A Week Under Marseille's Sun

Back in February or March, I started looking at my calendar and realized that once classes finished, I was going to have about 3.5 weeks in France before coming home. Knowing that I had decided not to take the bac but that my host siblings and friends would be reviewing for and then taking it, I was worried that I would end up bored and waste my last few weeks in France. So, I decided to take advantage of an opportunity offered by AFS in France: spending a week with another AFS family in a different region. After a little bit of research, I decided to ask to spend some time in Marseille, the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte D'Azur, also known as PACA. Thanks to the willingness of a wonderful AFS volunteer to open her home to me, I got to spend last week chilling out under the sun in Marseille while all of France's teenagers tackled their bac. It was really cool to visit another region and live at the pace in the South, which is a bit slower and more relaxed than in the busy North. So, if you don't care about my week in Marseille, go ahead and skip this post, but for anyone interested, brace yourself, because this post is going to be long. I apologize for all of the excessive details, but this way, when I get around to making my "Year in France" scrapbook, all I have to do is print out my blog posts.

Monday morning, I grabbed my suitcase, triple checked that I had all of my train tickets, and then my host mom drove me to the train station in my town. I took a TER(regional train) to Lille where I then changed stations with a crowd of other travelers to the newer, more modern station that does the TGV(rapid, inter-regional trains.) I looked at the big board showing all of the trains(being amazed by how well organized and easy it was to understand and then thinking about how confusing it is to find trains in Sacramento where the info is given on the PA system in a completely impossible to understand, mushy voice) and easily found my TGV. After a few uneventful hours on the train, I arrived in Marseille where I got off to meet the volunteer that would host me. It was only as I got off the train that I realized that I had no idea what she looked like or where she would be. Luckily, she had thought ahead and made a little sign, so I found her without any trouble. We headed back to her apartment, made dinner, and then slept to be ready for a filled week. My host wasn't working at all that week, so she was able to take my all over the place, and it was great to have a guide.

On Tuesday, we decided to tour the city. We first went to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde to see the city from up high.

Notre Dame de la Garde is the cathedral up on the hill, and it really is one of the highest points in Marseille. You get a great view from the top. (Photo courtesy of fotocommunity)

This is the basilisque de Notre Dame de la Garde.

This is Marseille seen from ND de la Garde.

Here's another view of Marseille from ND de la Garde. In the background, the little island is the chateau d'if, and the two further back are the Frioul islands. Unfortunately, the photo quality is not very good because the pollution was very visible that day.

I was told that my plaid shorts and my visor marked me as a tourist from a kilometer away, but I didn't care. In the North, I did try a bit to blend in since I would be living there, but in the south, I was there as a tourist so what did it matter if people could tell?

After we were done looking around from up high, we walked back down into the heart of the city. We strolled around the old port which now serves as the home for most of the little pleasure boats. The cruise ship port is a little ways away(you can see it from the old port, and I went past it in the train, spotting the Atlantic Start docked in the port) and the new industrial port has been moved away from the city, just a few kilometers away. The old port is a long rectangle, and being on one side, it is actually quite a walk to get to the other side in going all the way around. Luckily, there is a free ferry that goes back and forth taking passengers.

The ferry boat to go from one side of the port to the other.

After the port, we walked around in the basket district, one of the older neighborhoods in Marseille. As my host explained, Marseille is less of a cohesive city than a grouping a many linked neighborhoods. We also went to an ancient artifacts museum with a lot of artifacts found not far from Marseille. According to my host, Marseille was established as a city at least 600 years before Christ. Once done in the basket district, we headed back to the old port to grab an ice cream cone before heading back. One thing that was slightly annoying throughout the week as we got ice creams was that they were often very soft. They were more of a gelato texture than the nice, hard scoop of ice cream texture. They all had nice flavor, but where too soft and melted too fast. The other thing I noticed was that the size of the scoops bothered me. I'm used to nice, big, American-sized Baskin Robbins scoops of ice cream. So here, when the scoops were tiny, it bothered me way more than it should have. I'm sure if I had grown up paying that price for small scoops it would have been fine, but being used to American scoops, I felt like we were getting ripped off each time.

I Love ICE CREAM!!!!! (Especially when it was actually hot outside, after 10 months in the north where it was never really hot enough to enjoy the great cooling effects of ice cream.)

On Wednesday, I met up with another exchange student spending time in Marseille like me. She actually spent the whole year in the north, just like me, and it was a fun coincidence that we were in Marseille at the same time. We went to the Calanques, which are little coves along the coast where a lot of people like to swim. We took the bus to the trail head, armed with water, our lunches, and swimsuits, and headed off to look for adventure. We spent a great day together, hiking to the coves, swimming in the Mediterranean, and tanning. After we got back to downtown, we went to a beach close to my friend's host, which was a sort of mini beach boardwalk. There was a Ferris wheel and a few other rides, a bunch of treat stands and ice cream stores, and a few volleyball courts. It was so cool to be completely independent, thanks to the great public transit system and the fact that it stayed light until around 9:00 pm. I came back at 7:30 and it was still full daylight. My host, who had spent the day shopping and running errands, surprised me when I got back with a big bowl of tapenade(olive spread). My host dad had brought a small bottle back with him after a weekend in Nice, another city in the south, and I had really liked it. So, after I had expressed an interest in having some while I was in Marseille, she went to a store where they sell it in bulk and you choose how much you want yourself, rather than selling it in the tiny bottles. It was so yummy, and throughout the whole week, I ate bread with tapenade for an appetizer whenever we were at home for lunch or dinner. 

