Stop! Read the Last Post Before Reading This One

If you read the post "I Have a Camera" first, then this post will make more sense.

Here is the street on the way to my bus stop- do you see the church steeple?:

My bus stop is next to this old church's parking lot:

Sorry about the orientation- I'm still figuring out how to post pictures!



Across the street from the Church and bus stop is one of my favorite things about this intersection... the local bakery/patisserie! (It's no wonder they say exchange students gain weight, if all foreign countries place shops like this at every corner):

The bus stop itself:

My bus card, a necessity for the school year:

On the bus itself- as it fills with students in the morning, the new arrivals walk to the back, greeting the other students they know on either bus of the bus with kisses on the cheek:

Here is the bus station in downtown Bourges:

And from there, I have some snapshots of the remaining walk to school:

It may be difficult to tell in these pictures, but the roads are quite a bit smaller than at home, and a large number of the building in the downtown were build long before the town of Davis, California was even founded!

I Have a Camera!

This is going to be a photo oriented blog to make up for the lack of earlier photos. I bought the memory card yesterday and today I went into town with my host sister to take pictures. I also bought a watch (I mentioned the lack of clocks in an earlier blog, I think) and a pocket French-English dictionary. Probably something I should have thought to bring ahead of time, but there you are.

So to start let me introduce you to my host family...

My host mom, Christine, and me:

And my host father Michel (sorry, I know it's not the best picture of him) and host sister Laurie:

And the dog, Oupie (not sure about the spelling of the name)

Now let me show my trip to school in the morning...

Here's the house as I leave:

 I'm going to put the other photos in a second blog, in the hopes that the website will be able to load the pictures faster.



15 min post

I have 15 min before I leave for school so I thought I'd post something quickly. As you may be able to tell, school has very quickly eaten up a lot of the time that I would otherwise spend blogging...

But I wanted to describe the school cafeteria to you! So I aldready mentioned that lunch is a big deal here (as I side note, another exchange student recently contested with me that dinner may be as big as lunch here, but regardless I'm not used to much ceremony while eating in the middle of the day). So on my first day I was wondering what that would mean for school lunch. I knew that most people ate at the cantine, rather than bringing sack lunches or going out like most students do at home. As I was asking around about the school food I didn't get very enthusiastic reponses. The ubiquitous answer was "all right" but not "good". Comeing from the land which invented cafeteria mystery meat, this gave me a sense of foreboding.

However, on arrival I realized that their responses had no idea how low my expectation were! Walking though the line, I filled my platter with a salad, a small package of brie, and chocolate mousse. The main dish was hot roasted chicken, coucous, and ratatouille... all eaten with the fresh bread taken from massive bins at the end of the line. All in all, a far cry from the microwave pizza I never had the courage to touch at home!

The cantine is large, with tables full of kids talking, laughing and eating. Water pitchers are placed on the table as the beverage, to be refilled as needed. And I've even been lucky enough to be invited to eat everyday with different people in my class everyday... though after paying such close attention in classes I can't say I make a great conversationalist. Lunch is a wonderful thing here at my lycee, but it's also a much appreciated chance to let my brain relax!

(Again, apologies for typos as I'm on my way out the door...)

Catch-Up Post

This is going to be a quick post, since it's really time for me to be going to sleep, but I don't know when else I'll get the chance to write about the last week.

My first week of school went really well. As disoriented as the first day was, each day has gotten easier and I've moved from trying to make contact with people to actually a number of my classmates who I genuinly enjoy spending time with and I really look forward to getting to know. I'm able to follow all of my classes. It helps that I have so many classes in English and the history class is review for me. So far, French is the most challenging classes, but that said, I haven't had my physics class yet, which I look to with apprehension.

