wide exam Saturday morning, and so finished at the same time as I did. As her parents had left early in the morning to spend the weekend in Paris (they will be getting back tonight) we ate lunch together as the two of us and then I rushed off to pack a bag for the weekend and catch the bus back into town. The weather was fairly unpleasant, with both rain and wind working together against my umbrella, so the fifteen or so minutes I spent trying to find the house carrying my sleeping bag and stuffed backpack along the street weren’t particularly enjoyable. The meeting place was the house of the Bourges Rotary clubs main Exchange coordinator (it turns out that it was the one house on the street that didn’t have the number displayed. Go figure).

The rest of the students arrived not too long after I got there. It was the same twenty or so kids that I spent a weekend with in Paris about a month into my exchange. Once all were present and accounted for we set off towards the office of tourism for a walking tour of Bourges most interesting and historical sights. It was a really nice tour, even if the sights weren’t new to the three of us who live here, however the group’s overall interested was slightly dampened by the weather,which was very rainy and windy. My own umbrella was unfortunately rather quickly destroyed in the wind, and I eventually gave up trying to hold its spokes and cloth together above my head and just got wet.

However, the most important part of the afternoon was, of course, to spend time with all of the other amazing students here; and even as we walked through the rain we were happily talking and laughing over host families and typical exchange students anecdotes (for example one girl from the US told us about the time than she was talking about all the preservatives in McDonalds. It turns out that the French word for ‘preservative’ is not, in fact, ‘préservatif’ as she had thought. Rather, ‘préservatif’ is the word for a contraceptive.)

After the tour as a group, we were given an hour and a half of our own to spend in town. While I had been hoping, along with Hana and Joseph, to show our friends around the downtown area we took the weather into account and made a beeline for first place which was warm with indoor seating. So we ended up at the local Pat à Pain, which is a French bakery chain. It’s still pretty good as far as chains go and at least had enough room for the eight of us who had stuck together to all find a place to sit once we had ordered our pastries and hot chocolate.

Meeting back up at the same house as before, the whole group spent a great evening and dinner together. There was a brief and very wet journey for a group of us to move our bags to the house where we were going to sleep. Below are some pictures of our grateful and disheveled arrival:

After this interlude, we spent the rest of the time together as a large group. Each person has brought a small gift which were pulled out of the basket and exchanged. I ended up with a bottle of maple syrup from one of the Canadians, and look forward to making my host family pancakes in the near future!

The dinner was very good, and went late, as dinners in France tend to go. Nobody was ready to leave, as two thirds of the group were sleeping at other houses, so we lingered over the table talking to each other and just hanging out. It was so much fun to spend time with people who are 1) having the same experiences, 2) all extremely outgoing and accepting and 3) totally at ease with communicating one language to the next so that everyone understands and is included. We only left until after midnight, to walk back to the house we had moved our bags to (through the rain. It also rained during our walking tour of Montmartre and Paris picnic at the last weekend. I suppose that perseverance against the odds is what makes bond as exchange students). We went to sleep late, after staying up talking and then in the morning the couple who was hosting us for the night, knowing that we weren’t going to eat until a 11:00 brunch, treated us to a magnificent spread of tangerines, croissants, chocolate croissants, apple tart and chocolate cake (!) for breakfast. Our return to the main house was thankfully made in nicer weather.

As for the rest of the day, we ate brunch together and then spent the rest of the time just hanging out. At one surreal point I realized that while I was busy being taught how to say ‘hello’ ‘good-bye’ and ‘my name is’ in Swedish, to my right was a hilarious conversation occurring between an Argentinian and Taiwanese exchange student in French, Chinese and Spanish (with some English thrown in) as each attempted phrases in the other’s language. All around me were my new friends from every hemisphere laughing and talking like it was the most normal thing in the world.

We also spent a fair amount of time sing Christmas carols together as well as any other song we happened to think of. The singing transitioned to dancing and we cleared the tables out of the way to that everyone could learn the steps to ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ and fast line dance from Mexico.

At the table:

 Dancing in the dining room:

After the end of the weekend the good-byes were hard, especially since the southern hemisphere students will be going home before we all see each other again (the summer of their school system is the northern hemisphere’s winter).