This is the place where we ended up swimming, a calanque called Sugiton.

When we arrived, there weren't too many people yet. We were lucky to have come on a weekday instead of a weekend. It also rained a bit in the morning, so people were probably a bit slower to come out. But, by the time we had finished eating and swimming, it was starting to get crowded. The rock you can see directly behind my head is an island, and a lo of people were jumping from it. Both of us were dying to jump, but decided not to risk it since we didn't know whether it was deep enough and safe enough.

The trail we took really was a bit of an adventure. We had to climb a ladder as we left the cove, and at another point, we had to slide down a crevice on our butts. It was really fun. And, we couldn't help laughing internally a little bit as we saw people doing the trail in the other direction and wondered how they were going to climb up the crevice we had slid down. See that red mark on the rock, about level with my knee? That was a trail marker, and shows that yes, indeed, you are required to climb the ladder. The trails were really well marked, and we could usually see the next mark from the one we were at. That made us more confident as we slid down crevices and clambered over rocks.

Here's another, more crowded beach/cove.

On Thursday, I went with my AFS host to the Château d'If and the Îles Friouls. We took a boat from the Old Port and the first stop was the Château d'If.

On the boat as we headed out to the prison.

It is a prison that was used for a very long time and held some famous prisoners. It was often used to hold protestants when the catholics were worried that they would start uprisings. Of course, its most famous prisoner happens to also be fictional, but that's ok. This is the prison where Edmond Dantés was locked up for many years before escaping and becoming the Count of Monte Cristo. We could tour his cell, and there was even a video system in the cell next to it which allowed you to see yourself locked in a cell. Thanks to the book Le Conte de Monte Cristo, the island became a public monument in 1880, but it was used once again as a prison during WW1 when it held German prisoners. After the war, it reopened as a public monument, and has been ever since.  Just like in San Francisco with the escape from Alcatraz, each year they host the Défi de Monte-Cristo(Monte Cristo's Challenge) which is a swim race from the island to Marseille.

Here's the island and the prison seen from the boat.

After the château d'if, we got back on the boat(which was doing loops from Marseille to the prison to the Frioul Islands to Marseille) and headed to the Frioul Islands. The two islands, which are now connected by a man-made road, are part of a group of 4(which include If and another tiny island.) There is a small village with apartments and some restaurants on one of the two big islands. Besides that, there are some old buildings that served military purposes to protect Marseille, as well as an old hospital that used to be a quarantine. When the epidemics of pests and diseases were spreading across the seas, boats suspected of carrying infected people had to stop in the Frioul islands to be cleared. This was to protect mainland Europe from the infections, since Marseille was an important port city.

This is an old building on the Frioul Islands that used to be part of a fort.

We hiked around one of the two islands, stopping to eat our sandwiches, before heading back to the city. Instead of taking the boring old metro back to her apartment, we took a boat shuttle which went along the coast. It was fun, and definitely a cooler way to commute than with the metro or the bus.

On Friday, after a slow morning, we packed up the car and headed off to go camping. In high vacation season, you would normally have to make a reservation, but since everyone is still in school except high school students, we were ok. We drove about 1.5 hours west of Marseille to the Camargue, which is where the Rhône river flattens out and meets the Mediterranean. It is one of those rare and important ecosystems where fresh water and salt water meet, and a resting place for lots of birds. The camping ground was right next to a town called Les-Saintes-Mairies-de-la-mer. It wasn't really camping in nature so much as a cheaper alternative to a hotel in the very touristic town. The basic fee gets you a campsite, and you can have a tent and 1 or 2 people. Then you can pay supplements to have extra people, extra tents, electricity, and even a refrigerator. The campground was right next to the beach and there was a pool with a water slide and everything. We pitched our tent and then headed off for a walk along the beach.

As the sun started to slowly go down and the wind started to pick up, the kite surfers came out to play in the waves. They were lots of fun to watch.

So, let's take a minute to talk about something very cliché french: nude beaches. In my mind, I had always imagined nude beaches as huge, crowded sandy beaches where everyone would be walking around naked. Well, it doesn't exactly work like that. I stumbled across a few places during the week with some nudists, but it wasn't like in my imagination. When I was in the Calanques with my friend, we came across a small but pretty crowded beach. There was a woman strolling around in the shallow water without a top on, and there were two or three women lying on the beach topless. I know in the states people sometimes lie on their stomachs topless to tan their backs, but I had never seen anyone lying on their back topless. Oh, and men with speedos is WAY more popular in France than in the states. You don't see boys or men in board shorts. Ever. Speedos is the way to go. Anyway, back to the nude beaches. So then, when we were walking in the Frioul Islands, there were lots of small coves with beaches along the coasts. In one, there was a naked guy just walking around, sometimes swimming and sometimes tanning. The AFS lady said that usually, people don't have the right to be nude, but as long as they're pretty much hidden, they can get away with it. And then, finally, when we were on the beach next to the camping, there were a few people without swimsuits here and there. Some were tanning semi-hidden in the dunes while others were just boldly strolling along the beach in their birthday suits. But, it definitely wasn't a sort of "reserved," crowded "Nudists' beach" like I had imagined. It was just some people here and there.