I actually consider myself lucky that I'm already integrating with the system with success, moderate as it may be. That's because I spend Saturday and today (Sunday) meeting all the other inbound students in my Rotary district. They are from all over the world, and absolutly wonderful! I say that I consider myself lucky, because after meeting the other inbounds, I realized that I'm starting off with really good language skills compared to many exchange students. We're all struggling to communicate and make connections, so it was both really relaxing and really exciting to be surrounded by people who knew how it feels to think at two thousand miles an hour but only speak at about two words a minute.

However, communication was really pretty easey between most of the exchange students because those who weren't native English speakers (and between the U.S., Canada, and Australia, there were a lot of us)  had learned English primarily before learning French. In fact, it was pretty impressive how nearly fluent the Taiwanese, Argentinian, Swedish, and Mexican kids were in English. On the whole, it was one of the coolest expiriences I've ever had to be surrounded by people who were switching off between first, second, and third languages (with varying degrees of success) as they changed from group of people to group of people; and the absolute best part was being able to participate in it. I love the feeling that I can switch between two different languages at will. I'm nowhere approaching fluency in French yet, but I'm proficient enough to say anything I want and to understand everything said to me... and what a difference just these past two weeks have made!

In fact, we were all so busy talking to each other, comparing expiriences, comiserating and exclaming that I think we barely noticed we were in Paris at all for the entire journey from the train station to the hostel. As the rest of the day continued we did most of the really touristy things in Paris- climbing the Eiffel Tower, seeing the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo, taking a boat tour on the Seine. To be honest I was impressed by all the sights, but I was really taking mental notes for things to come back to sometime when I can visit Paris outside of a massive group of other students. At one point we were walking through the Louvre together, talking and laughing, when we were briefly distracting by the huge portrait of the Coronation of Napoleon (I'm sure you'd recognize it if you saw it). We stopped momentarily to gaze at the enormous canvas, the original of an image which all of us had seen in countless textbooks, and then recommenced our discussion on how much we missed peanutbutter.

Sometime soon I will describe my school and school day, and you may be lucky enough to find it includes pictures! I have, after far to many unimmortalized expiriences, finally purchased a camera. Unfortunatly, it turns out you have to buy the memory card seperatly... Who knew?

Please excuse my typos in this blog as well as in the last several. I hope you'll understand that when it's between sleep and proof reading, I have plenty good motivation to choose sleep.

The First Day of the Rest of the Year

Today was not only my first day of school, but also my first weekly Rotary meeting. Both went absolutely wonderfully, and I look forward to attending both of them for the next ten months!

I took the city bus to class in the morning- it was incredibly easey since there was a mass of other students all heading in the same direction. As we waited outside the gate I was able to strike up conversation with a few other students, a littly bit haltingly, but altogether friendly. My Rotary counselor is also the prof du sport, or PE teacher, at my lycee (high school) and he met me outside in order to help me become a little more aquainted with the school. He introduced me to my professeur principale, who is similare to a homeroom teacher and is also my English teacher, and to two girls in my class. They were kind enough to take me under their wing for the day, which, pleasently enough, ended by noon,

The intervening time was spent with my classe (who I will have most of my classes with for the rest of the year) in our professeur principale's room. She told us our electives and then wrote the schedule on the board for us to copy down. To be honest, it was a lot to take in (everything from the lined paper to the handwriting is just a little bit unfamiliar), and it didn't help that the teacher was so pleased to have a native speaker in her English class that she singled me out rather frequently, invariably drawing the classe's attention to me whenever I was attempting to decipher some cryptic new piece of information. However, I was bolstered by the help of my classmates sitting next to me, and I look forward to getting to know even more of my new classmates tomorrow.

I am in the equivalent of junior year here, and though I'm a good two years older than my classmates I don't think it should make too much of a difference, since I'm playing catch-up on a lot of skills they take for granted (like being about to talk). I'm in the literature (L) track, as opposed to the Science, Math, or Economic/Social Studies tracks. What that means is that since I didn't choose math as an elective (because I didn't choose any of my electives) I actually don't have a math class this year. I'm sure I'll enjoy that for now, but we'll see how college level math goes next year once I'm out of practice! On the other hand, I do have a science class, once a week, and French, Spanish, History/Geography, and Government/Social Studies. I also am in no less than three English classes. I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I think that in addition to the mandatory English class and the mandatory Foreign Literature: English class I was given supplementary English instead of another elective. At least those are three classes I won't have to worry too much about!