So off we all went, and now I’m going to see if I can catch up on sleep before Monday tomorrow.

Note to the last post

Also I forgot to mention it, but Thursday the 24th was also my official mark of having been here 3 months! Three months of so, so much which passed in no time at all!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

So it would appear that my blogs are becoming more and more weekend-centric, mostly because it’s the only time I have to blog. Which means that I’m back to the same recap-the-week format that I’ve used before.

Monday was Monday. Mondays may seem to you to be particularly boring days for me, but I’m almost certain that it’s just because I can’t remember anything about them by the time I get around to blogging.

Tuesday I had joined Physics/Earth Science test which actually passed pretty well; my French is good enough now that I’m regularly getting above the average, which in the French system is 10 out of 20. Getting over 10 is every French student’s goal as that is the passing grade. After the mind numbing but ultimately successful test, I went to the Rotarian’s house as per usual before the meeting, when I learned that it was not in fact the regular Tuesday Rotary meeting but rather a conference which the Rotary had been invited to, in which a former rugby player for the French national team spoke, both about rugby and about things like teamwork and leadership. Since I couldn’t remember his name and can in no way decipher the signature I got from him, I can’t tell you who the player was, but I was assured that he was famous, which added a pleasant feeling of exclusiveness, since the conference didn’t have that many people, all things considered. In any case I enjoyed the conference, or what of it I was able to follow. I was also able to introduce my club president to the some of the people who organize my rugby team. It was nice to be in the place of making introductions, especially between people who have both done so much for me. (The secretary of the Rugby club, I recently learned, has had to sort through some complicated paper work to register me with the team, thanks to my nationality. She has not only made the extra effort for me without even mentioning it, but also regularly gives me rides home after practice.)

Wednesday for me passed rapidly from class, to volleyball practice, to home (where I finished my essay on tragic heroes), to rugby practice (where I now appreciate that I brought my ski polypro pants and shirt), to dinner and bed.  

Thursday, as you all know, was Thanksgiving. I will admit that it was a homesick day for me as can be expected. What I didn’t expect was how understanding and supportive my classmates were. It’s nice to know that I have friends here who care about how I’m feeling. During a break during the day, I took the time for myself to walk along the canal which is about a block away from my school. I was alone and it was totally quiet and still. Leaves were falling with silent, poetic regularity from the sycamores which line the canal, and they made ripples in the water were they landed. Church bells were sounding far away, possibly from the Cathedral. Even as I missed home in that moment, I was missing home in a very, very beautiful place.

Friday on the bus on my way to school I was struck by the continuing development of Christmas lights which the city has been putting up for the last two or three weeks. They have yet to be illuminated but each day there are more and more. On Friday I saw that a canopy of strands of tiny white lights had appeared, seemingly overnight, over one of the main squares in town. When the turn the lights on, the whole city will be sparkling. I suppose that without Halloween or Thanksgiving that gives both the freedom and willingness to really start building up early for a spectacular Christmas season.

Today I had a test on a text by Rabelais, which not the most preferable of ways to start a Saturday but was at least an interesting text. I came home for lunch as usual, we had homemade French fries with steak, which are eaten with Dijon mustard. I also tried fois gras for the first time, which was very good.  This afternoon I went with my host parents, Laurie, Coralie and little Noha to see a range of artisanal products (glass jewelry, nice household ceramics, jam) which was next to the Cathedral. We didn’t get anything but it nice to look around and admire the artistry. When we got home I biked to the library quickly before it close to renew the book I checked out. It’s a historical fiction for my Literature class about an Italian noblewoman during the Renaissance, and I actually really enjoyed it. At the moment I’m slogged through Dans la solitude des champs du coton (In the Solitude of Cotton Fields) which, while an excellent book, is difficult to read as it’s not too far away from the theater of the absurd. The theater of the absurd is, well, absurd. Enough that even harder to follow in a second language than the 16^th century texts we were working on before! After I spent the rest of the afternoon taking it easy because it’s looking like I won’t have another free weekend until mid-January. It’s nice to be busy and I have some really cool things coming up, but I’ll take advantage of a quiet two days while I can. Tonight is a nice at-home night anyway since Noha is spending the night with us and is bigger and more alert with every passing day it seems. His grandparents and aunt are gaga over him, and I won’t pretend to be entirely immune either.