So, after a long walk along the beach, we went back to the camping ground, hopped in the car, and drove into the town to get dinner. Basically, we had two choices of food: Italian or Seafood. It would have been the perfect chance to try famous bouillabaisse, the typical fish soup/stew in Provence, but since I don't like, fish, we went for Italian. There was also a strong Spanish influence in the area, with dishes like Paella and tapas available at many restaurants. You could also find bull steaks and bull sausages. And in the restaurant we went to, there were two guys who wandered through the restaurant playing guitar and singing in spanish. At the Italian restaurant, they gave us sangria and olives as a free appetizer, so I tried the drink. Even though the alcohol taste wasn't very strong, it was still present enough to prevent me from liking the drink. I guess its a good thing I don't like alcohol rather than falling in love with it. After dinner, we walked into town to look around. We saw all kinds of people in pink t-shirts, and couldn't figure out what it was. After a little bit, we saw a bunch of people lining up on the sides of the main road, so we guessed that something was probably going to happen.  We finally asked the man next to us what it was all about, and he explained. It was the "Fête Votive," meaning there were bull-fighting and activities like that all throughout the week, another example of the Spanish Influence in southern france. That night was an activity with a group of horses acting as the guardians for 4 bulls that were running just behind them. Then all of the kids in the town(the ones who had been wearing the pink t-shirts) were trying to divert the bulls and separate them from the guardians. But, they weren't very successful, and both times they went pasts us, we just saw the horses and the bulls in the middle and a whole crowd of noisy kids running along the outside.

Here's the huge group of people, horse, and bulls running along down the main street.

Here, you can sort of see the bulls. They have their head practically in between the horses to stay protected, and the kids are trying to make them come out, away from the guardians to wreak havoc in the streets. At one point, they did get one bull slightly separated from the group, but all it did was speed up to hide again.

There were also some aspects of a parade, because decorated cars like these came along afterwards to cheer. I think they are all dressed like flamingos because pink flamingos are typical in the camargue.

After the activity was over, everyone seemed to be heading to the beach, so we followed them. There was a stage set up and a group of musicians started to play. Soon afterwards, a group of horses and riders holding candles came onto the beach and rode around the stage. I'm guessing they did some formation riding and stuff, but since the mosquitoes were eating us alive and it was 11:00 pm, we decided to head back to the campground.

This is the group of horses and riders getting ready to ride onto the beach. The riders had on traditional clothes and each carried a lit candle.

On Saturday, we woke up pretty early as the sun turned our tent into an oven. After a rough night, we headed to the snack bar to get breakfast and coffee. We then drove into town to pick up food and snacks for our lunch, popped into the tourism office to ask for advice about what to do, and then headed off to the bird park. It was a preserved space, meant as a landing place for the migrating birds and other permanent birds in the special salt water/fresh water mix marsh. Mostly, we saw flamingos and ducks, but there were lots of different species.

At first, these birds were so stationary we thought that they were just a statue set up by the park, but then we realized that they were real as they started to move and the young ones started to squabble for food.

Here's a group of flamingos. There were a few different types of flamingos, and different groups were all over the marshes. I even saw some flamingos flying, which was cool since in the zoo, they always have clipped wings. They were really graceful.

These are horses of the camargue, a special breed of horses that you can find all over the camargue. In general, they seem to be used for horse-back riding trips and to control the bulls. But they were often allowed to roam free in the marsh areas as well.

After the bird park, we headed back to go swimming in the Mediterranean. It felt great to play in the gentle waves and lie on the beach after the day of hiking. After the beach, I decided to take advantage of the pool and went down the slide a few times. We took showers, and then walked to town this time, since we had some extra time. After looking around the town, we ended up at the same restaurant since we had liked the ambiance. That night's "Fête Votive" activity was what I would call "Bull Teasing." They set up a course on the main street and lined it with the special yellow fences which human can slide in and out of but bulls can't. I'm not sure what the goal was, except to have an entertaining spectacle, but they released one bull at a time and then the teenagers in their pink shirts were running around. They would tap the bull's horns or hit it on the rump, and a few daring kids pulled on its tail. They would stand right next to the fences, brusquely stick out their arms and legs in front of the bull, and once it saw them, they would pull back in. One bull charged the fences once or twice, but in general, the people in charge let the bulls go back into the truck before they got too irritated and dangerous. After the bull-teasing, we walked back to our campground and slept soundly, exhausted after the day.  

There were signs like these all over the town during the few days we were there. They say "Danger Manifestations Taurines et Équestres" which means "Danger, bull-fighting and equestrian events."