As for a description of the school itself, it is actually built in two distinct parts, seperated by a city street. The most visible part is the old building which house the girl's school about a century and a half ago. While the interior is renovated, the exterior makes quite an imposing impression on a girl used to schools built well into the 20th century. Just across the street are a colection of modern buildings which contain classrooms, the gymnasium, the caffeteria, etc. There is quite a bit of open courtyard space in between the buildings, which is pleasent as can be right now, but I'm hoping won't be regreted too much by winter.

On the whole, I'm really pleased by the school, and I think that I can look forward to the coming challenge!

As for my first Rotary meeting, I really enjoy being with such genial host Rotarians. Of course, there was pleanty of business at the meeting which had little to do with me, but it was offset completely by the different Rotary members who spent the evening good naturedly teasing me in between the club affairs.

It's late enough to sign off, but thankfully I don't have to be in class tomorrow until 11:00- and Wednesday afternoons are entirely free. Though that good new may be offset slightly by the time Saturday morning rolls around... and I have a class at 10:00!

Fête!

Yesterday was my first French party, the celebration of my host sister's 17th birthday and her friend's 18th birthday. I learned that 18th birthdays in France are a combination of the American Sweet Sixteen and, since 18 is when they gain la majorité, the American 21st birthday.

On the whole, it was great to meat a lot of people before starting school (tomorrow!), but those of you who have ever had a sleepover with me won't be surprised when I say that I was ready to be finnished at midnight. However, the party was going strong until 5:00 in the morning, when everyone fell asleep in chairs or in sleeping bags scattered across the floor. With the clean up in the morning, we didn't actually leave until 1:00pm the next day.

Once I resigned myself too a long night, I was able to follow the crowd in the French dances. One of my favorite things to see was how they danced to the American song Cotton-Eyed Joe. I know that there is actually a choreographed dance to this song, since we were forced to learn it in 8th grade PE, but since nobody was familiar with the dance (or understood the lyrics), they made a tunnel of people holding hands, London Bridge-style, and as the two people at the end of the tunnel each ran through it to the other side, the tunnel snaked energetically around the dance floor. In general, many of the pople there were excited to meet the American. In fact, many attempted hilariously to speak in English with me, leading me to the conlusion that there is very little more difficult to understand than a drunk French teenager attemping to speak in English. Actually, thanks to American media, many of the kids there were surprised when they heard that I personnaly don't drink. But none of them cared enough to stop asking, variously, if I was proud to have a black president, if I played American football (miming a basball bat), if I was familiar with the names of different soccer players, and if I went the the beach a lot.

Yesterday was spent cleaning up and catching upsleep, and today, being my last day before school starts tomorrow, I am enjoying the quiet. In fact I though I might spend the time listing just a few of the cultural differences I have encountered so far.

1. Flip flops are worn in the house, but seldom outside of it. Once my host sister accidently left the house in her flip flops, and we had to drive home so that she could put on real shoes.

2. It is not uncommon to wear the same clothes for two days in a row. This isn't even rewearing jeans or a sweatshirt- the entire outfit, if it isn't stained or too wrinkled, is laid out at the end of the day, ready for the morning. It's not considered dirty- my host sister was the first person who I noticed to do it, and she is the only person I have ever met who brushes their teeth three time a day. (As a side note, there is zero truth to the stereotype that the French don't shower).

3. Since the roads are so small, drivers just park with two wheels on the sidewalk. In addition, I though the the California idea of following distance was nonexistant- but French drivers don't come to a halt until the front bumper is practially touching the bumber of the person in front of them.

