Random Adventures

Sorry about my lame titles. I just never know what to title my blog posts.

Here we go again with some more talk about my life here.

The first thing that i recently discovered is that the gps in my host father’s car says “please”. We will be driving along and it will say something like, “enter the roundabout and take the second exit, please.” It is so much more polite than our gps back home which just says, “Turn right.”

While I’m on the subject of cars, I’m sure everyone wants to hear about french radio. The other day, we were driving home and the song “99 Red Balloons” came on. I started singing along in my head, and it took me a minute to realize that my words weren’t matching the words on the radio. Turned out that the song was being sung in German. All I can say is that I’m really glad I didnt start singing out loud or I would have embarrassed myself completely. And at least half, if not more, of the songs played on the radio are in English. It is pretty funny because an english song will be playing and then it will fade into the radio announcer and they will say something like “and that was such and such song by so and so, and now onto the news” and that will be in french except when they say the name of the song and they say it with a really heavy French accent and I giggle practically every time.

My family took us to the theater last night. I was a bit worried about what to wear because everyone was rushing to take a shower before we left and I thought it might be a sort of fancy affair. It is pretty cold here, and my nice clothes are definitely not warm. I asked my host brother and he said I could wear whatever I wanted, so I just wore my black pants and a sort of nice sweater. It turned out I needn’t have worried. The show was performed in an elementary school gymnasium and there weren’t enough chairs for all the people. The kids, including me and my host brothers, had to sit in the floor right in front of the stage. Aside from it sort of hurting my back, it was cool to have a front row seat, (well, front row aside from the row of 6 year-olds in front of me, but I don’t really count them.) It was billed as a mixture of acrobatics and theater. It was more of dramatic dance and theater, but it was still really cool. There wasn’t any dialogue, aside from a few yelps, grunts, and an ok, so it didn’t really help my french much, but at least I was just as confused as the rest of the audience and not handicapped by my language abilities. I did understand the announcer at the beginning telling everyone to turn of their cell phone and that photography was strictly forbidden. There were 4 people in the show and they ended with the girl doing the trappeeze. Personally, I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown because they did this really cool three person handstand right before that and I thought that was the grand finale trick, but then she went and did the trapeeze and it was less on a bang of an ending. I would have rather they changed the order to end with a bang rather than a subtle sinking back into the scene that the show started with, but I guess that is my American desire for a happy ending and a grand finale.

I am not playing basketball anymore(actually, I only went to one practice but I didn’t update my blog with that news.) I went to one soccer practice last week and I really liked it. It is really frustrating that my town does not have a girls soccer club. We have about 7 soccer fields within very easy walking distance of the house, but they only have boys clubs. The town where they do have a girls team is about a 15 minute drive away. But, i really enjoyed the practice I went to. There were about 20 girls at the training, and I know they are at least up to 21 years-old, maybe older. They sort of scoffed at me when I told them I was 15, but when we scrimmaged, things changed. After I scored 2 goals, I think they realized I could hold my own. It was really fun and I’m hoping to go back.

Beds here are a bit different from what I’m used to as well. The pillows are square, and that is just really hard for me to get used to. I miss my rectangular pillows, with my cloud print flannel sheets, and I really miss my tempurpedic pillow. I wanted to bring it, but it would have taken up about half of my suitcase by itself. They also don’t use a top sheet here. You have the bottom sheet that cover the mattress and then you just have the comforter. The comforter is inside a sort of “sheet pouch,” so when you change the sheets, you just take it out of its pouch and put it in a new pouch. Its different, but it works.

I know I already talked a bit about the bisous kissing here when I talked about getting off the train, but I’ll give anyone who is interested some more details. First of all, you don’t actually kiss(except with young children, but I’ll get back to that.) You just touch cheek to cheek and make kissy noises. here, we just do 2, right cheek to right cheek and then left to left, but it varies by region how many you do. It is weird for me how willing people are to touch cheeks with a complete stranger, but obviously girls more than boys. Until boys get really close, they mostly just shake hands. But with girls, they will basically kiss anyone. If I’m sitting with a friend and one of their friends comes over, most likely they will do the bis with my friend, do it with me, and then turn back and chat with my friend for a bit before leaving. And I’m left thinking, “I just touched cheeks with someone and i don’t even know their name, nor did they ask mine.”  All my friends back home, beware! When I get back, i’ll prabably try to kiss you every time I see you, so you will just have to gently remind me that I’m not in France anymore, rather than freaking out because i’m coming toward you. With young kids you actually do kiss them. First, they kiss your cheek, and then you kiss theirs. I dont know at what age they become equals and just touch cheeks with people.    

I think I briefly touched on this already in my last post, but I’m going to talk a bit more about the grading system. Here, they grade most everything out of 20. If they don’t grade out of 20, then the next most likely is that they grade out of 10 and double the score. Unlike in the United States where a 50% is a complete fail, a 10 here is a passing grade. Granted, it is the last passing grade, but it is a passing grade all the same. At home, a 17 out of 20 is an 85% and a solid B. Here, a 17 is really really good. Not al of the homework gets collected, but the homework that does is like a take-home test. It is graded just like a test, so you really have to focus on answering those history questions right because it is not graded on completion; it is graded on correctness. I also think that the school is on trimesters, but I haven’t totally figured that out yet, so don’t quote me on that.

And finally for all your inquiring minds I keep hearing about in emails, no, there aren’t any religion classes in my religious based school. I go to a private catholic school, but we don’t have uniforms(though shorts are strictly forbidden, except for EPS), there are no religion classes, no mandatory prayers and no mandatory mass. There is a chapel which I believe holds a Sunday service, but that is about it. Oh, and I think one of the mission statements is to encourage a christian learning environment.

One more thing...In EPS(p.e.) last week, i got my first real instruction from a P.E. teacher. We were doing a ping pong tournament and if you won you moved up and table and if you lost you moved down. After a couple of matches, my teacher came over to me and took my aside and gave me some really good advice. I think it was the first time a P.E. teacher has ever talked to me one on one and really tried to improve my game. It was really nice. The funny thing was, she gave me all of the same advice for ping pong that Maureen and Ms. Castello gave me for 3 straight months fro tennis. Apparently I play ping pong the same way I play tennis: just keep hitting it back and wait for them to make the mistake. It’s not surprising really, but it was funny to hear her tell me(in french of course) that I need to change the pace on the ball, hit it from side to side to move my opponent around, and work for a set-up and a kill shot, rather than waiting for my opponent to mess up(since as you get better your opponents mess up less). It made me think of home. I hope Rio Tennis is doing well.

That’s all for now. Keep reading, and I’ll post again soon. I have a local AFS orientation weekend next sat and sun so we’ll see if the local ones are any better organized than the chaotic national orientation.