Since it is the week of Thanksgiving, and I wasn’t there to spend it with you I’ll make a list here of all the things I’m thankful for this year:

For a family who is worth being away from for a year, just to learn how much I appreciate them. love you guys!

For my sponsoring Rotary in California who sent me on this amazing year and will be there to share the stories with when I come home. Thanks to every member of the youth exchange team of 5160.

For a host Rotary club who is so incredibly welcoming, and has already given me opportunities above and beyond this year. Especially for a counselor and president who are always willing if I need anything.

For a host family who has taken me into their home and lives so wholly and that I have two equally wonderful host families waiting for me for the rest of the year.

For every single person who has helped me, explained something to me, and shown me such kindness and hospitality.

For being (pretty much almost) bilingual.

For my friends at home still being the best friends in the world, even so far away and all apart.

For my friends here being open enough that I can’t walk down a hallway without stopping to faire les bises, which is how you say ‘hi’.

For now having friends who come from Taiwan to Costa Rica, and who are currently living from Strasbourg to Brazil.

-Pause to apologize to whoever or whatever I’m forgetting, who I have an annoying feeling is really important-

I think that’s it… Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone!

Apple Pie

I had such a good day today! I was up early and managed to do most of the essay which is due tomorrow, clearing the way for the rest of my day. At noon I went to Hana’s, the other American exchange student’s, host family’s house. There we made the pie crust pastry and prepared the filling with the help of her host sister, before having lunch together with Hana’s host mom and sister. Joseph, the Rotary student from Taiwan, came over after we ate in time to help finish the pies and put them in the oven.

I left before the pies were finished to go and see a movie, Intouchables, with a friend from school. We both found it really funny and well made, and though he helpfully explained the slang I didn’t follow during the movie (yes, a I went to see a movie with a guy, who  just for clarity is not a romantic interest, as he is not interested in the opposite sex). Since he lives in town not too far from Hana’s house we walked back from the movie together, he to his house and me to see the final results of the pie. It turned out deliciously, and was much appreciated by Hana, myself, and Hana’s host family (and Joseph though he had left long before I got back). I also had a really interesting discussion with Hana’s host mom on race relations in France, as her family was originally from Algeria and it is a topic which she finds both interesting and very personal.

I came home and had dinner with my host family, which was good to see them after being out and about for so much of the weekend. I brought them some of the apple pie, and while they liked it they are some of the first people I’ve met who don’t like cinnamon- so that will just leave a few more slices for me until it’s all gone! It was a nice Thanksgiving tribute to put together with my fellow countrywoman and made for a pleasantly busy day.

A November Week in My Life in France

So I was recently told that I should post something considering it’s now been nearly four days, and my last post was an advertisement (calendars are still for sale- help send another student abroad!).

Since my last real post I have done… not much. Really that could be considered a good thing; that my life here is now routine enough that every other turn doesn’t seem like a marvel to be shared.  

Monday was a typical school day. Can’t remember anything particularly noteworthy expect that for the first time, one of the servers at the cafeteria gave me a serving of the vegetables without my asking. As most of the students file down the line, they ask for one of the meat and one of carbohydrate dishes being served (pasta, couscous, potatoes). I am one of the few who regularly makes a special request for the vegetable dish, in my ongoing effort to eat a moderately balanced lunch every day. The workers who serve the food are really friendly and joke with the students as they file past. Probably thanks to some of my early stumbling requests they now brightly greet me in English and as of Monday are kind enough to remember my preference for veggies.

