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.