This is one of the bulls after a few laps. Mostly, the kids sort of chased the bull up and down the course. These were not full-sized bulls, but they were still dangerous. The kids had energy and enthusiasm, but we could tell that they were scared, which is probably a good thing and prevented any serious injuries. The yellow barriers are wide enough that the kids could easily go in and out, but too narrow for the bulls. Some of the older men who were in charge of the event and commentating had to suck in their bellies to be able to get through.

Sunday morning, we packed up the tent and headed out, this time the destination being Arles. Arles is another really old town that was an important town during the time of the roman empire but lost importance when the invasions began, and then once the trains replaced the boats as the primary means of transporting goods. We went to an ancient arena where they used to do gladiator fights and an ancient theater, both built in the 1st century BCE.

The old, Roman arena.

The arena was still in really good shape, thanks to a lot of restoration efforts by the town.

Today, there are metal bleachers installed inside that work together with the old stone structure to create a functional arena that is used today for bull-fighting events.

We took a different route to come back to Marseille, passing along the coast. We took a little ferry to cross a branch of the Rhône and then drove along the coast. As we drove through l'ésatque, a little tourist area next to Marseille, my host was seized with memories.

This is L'éstauqe, the little painter's village and now touristy area next to Marseille. The beaches were completely full to bursting with families enjoying their sunny Sunday afternoon.

 She was telling me about how she used to walk there with her siblings to go swimming when they were young, and how they would buy panisses and chichis. We ended up passing three little kiosques where they sell them, and she was suddenly craving a chichi, so we stopped and I got to try them.

This is the kiosque we went to. Apparently you can find chichis at fairs as well, but they are nowhere near as good as the ones made here.

They were really really good, and super fresh. We didn't get panisses, but they are fried slices of garbonzo bean puree. Chichis are sort of like donuts or churros, fried dough and rolled in sugar. They had a citrus flavor to them that I was told comes from the use of fleur d'oranger to flavor them.

The stand was worked by three people. There was one guy who did the frying, the lady you see here who cut and rolled them in sugar, and a young woman that took the orders and the money.

When they come out of the frier, the chichis look like this. Then, they are cut into individual portions.

These portions were then rolled in sugar, a little piece of paper wrapped around the middle for easy eating, and placed in a bag. When you order two chichis, you also get a little bonus in the bag: an extra little chunk like the one you see on the left of the photo.

 We got back to Marseille exhausted, unpacked the car, whipped up some dinner, and then rolled into bed.

Monday morning, I packed up my suitcases, hopped on a train, and headed to Lyon for another week's worth of adventures. Stay tuned.

The (Almost) Final AFS Activity

I know I'm behind on my blog pots, having missed Friday's, but I'm back on track and ready to tell you guys all about my vacation. Since it is in multiple parts, I'll be doing separate blog posts as well. So, this post is all about my second-to-last AFS activity, and my final AFS activity in the North. I still have one more AFS orientation: the night I spend in Paris debriefing the year before we head to the airport to go home. But this one still felt like the last because it was the last time I would see a lot of AFS volunteers and host families from my region.

The activity was a sort of scavenger hunt in Lille, the big city and "Capitol of the North." It is a very pretty city with some cool monuments, so this activity was designed to help us discover some of its "hidden treasures." We arrived in the morning, around 11, and split into groups. We were then given a paper and sent on our way, following the directions to find certain monuments and statues. The questions were far from easy, we had to resort to pulling out the iphones a fair number of times when we had scoured the outside walls of the buildings without finding the answer. But, it was still fun to walk around the very pedestrian friendly city.

This is Lille's Palace/Museum of Fine Arts

This is one of the many buildings around Lille's main square. Our questions was to find the symbol of Louis 14 on two different buildings and say which buildings it was on. So, since Louis 14 had organized all of France to revolve around him, he was called the "Sun King" and his symbol was his face inside a sun. Apparently, the day began not with the rising of the sun but with Louis 14 getting up, and ended when he went to bed.

This is another side of the main square.

This is the "Porte de Paris." Basically, when the city was older, there were "doors" like these on all sides of the city, and the only way into the city was by passing through the doors. There is a drawbridge on the other side, so in the case of any unwelcome visitors, they could raise the drawbridge to keep them out. It is called the "Door of Paris" because it is on the road that you would take to go to Paris. There is another one in a different part of the city called "Porte de Valenciennes" which would let people coming on the road from Valenciennes come in.

The scavenger hunt started at 11:00, and we were supposed to be at the lunch spot by 1:00. Well, that didn't happen, and my group arrived around 2:00pm. But, we weren't even the last ones. There were indeed a few groups ahead of us, but a few groups behind us as well. One group, a group of AFSers and some young volunteers, claimed to have been waiting for ages...it turned out that their scavenger hunt was missing a page, so they had skipped a few places, explaining why they got back so early.

Once everyone had arrived, we started the "apéritif" which consisted of sangrilla and pretzels and peanuts. The answers and the winners were then announced(my group came in 4th with 35 points, the winners had 38, but we had gotten a 2 point question right and they had marked it wrong.) There was a whole table of "AFS Prizes" like AFS pins or pencil pouches or t-shirts, all completely covered with the AFS logo.

