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.