Tuesday I once again had no PE, and since that combined with my lunch made for a four hour gap during my day I did like the French and went home to eat. It was very relaxing and I even took a short nap. After school, I figured out what I’m going to do in the hour between school getting out and my weekly Rotary meeting. It wasn’t an issue until it started getting dark outside when I get out of class at 6:00. Last week, I asked a Rotarian (who previously had told me that she lived nearby and to ask if I ever needed anything) if I could go to her house for the intervening hour. She said yes and so after my physics class- in which I absolutely bombed the test she gave us, prompting me to ask for some one-on-one vocabulary help in the future. It’s hard enough to copy the notes in French, let alone understand them at the same time- I made my way on foot to her house which was not at all far away. Her fourteen-year-old and her daughter’s nourrice, or nurse/babysitter as many French children with working parents have, welcomed me and we talked in the kitchen until the Rotarian got home from work in a rush and then drove us to the meeting.

Wednesday I finished at noon, as per usual, but instead of eating and then heading to volleyball practice I joined the some of the other girls from the team to take the bus to a volleyball match at another high school in town. The volleyballs coaches met us there (one of whom is my Rotary counselor, have I mentioned that? He’s a PE teacher at my school and he’s absolutely great. Very reassuring, which is exactly what you want in a counselor).  Once we were there we found that only three girls from the senior division had come, including me even though I’m only in the senior division because of my age; I’m still too new at the sport to compare with most of my teammates skill-wise. With the one cadet who had come, that made a team of four. So the match was automatically forfeited, but we still played for fun, with the help of two girls from the other team playing with us. After the match my counselor gave me a ride home with one of the other players, and I did homework until it was time to leave for rugby at 6:45. The practice officially starts at 7:00 but since we don’t usually start until 7:30, I take the bus that gets me there late instead of early.

Thursday after school I went to my second host family’s house for dinner. It was wonderful to see them again- I think that each host family is going to be even better than the last during my year here. I’ll have two host siblings, a brother who is in his early twenties and a sister who is 17 and in her last year of high school. We set the date for when I’m going to move, several days after Christmas. After dinner together, my future host mom and sister stopped by the local public gymnasium where my host sister plays and referees basketball matches. Her mom is also very involved with the basketball league there, so it was nice to see the place and some of the players which will likely be figuring in my life too very soon.

Friday is generally a long day for me, since I go straight from my last class at 5:00 to rugby which is in a suburb a little ways out of town. It’s a bus ride where I get a lot of my reading done. Which is a good thing since I have plenty of books assigned to read, all in French, and my reading pace and general lack of time has put me some ways behind my classmates. My day this Friday, however, was made even longer because I had my once-every-other-week class which starts at 8:00. This Friday I gave a PowerPoint presentation for the first time since getting here. It was nice to do some public speaking, even if my group was less than motivated during the making of the project. I, of course, am in a place where I don’t have to worry about what grade they or I got so I was just able to enjoy the simplicity of putting together and giving my piece of the presentation. It may seem that I have enumerated a number of school work difficulties I experienced this week, but this last Friday I also had a triumph later in the day when my History/Geography teacher handed back the tests and told me that she had, for the first time, graded me like everyone else and that I had received a grade about equivalent to a B.

Which brings me today, Saturday. This morning I had class, as usual, after which I walked into town to meet up with Hana the other American exchange student in Bourges. We got sandwiches at a pastry/sandwich shop on the downtown main street, which were made with freshly baked French bread which I can personally attest makes for all the difference in the world when it comes to sandwiches. After eating we met up with Joseph, the Taiwanese Rotary student who is also hosted by Hana’s club and goes to school with her, to go buy the ingredients to make apple pie. This is our personal Thanksgiving celebration, and now that we have all the ingredients necessary we’re going to meet up tomorrow afternoon to bakes the pies at Hana’s host family’s house. I’m really excited about this since it’s been a long time since I’ve had a slice of pie, and I can’t want to introduce Hana’s host family and possibly mine to the dessert. 

After heading home from Hana’s house, I took a nap, did some homework, and then got ready to go to a movie with Laurie, and her sister and brother-in-law (the new parents). We saw the fourth Twilight movie, which Laurie and Coralie really enjoyed. My favorite part was the setting in the Pacific Northwest, with a good number of shots set in woods which might well have been out of my childhood. My friends from home may be proud of me when they hear that I was able to restrain myself from commenting on things like the logging industry in the Northwest during the course of the movie. Experience has taught me that I am frequently the only one to find such commentary interesting, and I had a feeling that my host sister was probably more interested in the werewolves than the freshly logged timber behind them. It may also be of interest to some of you to note that Robert Pattinson’s acting was much improved with the help of the French voice actor who was dubbed over him. His lines weren’t nearly as stilted as usual.