Finally, around 2:45, we got to eat lunch. It was a sort of sandwich bar but wasn't really meant to be sandwiches. There were all kinds of meats to choose from, as well as some vegetables, and we each took a chunk of bread. And there was also rice salad, pasta salad, and couscous salad. I, being American, made a sandwich with my bread and meat, and then ate my pasta salad on the side. But the "French" way to eat it would have been to use a fork and knife to cut up the meat as I was eating it, and to tear off little chunks of bread as I needed them. Once finished, I would also have used the rest of my bread to wipe my plate clean. But, I wanted a sandwich, so I ate it as a sandwich. And I certainly wasn't the only one that chose the sandwich route.

After a leisurely lunch, it was finally time for dessert: petits fours. Apparently we were only supposed to take one each for the first round, but some people didn't get the memo. It didn't end up mattering because at the end, the volunteers were walking around with the plates of petits fours asking if we wanted seconds and then thirds and then fourths. The ones I tasted were all very good, but my favorite was the mini chocolate cake, which even though about the size of a postage stamp, was complete with 3 tiny layers of chocolate cake, a creamy filling between each, and a chocolate ganache topping. You can see the row of tiny chocolate cakes in the platter on the right; they are in the bottom right hand corner. The others were mini chocolate and mini coffee éclairs, mini chocolate tart, mini raspberry tart, mini chocolate cupcakes, and all kinds of other things.

Two of the numerous platters of petit fours.

My Malaysian friend with her plate of mini cakes.

It was weird leaving that activity, knowing it was my final time seeing a lot of the volunteers from the north. I have spent this whole year having an activity with these volunteers around once per month. And that was it. I walked out of those doors and knew it was just another of many goodbyes storming my way as this year comes to an end. I know I still have one day to be annoyed by wasting my time with some of the AFS activities while in Paris when we will be "Debriefing" our year in France before partying into the night and then stepping on the plane int he morning, but while it is true that some of my AFS orientations drove me crazy, I do have to say that I really did enjoy seeing my AFS friends and doing fun activities throughout the year.

Well, I guess that's it for this post. I got on the train to Marseille on Monday morning following that Sunday activity, so a post will be coming soon about my time under France's southern sun.

Only 2 Weeks: From the Other End

So, I clearly remember how I felt when Sunday rolled around and I realized that in exactly two weeks, I would be stepping back onto American soil. It was just such a weird feeling. I mean, I remember my blog post ever so long ago in September when I wrote "Only 2 weeks?" and those two weeks had felt like an eternity. I felt like I had learned and done and seen so much in those two weeks. But they had also been very difficult, and I looked at the calendar thinking "How am I ever going to make it through 10 MONTHS!!!!" But, here I am, with just two weeks left, and right now, two weeks feels like absolutely nothing. I just have two weeks left of speaking French all of the time, just two weeks left of living in Europe, just two short, miniscule weeks to squeeze in as much as possible. It feels like just 2 minutes.

It's very weird how my concept of time has changed during this year. I remember packing for a 10 day vacation and having that seem really long. And then I was sitting in my room packing for a 2 week vacation to the south of France, and it felt so short. A while back, finishing school at 2:50 pm was a long day, and here in France, I was grateful for the days when I finished at 3:30. And a year, well 10 months, which once seemed like a lifetime, is now just one very full chapter in the book of my life. This year is a particularly thick chapter, with ups and down, highs and lows. It's a chapter full of adventures and lessons as I navigated my way through this year. Of course, anyone wanting to read the chapter will have to be careful, since the pages are most likely stained with chocolate from chocolate croissants and the linings filled with delicious bread crumbs. So yes, it is a full chapter, and two weeks is just a few pages, but it is only that: a single chapter in my life. So, the fact that I'm coming home soon doesn't mean the book of the adventure is really ending. It just means a page is turning. This year was not a book separate and apart, but a fully integrated chapter. That way, it continues to affect the chapters to come as I move toward the next steps and look beyond. Who knows? Another trip to France may appear, or some time volunteering to help other students pursuing the same adventure. Only time will tell. For the moment, I'm just trying to focus on what I have left: 2 weeks.

It's vacation time: the final chapter

Well, school is out for the high schoolers (but not for middle school or elementary school) but I'm the only one really on vacation. We finished classes on Tuesday at lunchtime, and the first part of the bac is monday. So, for all of the kids in première and terminale who have the bac, this week is very important revision time. But, since I'm not taking the bac, I have been chilling out. Well, I have been working too, doing summer homework for my two AP English classes, but when I don't feel like working, I don't have to. So, I'm relaxing around the house, trying to get started on my packing and cleaning up my bedroom. I emptied out my school binders and filled an entire bag with used paper to recycle. It is amazing how many pages of paper I used in this year, between taking all of the notes, doing homework assignments, and writing essay tests in every subject, even the science subjects. It felt good to clean it all out and really be able to appreciate all of the work I had done this year.

