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.