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to- baking pies and then going to see a movie with a friend from school. I’ll tell you how it goes… and if I managed to find the time to do the homework I always intend to do. (It’s nice to spend a year not worried about school, and yet at the same time I already have a feeling that I’ll be more focused next year than I would have been otherwise. This period of adventure and adjustment has already got me to thinking more seriously about what I want to do in the future, and though I don’t yet have an answer, I think that thanks to my year on exchange I’ll take less time getting there in the long run).

So there you have a blow-by-blow of what I did for an entire week, ending on an oddly introspective and philosophical note. I hope you enjoyed this post that took me so long to get around to writing.

In which I sell out my blog (for a good cause)

Well as far as I can tell, I’ve begun to gather something of a following with this blog, and I have finally decided to cash in on my newfound (mini) celebrity. It was only a matter of time, so to speak.

My host Rotary club here in France is fundraising for their youth programs for next year (mainly the exchange program) and so I would like to open a unique opportunity to any and all who are interested. For only 5 euros, about $6.80, a calendar featuring the young participants of said programs could be yours! In addition to seeing exactly two pictures of me, you will also have the opportunity to learn the months and days of the week in French! (reminders for holidays such as Thanksgiving, President’s Day, Martin Luther King’s Birthday and the Fourth of July are not included) If you so desire, the smiling faces of international students could greet you every day! Don’t miss this unique opportunity as supplies are limited! *

*My Rotary counselor asked me if I wanted to help sell the calendars and gave me five when I said yes. So if you’re not interested in my shameless advertisement, it’s no big deal. I'm just planning on running the idea by as many people as possible. If you would like one, just send me an email and/or give the money to my parents as they can forward it on to me and I can give it to my Rotary club.

In which extremely nice people invite me to come do fun stuff with them

So I promised an entry for today, which is good because I don’t want to leave anything out about the rest of my weekend. Right after my Saturday morning class, a member of my host Rotary club came with his daughter, who is 16, to spend the weekend with their family.

This Rotarian, his wife and daughter were absolutely wonderful. I’m so lucky because it seems like so many people I meet here are not only incredibly welcoming but also genuinely fun to spend time with. After I dropped my things off in the room prepared for me and was showed around the house, we sat down to a lunch of a Spanish rice dish similar to paella but with a tomato-based sauce, followed by homemade coconut flan. Flan is a poplar dessert here, and I was surprised to find that it was a European food, since I had only ever eaten it in Indian restaurants before.

After lunch we went to the Cité d’or, which is a large pyramid shaped building in a town about a half hour away, which hosts a theater, numerous multi-use rooms and a permanent exhibit on gold. I walk interested to learn the history of gold mining in the region and France in general, as well as to see a live demonstration on gold working. I had trouble understanding the technical spiel, it didn’t make it any less impressive to see the sparks fly! After the demonstration we toured the exhibit on jewelry and art made from gold including a spectacular woven gold cape for a 15^th century member of the clergy and an equally impractical modern creation: a bikini made of pure silver.

We can home from the trip and decided to order pizza, which was great for me because while on of the pizzas was topped with Dijon mustard and ground beef, it was still nice to see the familiarity of take-out pizza. Though while I succeed at eating pizza with a knife and fork, the chicken wings were a little bit harder! But luckily, the Rotarian’s daughter, Alexia, dug in with her hands so after a few unsuccessful attempts I put the utensils down and joined her.

The evening after dinner was spent in Alexia’s room sharing YouTube videos, which may sound like something that I could do any old time back at home, but I’ve found that even YouTube and Facebook have started reflecting my stay here. We were warned to stay away from internet sites like that for fear of falling into introversion and homesickness, and for the first month and a half I was very good at following the recommendation. However, I’ve started to find now that being online isn’t just about reaching home for me any more- it’s also about chatting with my classmates here and subscribing to the French YouTubers that they’ve introduced me to.