4. It's all about the bread; there is baguette bread with every meal, and it is such a staple that it isn't even placed on the plate. Rather, it rests next to the plate and often used instead of a knife to push food on to the fork, and at the end of the meal is used to practically swab the plate down. For us, good bread it a part of the meal. Here, as far as I cam tell, it is almost one of the utensils used to eat the meal, and it just as common and necessary as water. In fact, today I discovered where the stale bread goes (since it is bought fresh everyday) in the house. In the garage by the recycling bin I found two enormous tote bags of the odds and ends of bread which hadn't been eaten before it went stale. (And the tote bags here are enormous, since they don't use paper or plastic shopping bags).

5. Those of you with rats and mice at home might be wondering at the wisdom of keeping that much stale bread lying around. However both those rodents, and one other pest have been pleasently absent to far. Dispite the standing water of the nearby marais, I have seen no mosquitos whatsoever. It is a mcuh appreciated absence especially after, for some of you, our night by Charlotte Lake not too long ago.

6. Everyone wears watches. Actually, because of this, I've noticed a lot fewer clocks around, so I'm going to need to get one too.

7. This may only be my host family, but they iron everything from T-shirts to jeans.

8. Pizza actually is eaten with a knife and fork. When I mentioned that it was my first time using utensils to eat pizza, I was greated with surprise. "Even at resaurants?" asked my host mother.

9. On the topic of food, I haven't seen any grilled meat so far. At home, something comes off the barbeque nearly every night during the summer and frequently during the winter. Here however, meat is fried in about a quarter cup of melted butter in a frying pan. At the end of the cooking process, both sides are sprinkled with salt, garlic powder, and dried basil. Simple, and very, very good.

10. There is just as much subtlety to the bises and handshakes (kisses on the cheek) used for greeting and good-byes are there are to the hugs and handshakes used at home. Women and women do bisous with eachother, as do women and men. Men shake hands, for the most part. However, you know the hankshake-hug-backslap that men who are good friends do? Replace the hug-backslap with a bise, and you have the French version!

The First Week

My goal for this last week has been to familiarize myself with Saint-Doulchard and Bourges, and I think that I'm well on my way to starting to feel a little more at home. The day before yesterday, I succeeded in getting a library card from the local library. It's within walking distance, so going back and forth helps me get to know the neighborhood a little bit better. I've been missing having something to read, because, though I brought some books from home, I don't want to get lost in the English language until I'm a little more secure in my language skills. I've been reading the Tintin and Asterix books in my room, but as comforting as it is to see familiar faces, I've been worrying about learning French from the likes of Thomson and Thompson (or Dupont and Dupond, here).

I've also been running, because I find that I'm less likely to feel frustrated or homesick if I exercise, and I gained a fairly good knowledge of the neighborhood and a reputation as being 'sportive'- I'm not the only runner I've seen out, but so far I haven't seen any other girls or teenagers.

I've also got my bus pass, which I'll use to get to and from school for the rest of the year, and a map of the towns so that I can orient myself. Give me a mode of transportation, a map, and a library card and I'm ready to conquer the world!

Last night, I met my host Rotary for the first time. There was a delicious dinner outside with a view of the marais (marshes which were trained into lush canals centuries ago for the use of fertile marshland and as a part of the towns fortifications; they are now maintained as the city's main greenspace). I absolutly love my host Rotary club! They are friendly lively, and perhaps a little bit insane (there were a number of costumes present for the dinner- orange and pink wigs, and at least one fake mustache- all mixed in among the respectability of the rest of the club). They introduced me as a new member of the Rotary club, and I'm now looking forward to attending the weekly Tuesday night meetings. In fact, it's a pleasure to be hosted by such an interesting and involved club because I've heard from other students, returning from previous years, who had little to no contact with their hosting Rotary club during their exchange. At the same party I met my second and third host families, who I liked immediatly. They were as excited to meet me as I was to meet them, and they were fascinating to talk to during dinner. Not to jinx anything, but I think I may have had more luck than is fair for this exchange!