So, on Monday, we watched movies in 3 classes out of 6. In English, we watched a Michael Moore documentary about the gun problem in the USA. In DNL(history in English) we watched Black Book in original version, so in Dutch, with English subtitles. And in math, we watched Vegas 21. In the three other classes, we crammed since the bac is coming up: history and 2 hours of french. well, actually, only half the class had 2 hours of french and the other half had an hour of SVT. The french teacher offered that last hour as revision and last-minute question time for those interested, and the rest had SVT. Since I'm not taking the bac, I graciously decided not to take a spot in french and went to SVT. In SVT, we did an activity where we looked at documents and answered questions in groups of 2. My partner and I did the best, so we won a box of candy, which was super awesome. Remember when I talked about how Milky Way bars are called Mars bars here? Well, they also do have things called Milky Ways which are like a normal milky way but without the caramel. So it is just like chocolate covered nougat.

On Tuesday, we had physics, history, and PE. In physics/chemistry, we worked until the last second, doing a chapter of O-chem on the last day of school. In History, we spent the first 30 minutes listening to the teacher give some last advice for the bac. And then we watched a movie. And then in PE, we finally got to go bowling. It was supposed to be 6 to a lane, but at the end, there were 4 of us together without a lane so we got to play as just 4. But, it didn't help us finish any faster because it actually turned out that our lane had a problem. They stopped our game at the end of the 8th frame, and even after we asked 2 different staff people to help us, no one really did anything. We were not happy and wanted to play our final two frames(since we had paid 3.50 euros for the game.) We were still waiting once everyone else had finished and was off playing billiards or foosball. With just 10 minutes until it was time to go, the staff turned on two lanes for us, and we got to play a whole other game with just 2 in each lane. I ended up with a horrible 103 and came in 3rd, but I blame it on the fact that we had to play fast so I didn't have time to aim. I was winning the first game that got stopped. But it was still cool that we got to play a complete 2nd game.

At the bowling alley. We were the only ones there(just our 2 classes of PE) so it almost felt like a private bowling birthday party or something.

Friends in my class waiting for their turn to bowl.

The bowling balls were basically exactly the same as back home. The same colors for the same weights, same sized finger-holes, ect. Some of the boys tried to "show off their strength" by using the balls marked "13" saying "look, the ball is 13 kilos" but then the girls pointed it out that it was in pounds, not kilos, and the boys looked pretty silly.

So, after the end of class, I said a fair number of "Good-byes" to people I know I probably won't see again. It was weird, after a year with having them in every class to think that it really is coming to an end. Then, I went to a "BBQ" at my friend Laure's house. They have a huge bbq/grill in the backyard we had planned to use, but a few people ended up not being able to come at the last minute, so it wasn't really worth it for the 5 of us. So, we grilled sausages in a frying pan and called it a bbq, making hot dogs with fresh baguettes. We made "cocktails" with orange juice and a fruit smoothie-type drink.

After lunch, Laure asked us if we wanted ice cream, a proposition which we gladly accepted. She opened the freezer and started pulling out cartons, first 1 then a 2nd and a 3rd...and then an 8th and a 9th. I had never seen so many different flavors of ice cream in one personal freezer in my entire life. From left to right, top to bottom there was: apple-black current sherbert, double chocolate chocolate chip, chocolate hazelnut (ferrero rocher style), rum raisin, lemon sorbet, caramel dulce de leche, raspberry sorbet, vanilla bean, and caramel. There was also caramel sauce, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce to put on top. It was a real sundae bar, and lots of fun to build bowls with 3 or 4 flavors.

After the bbq, I took the bus back with my other friends to downtown and said some more "good-byes." Then it was home to start sorting clothes and beginning to pack. I got my letter with my train ticket and Paris orientation info and everything is just getting more and more real. It is like the month leading up to my departure all over again. I find it hard to believe that July 7th is just around the corner, but more and more things are coming along to make it real. So, I've spent a relaxing week, working on summer reading and packing, planning my trips to the south and my summer back home.

However, I haven't let myself be too holed up in the house, making sure to get outside a bit each day. I went to play tennis with a friend from school on Thursday(well, it was more like get slaughtered by said friend. But, I hadn't played since one little informal game in October, and he has played competitively for more than 9 years. So, I was just glad for a fun chance to get out and move around.)

I'll let you guess which score was which.

I also made dinner for my host family on Thursday. As my host siblings came into the kitchen and asked what was for dinner, they quickly realized that if I was making dinner, that could only mean one thing: baked macaroni and cheese. My macaroni turned out just as wonderful as usual(if I do say so myself) and even though there were only 7 of us instead of 8 eating it, every last noodle was polished off. I'm getting pretty good at the macaroni now, and I can't wait to make it back home too, both to share with my friends and to alleviate my mom from always having to do the cooking. The other thing I'm getting good at making now(besides chocolate chip cookies) is log cakes. Everyone seems to say that making them is hard and that they often crack, but with the right technique, anyone can make a good one. The hardest part is getting it to roll without cracking, and the important part is to roll it while it is still hot. Once it comes out of the oven, flip it immediately onto a damp hand towel that has been dusted with powdered sugar and roll it(towel and all) right away. Leave it rolled in the towel 30-60 seconds, then unroll it and frost it/fill it, and then reroll it on itself, and you have your roll cake. But, be careful, because the filling may melt. If you are going to fill it with ice cream or something meltable, leave it rolled in the towel until it is cooled. It will be a bit humid, but the filling will take care of that. I didn't take any pictures of the nutella ones I made this week, but here's an old picture of the one I made with my first host family where I learned the towel technique:

Here is a recipe for log cake, if anyone is interested. They are really simple and easy to make, and lots of fun:
4 eggs
120 g(1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp)sugar
A pinch of salt
140 g(1 1/3 cup)flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Filling(jelly, nutella, whipped cream and strawberries, ice cream...it's all up to you)

Line a pan/cookie sheet (preferably with sides) with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 355 degrees F.
Separate the eggs and whisk the yellows and the sugar together until the mixture turns almost white.
Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff but not too dry.
Add the flour and baking powder to the sugar and yellows and mix, but not too much. Gently add in the egg whites.
Spread your batter evenly onto your prepared pan and bake for 12 minutes. The cake should be lightly golden when done.
Flip your baked cake onto a moist hand towel that has been sprinkled with powdered sugar and immediately roll it, towel and all. Depending on your filling, either let it stay in the towel until cool, fill it, and then reroll it. Or, let it stay in the towel 30-60 seconds, then fill it and reroll it. You can either freeze it, refrigerate it, or let it stay at room temperature until you are ready to serve it.

Enjoy!

I also had my last guitar lesson on Friday afternoon. It was great, and I am really glad to have had the opportunity to take lessons during these months, since it gave me something to do when I was bored, a project to work on.

Well, that's it for the update. I leave for my vacation in Marseille on Monday morning, so lots of adventures are in store. Stay tuned!

Exactly One Month Left

Wow, I absolutely cannot believe that I am exactly one month away from stepping off an airplane  onto American soil for the first time in more than 10 months. It feels so unreal. I really can’t say that the year passed quickly, but at the same time, I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that it is actually coming to an end. It’s weird. My return from France has sort of been the farthest thing I could see on my horizon for months now as I did my best to live in the moment. But now, with just one month left, I am starting to look past that horizon to the one beyond, but everything seems so different. I almost feel like I won’t be coming home to a new country but to a new life. I know this sounds really weird, but I feel like everything left in my time is France is tinted one color, and then I look at the things planned once I am home and they are a completely different color. I wouldn’t say one color is more attractive than the other, but it is just completely different and a bit overwhelming.

So, moving on. I have to say, this was a pretty great but very different final full week of school. I’m used to USA final weeks which mean taking finals and then signing yearbooks all the time. Here, I haven’t taken a test in the last few weeks and finals don’t exist. The teachers must figure that the kids are going to study for the bac, so it is better to maximize class-time to help them review and answer last minute questions. In other classes besides French and History, the classes with the bac, we have sort of stopped working. In math today, we finished our last chapter, did some final exercises, and then I taught some girls how to play egyptian war while the teacher chatted with some of the other kids. In other classes we watch movies or talk about the French open tennis results. And we even had a party/snack in our last SVT class today. I mean peanut butter blossoms, and even my friends who claimed they don’t like peanut butter said they were incredible. I mean, peanut butter blossoms are one of my specialties, but I was still a bit worried given the general French aversion to peanut butter. And, since they don’t have Hershey kisses here, I was stuck using just pieces of chocolate broken from candy bars. Actually, an interesting thing to note: here in France, they call them squares of chocolate, even though they are actually rectangles. Like in a chocolate bar, there are 4 rows of 4 rectangles, so when you take a few, you actually say “Do you want a few squares of chocolate?” Funny, huh?(Well not really, but for a nerd like me obsessed with French, I think it is. But it’s kind of like the way we call Football football when it is a game we play with out hands. Oh, and speaking of football, I saw 4 guys at the local park playing American football today. It was super funny to see a football for the first time in ages. They weren’t very good, and the guy playing quarterback couldn’t throw a consistent spiral, but they looked like they were having fun.) Anyway, back to the snack. There were lots of super yummy things, like homemade brownies and chocolate cakes. And store bought candy and marble cakes and drinks. And my friend Laure made a caramel version of rice krispy treats where she melted caramels, marshmallows, and butter, and then added the cereal. They were super good, but two bites and you felt like you had just gained three pounds. But my favorite treat was a sort of brioche with a chocolate swirl through it. It was freshly made and still warm, since the girls that brought it go home for lunch so wrapped it in foil at lunch and brought it for our snack right after lunch. It was just amazing.

Even though I didn’t have a yearbook to sign, I still found a way to have my friends and classmates write me notes. I got a plain t-shirt with the school’s logo on it when I volunteered at the open house. So, I went to the local bookstore and bought special marker/paint pens specially designed to write on cards and fabric. I brought them to school and meant just to have people sign the shirt, but they were all very enthusiastic and wrote really long, nice notes. It was so touching and I am just so lucky to have had such a great class all throughout the year. I know I will keep my shirt and my class photo for a long time as a souvenir of the great year.