Sunday morning  Alexia and I left by bike to see the marais or marshes which are near the center of town. When I originally heard that there were marshes in Bourges, I pictured something like the vast levees of wetland in the Sacramento delta. These marshes are nothing like that. In fact, while there were at one point wild enough to serve a natural defense for the original Gauls, they began to be drained into canals and cultivated under Roman rule. Several centuries later the marais are small plots of rich, green land divided by canals which can be bought or rented as private gardens. The walkways, however, are public and make for a pleasant spot on a sunny Sunday morning like last weekend. The relative tranquility of the space was attested to by the number of jogger and walkers out enjoying the sunshine. After touring the twisting paths, Alexia and I went to the Sunday market just nearby in the center of town. We locked our bikes (or rather I locked them- six years of life in Davis makes for an ability to lock and unlock bikes swiftly) and toured the market on foot. The stands of artisanal cheeses, cured meats, pastry, regional fruits and vegetables filled the market with every imaginable smell. We got a bag of small beignets au sucre which are very similar to doughnuts, but somehow better.

After the (mostly uphill) bike ride home we had lunch together. It was delicious again- Nanette, the Rotarian’s (François’s) wife is an amazing cook. Their son and his longtime girldfriend, who both live and work in Bourges, joined us for lunch. They had just returned from gathering mushrooms in the woods. This pastime is popular enough in France that all pharmacists are certified at identifying edible and inedible mushrooms. You take your basket of wild mushroom into a pharmacy and have them identified before attempting to eat them.

After lunch I went with François and Alexia to the small lake/pond far out in the countryside which belongs to their family. While François worked on maintaining the surrounding bramble of trees and bushes, Alexia gleefully showed me around the pond; with the sunny weather and surrounding open space we were more than happy to gamble around tossing a ball back and forth.

We got back in time for me to get ready to go to the theater- a few months ago I bought a ticket to see the St. Petersburg Ballet Company perform Swan Lake here in town. The trip was organized by a Russian teacher, but places were open for students like me who aren’t taking Russian. Just my chance Julia, the girlfriend of Alexia’s brother, and François’s mother were also going to see the same show. They gave me a ride there and I left to go meet up with the class. It was a spectacular performance. It really made me think of everyone at ballet- I can’t wait until I’m back in class with you this summer, because this performance was absolutely inspiring! (I did however wonder at one point if Tchaikovsky reused certain motifs in his compositions- the music to some of the First Act in Swan Lake I recognized from the finale of the Nutcracker.) The dancers were amazing, the story, costumes, and choreography all came together with the live orchestra to make for a wonderful show.

After the show Alexia’s brother picked us up and I went back to the François and Nanette’s for dinner. It was, as I have nearly come to expect, absolutely delicious. I was treated not only to hot, creamy vegetable soup, but also the history of the tradition of soups in France. (In summary: winter was cold, so peasants made soup because it was hot and tasted good. A nice, straightforward story as traditions go.)

My weekend ended when I came home, at 9:00, and got to see my host family before heading to bed. I’m so lucky to be surrounded by people who have decided to take me into their lives during this year!

Headcheese

Well I’m having an awesomely busy weekend right now, but that doesn’t leave much time for telling you guys about it! So I’ll give you a bullet pointed list of highlights from the last few days and then you’ll have to wait until I get back on Monday to hear about the rest.

Tuesday: I was served a mysterious meat cut into cubes at a Rotary meeting. Having now enjoyed everything from pâté of wild boar to duck gizzards in salad, I grabbed a toothpick and dug right in. When I ask what the name of the food was, I discovered that I was eating headcheese. I was good, if you enjoy foods with large clumps of gelatin and bits of who-knows-what mixed together.

Wednesday: I went to a presentation organized by Rotary on the discovery of radioactivity and nuclear technology in the modern day. I was very interesting and I understood most of it despite the technical terminology. At the end of the presentation I had a great surprise when I saw another exchange student, who I had met at the Rotary weekend in Paris, was also present. Kate (from New York, the state not the city) was equally excited to see me and we had a great time talking and comparing our experiences of the past month during the dinner after the presentation. It was funny to see how we had become sufficiently accustomed to the language that we actually spoke franglais with each other to a certain extent and then switched to pure French to talk to everyone else.