Now for some highlights from the week:

Let’s start with last weekend and the recap of the bicycle camping trip I promised. The trip was lots of fun, even though it rained and we didn’t get to do the challenge course. We met up and the old train station and rode about 25 km along an old railroad track that had been transformed into a bike path(if you know about rails to trails in the states, it’s the same idea.) Then, we turned off the path and biked to the campsite just a little ways from the trail. Our sagwagons arrived with our luggage and tents and we quickly set up the sleeping area. I ended up pitching three tents because I knew what I was doing thanks to years of summer camp and girl scouts. It was cool to help my friends out and teach them something new. After the tents were pitched and we had run through the showers, we piled into the cars to go out to dinner. We had originally planned to go to dinner on the bikes, but everyone was really tired so we decided to go in the cars. It was a good idea because we spent so long talking and hanging out at dinner that it was pretty dark by the time we got back. We went to dinner in Belgium at a friterie(fries restaurant.) There were 30 of us between students, host siblings, host parents, and AFS volunteers, so we practically took over the whole restaurant. We had a great time telling jokes and sharing stories as we ate. After dinner, it was back to the campsite and crashing into bed to be ready for the next day. In the morning, it was pouring rain so we quickly ate breakfast(freshly bought bread and coffee) and then packed up the tents. We decided to just start our trek back instead of staying at the campsite and doing paddleboats or any of the other activities. We took a different route on the way back, rolling along tiny trails with branches whipping our faces and mud splattering our legs, but it was more adventurous and lots of fun. We were a bit worried about lunch since it was still pouring, but we managed to call the town hall of a little town we passed through and they opened a public room for us so we had a dry place to eat. It was one of the girl’s little host brother’s 11th birthday, so his family brought us chocolate cake in the sagwagon. After lunch, it was back to the trail and headed home where our host families were waiting for us. Overall, it was a great trip with only a few minor bike problems: one flat tire, two broken sets of brakes, and one lost pedal.

Getting ready for the camping trip. We had nice weather on Saturday, but lots of rain on Sunday.

Pitching the tents

Doing what AFSers do best: taking photos. This one is in the friterie. This is America, Chile, France, and Malaysia.

Another restaurant photo: Italy France America

 

Here, if the video works, is a video of all of us singing "Happy Birthday" in our native language for Sylwia's host brother.

This was our meal: Fries and a sausage. Here, the joke is that everyone knows what is in the sausage but no one says it, just like Americans with Coca Cola.

Monday was a normal day of school with a movie in both my English class and my DNL class. In English, we are watching a Micheal Moore movie about guns in America, and in DNL, we are watching a movie about WW2 in V.O.(version originale) so it is actually in Dutch with french subtitles.

On Tuesday, I had 3 hours of class from 9-12: math and 2 hours of PE. In PE, we went to the pool for the last time, but since we had already been graded, we could do what we wanted. We used the water slide and the boys did flips from the blocks. We got out the water polo balls and played monkey in the middle. And 7 of the boys in my class threw both of the PE teachers into the pool, which was hilariously funny. After PE, I went out to lunch with my friends. We went to the pasta bar and actually got a table(something really rare since there aren’t very many and we normally just take it to go) so once we had finished eating, we stayed and talked for a long time afterwards. We didn’t have to rush back to class so we just hung out, and it was really nice to just be the three of us and be able to talk and really listen to each other.

I went to the bakery the other day on impulse. I think I was really beginning to realize that my time here is ticking down, so I needed to make sure I got one last palmier before I left. Actually, I was really disappointed. Not with the palmier, but with the fact that after the large number I have ordered here, you would think I would be able to order them correctly. But no, the baker still had to ask me to repeat my order, which frustrated me that my accent is still so bad.

We lost the nice weather I was so excited about last week. It has been raining off an on all week. We are in a period of 5 minute storms, so we will go from blue sky to pouring rain to blue sky in the span of 7 minutes. And I think the weather has decided it doesn’t like me and wants to make sure I get my fill of Northern france’s rain before I leave. The day I went to the grocery store to buy the peanut butter for my cookies, it was sunny when I decided to go and went to get my coat. As I stepped outside, it started to sprinkle, and as I left the store with my bag of groceries, I felt like I was under a cold shower. And as soon as I got back home and started to bake, the sun came  back out. And the exact same thing happened today as I got ready to walk to guitar. It was just sprinkling as I got ready to go, so I grabbed an umbrella. And as I walked back outside again, the shower came again. And once I was back home, no more rain. It just doesn’t seem fair.

I watched “Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis” the other day, the number 2 most successful film in French cinemas behind “Titanic.” It is about a man who gets sent to the North of France to work as a punishment for bad behavior. And it is all about the stereotypes and the images that people of the South have of Northern France. Like that it rains all the time, or that they talk weirdly. It was really cool for me because I actually understood the jokes after having lived in the North for this whole year. I was proud when I even understood when the characters were speaking Ch’ti, which is the “dialect” here in the North and is slightly different from normal French.

Well, I guess that’s it for the update. I have 1.5 days of school left, which is just incredible. I just can’t believe this is all coming to an end.