Incidentally, this was my second time eating in a French restaurant and my first time with a big group. Even at a restaurant we spent two hours at the table and had three separate courses. I ordered the andouillette, which I was told was a delicious specialty sausage. It was very good, though lucky it wasn’t explained to me until I was a few bites in that it was made entirely out of pork intestine.

Thursday: After school ended (at 6:00) I went to go see Paranormal Activity 3 with two friends at the movie theater next to our school. It was a really bad movie, I don’t recommend it at all, but it was still fun to complain about having just seen a bad movie with friends.

Friday: I left with my host family on a two and half hour drive to Tours this morning to celebrate the birthday of 3-year-old Romain (who is Laurie’s nephew and my host parents’ grandson). We got stuck when the road was blocked for a parade, since today was November 11, the day the Armistice was signed ending WWI. We got to see military personal in their best dress walking by, and I’m pretty sure one of them, with an impressive mustache, made some comment to me and Laurie, as we both had our heads out of the window to see the parade, though we didn’t hear exactly what we said. By the time we got through the traffic nearly everyone else had already arrived at Laurie’s brother’s house. It was a wonderful family lunch of the type I have previously described, with an adorable three-year-old and his several-week-old cousin, Noha, who were the darlings of the entire gathering. The duck with mashed potatoes was delicious and put a fine finish on my week of adventurous meat-eating. We got back late, had a casual dinner (I got myself a ham sandwich, prepared à la française: baguette, thick sliced ham, and butter) and then I packed my bag for the next stage in my weekend. If you’re lucky you’ll get to hear all about it on Monday!

When the Teachers are Absent

Today I have no PE class, since the teachers are busy testing the grade level below me, and I have no Earth Science since the professor is going to be absent. What that means is that I have exactly two classes today: one from 9:00 to 10:00 and another from 2:00 to 3:00. So, like so many other days of unexpected leisure, I now get to decide what I want to do with my free time. I think that during my four lunch break I’ll go into town, mostly because I have to go to the bank, but also because it seems like sudden opportunities like this should not be wasted.

After my school day ends at 3:00, which now to me seems luxuriously early, I’ll have the chance to take the bus home and kick back for a little bit before my Rotary meeting. This is nice because on Tuesdays I usually go straight from school, which ends at 6:00, to the meeting which starts at 7:00. The walk is twenty minutes long and I get there early but that still leaves an awkward 30 minutes which isn’t really enough time to go shopping, but is enough time to walk around. Now that it’s dark after 6:00 I’m going to ask a Rotarian who lives nearby the school if I can hang out at her house until the meetings start.

The thing about these long breaks though, is that I don’t usually try to do anything special during them, because no one else does. If they live nearby, my classmates go home during their break, and if not they stay at school and hang out together either on a bench or in the library. I find that that makes for the perfect opportunity to meet new people and spend time with the people I do know. The social life of French teenagers seems to take place of the weekends and during vacations, but also very much built into their school day. And there’s nothing more convenient for an exchange student’s continuing efforts to build a social network!

Sunday

Since blogging is technically a productive thing to do, it seems like a more appropriate way to take a break from my essay than browsing the archives of the National Geographic website or going on facebook. The essay is coming along. Even though it’s in French, the essays here are only about a hand written page and a half long since they are, once again, practice for the bac which includes a number of timed written analyses.

Today I had family lunch with my host family, Coralie her boyfriend and the baby. I can personally attest that baby speak in French sounds almost just like cooing in English. Noha is a healthy little baby and already so much bigger after just three weeks! He’s very alert and had started to follow voices and faces with his big blue eyes.

After lunch Dora come over to work on homework together since we both had plenty to get done. Although we’ve been warned about the dangers of only making friends with exchange students, Dora and I make an effort to speak in French when we’re together and don’t often see each other during school, since we’re both focusing on making friends with our classmates. That said, it certainly is nice to spend time with someone who is going through the exact same experience.

A nice quiet Sunday, and now I should get back to work!

Friday and Saturday

My Friday passed uneventfully, except that another girl from St Doulchard (where I live) joined the rugby team, which is nice because that makes getting a ride home even easier.  I also got permission from one of my teachers to do TPE on my own. TPE is the one large group project that the students at my school do, and it counts for their exit exam, the BAC.  I was originally in a group, despite the fact that the project wouldn’t count towards any sort of grade or BAC for me. After two sessions with my group, I realized that I had no desire to take my classmates through the baby-steps of collaboration (oh Da Vinci, how I miss you sometimes). So I talked with the teacher about it, who is a teacher that I really like, and it would appear that I’m now free to work on whatever I’d like on my own. I suppose that my I can put my Twenty-first Century skills on hold until I’m in a less traditional educational system.

On my way to school on Saturday morning I pass by the city’s morning market, which is held in the area which historically stored the city grain. Now each Saturday morning it’s filled with booths of butchered meat, cheese, produce, trinkets, and used books. Since my bus arrives early I took a detour through the market and was able to find a used copy of another Tintin book for a mere 5 euros.

After morning classes and then lunch with my family I went back into town to meet up with friends. Well actually, I missed the bus (apparently nobody told the new driver that he’s expected to be 10 to 15 minutes late). So I walked to the library and checked out a book for school, passed the time until the next bus browsing through the library shelves. Then I went into town as planned, where I played pool with two friends at the bowling complex not far from our school. I didn’t do too badly, all things considered; in fact I quite nearly won my first game. Though since none of us are exactly experts, the competition wasn’t the stiffest, and we had more fun just hanging out together.

Then I came home, almost did my homework, and then realized that I have all of tomorrow to worry about it. All in all, a nice Saturday I would say.

Back to Class

For the first I as I sit down to write this I can think of nothing to say. I suppose that means that I’m finally really accustomed to my life here. In fact, the first two days back in school after the vacation were nice in terms of getting back into the routine. (Not so nice in terms of having to wake up 6:30 again…) The one thing that has changed is because my day was so long today, from 8:00 to 6:00, with a 20min bus ride on either end, daylight savings time has made it so that I left the house before the sun rose and it had already set when I got out of school. That’s a first for me, but luckily the high school campus has enough outdoors space between buildings that you get to see daylight during the day. Especially considering that in the last two days I’ve had three teachers be absent from their classes resulting in unexpected two hour breaks in my day.

What else is there to talk about? Well, if you’re wondering if I managed to complete my goals over break I’ll give you a quick run summary:

1)      Spend time with friends- check. I think I wrote about ice skating, and I was also able to go into town with Dora and had lunch at her host family’s house. They were very welcoming and funny, cracking jokes and teasing each other. We also played an online geography quiz with her younger host sister, at which Dora absolutely crushed. Between her near fluency in English and geographic prowess, I’m wondering what other miracles are worked by the Icelandic educational system.

2)      Read assigned texts- check. Almost. I read one out of four, which is pretty good considering that they were all in French. Luckily, it’s the one book we’re working on right now, Caligula by Albert Camus. I also finished The Princess Diaries in French, though that wasn’t exactly assigned by my Literature teacher.

3)      Winter coat and shoes- check. I very much appreciated having them when I caught the bus this morning.

4)      Skype home- check. It was great to see all of you!

5)      Homework- well, I did everything that was due right away. I still have that essay on a text I don’t understand… but I’m sure there will be time to decode it over the weekend.

6)      Cupcakes- no, but I did make some very delicious cookies.

7)      Visit my third host family- yes, and I’m absolutely looking forward to living with them.

8)      Review French- yes, though I barely made a dent in reviewing the list of irregular verbs I made. French has a lot of irregular verbs, which are especially horrific in the subjunctive. I deeply dislike the subjunctive.

9)      Sleep- check. It was wonderful.

So as of Wednesday my vacation was over and I’m back in school. I had badminton today, and slowly continue to improve. On my way home from the bus stop I bought a delicious pastry which was a type of apple tart/pie and very good. However my favorite discovery so far as French pastries go is the religieuse. Two round, chocolate, cream-filled pastries are stacked on top of each other with a white collar of icing in between. The pastry together forms an abstract figure of a religieuse, French for nun!