The Last Week in France

I'm officially back in the United States, but before I get to all of my "let's recap the experience, here's what I learned" stuff, I wanted to quickly talk about my last week in France.

I got back to the North on Sunday, exactly one week before I would be on an airplane flying toward the States. Actually, my head was so entirely elsewhere that I accidentally got on the wrong train when I was in Lille changing trains. I guess it had to happen once during the year. Luckily, I was able to just get off at the first station and get back onto another train in the other direction. But, I was really stressed out. Anyway, it all turned out fine; I just got home an hour later than planned.

Monday was devoted to the "dress rehearsal" with my suitcases. I had already done a few rounds of sorting and tossing out, throwing all of the stuff haphazardly into the suitcase and weighing it, just to see where I was. This time, I actually packed all of my stuff into the bags as if I was going to leave in 30 minutes. And, I succeeded. I packed my whole room and all of my stuff into the one big and one small suitcase, and still have about a kilo of space to buy little souvenirs from the grocery store. (I'm thinking about getting a pack or two of my favorite cookies to bring home.) So, once all my stuff was completely the packed, the question was: Do I unpack it all, or do I wear the same outfit all week? I decided to leave the big suitcase packed and just live from my small suitcase, which has worked pretty well. That way, I only have the carry-on to pack tomorrow as I do my final sweep.

On Wednesday, I went to an amusement park, Parc Asterix(Based on the Asterix and Obelix comic strip) with my friend Pauline, her mom, her grandma, and her 11 year-old cousin. It was a ton of fun, and a great way to totally live in the moment and not be thinking about home, or about leaving. I felt like a ghost in the house at 7:00 am as I ate breakfast alone and got ready while everyone else slept. At 8:00am sharp, Pauline and her mom picked me, we got the others, and then headed off.

The entrance to the park.

The amusement park was close to Paris, so about 2 hours away. By 11:00am, we were getting onto our first ride: the brand new steel roller coaster with lots of loops and twists. It was based on the egyptian theme of one of the comic strips. The whole line was decorated, like at Disneyland, but we didn't have time to admire the decorations as we ran through the empty barriers. We only had to wait 10 minutes for an incredible ride.

This is me and Pauline in front of the roller coaster. The best part was when we were hurtling downward and thought we were going to hit the ground but it was actually a tunnel and they blew a ton of mist at us. You can see it right behind us. This was Pauline's favorite ride.

Overall, it was a really well-done amusement park. They had paid a lot of attention to detail, and everything was themed and decorated. It was fun going from ride to ride and looking at all of the shops and other parts of the experience, rather than just the rides.

Here's and example of the attention to detail. The dragon/boat is a restaurant!

This was in the middle of the park. On sunny days, there were paddle boats, but since we were there before summer break officially started, not everything was open yet. That roller coaster was also closed, unfortunately, but everyone says it is amazing.

We had fun taking silly pictures with all of the decorations.

 We went on some low key rides, like a tube slide, as well as all of those crazy roller coasters.

Pauline and I in the tube slide.

My favorite ride, by far, was Zeus's Thunder. It was an enormous wooden roller coaster, but it went insanely fast and threw us around bends. It also had a cool underground tunnel part. The car all the way to the top, and then we suddenly realized there was a whole second part to the coaster that you can't see from the ground. And then, it goes from the highest drop all the way to underground before shooting up again. It was incredible, one of the best roller coasters I have ever ridden. Pauline thought the egyptian themed one was better, but I preferred this one. We even went on it twice. Pauline said she had been to the park three of four times and that was the first time she went on it, because before, it had either been closed or the line too long.

Zeus was looking down, guarding the entrance to the line. He was intimidating until you walked underneath and saw his cute, flowery underwear  :)

There was also a dolphin show. I have to say, it was probably one of the, if not the, best dolphin shows I have ever seen. It topped Marine World and Sea World easily. They had 10 dolphins and three trainers that swam with them. It was incredible. They did all kinds of tricks I had never seen before, and the trainers interacted a lot more with the dolphins than in other shows I had seen.

5 dolphins jumping at the same time while others swim around and rest a bit. The joys of having 10 show dolphins.

This was my favorite trick. The three trainers made a circle putting their arms to toes and the dolphins swam under and then jumped out of the center of the circle. It was so cool.

In the afternoon, we had to deal with a few thunderstorms and lightning bolts, but everything eventually reopened again. The park closed at 6:00pm and we headed home. I spent that night with Pauline. On the way home, we bought pizzas from a pizza truck for dinner. And for dessert, I ate more raspberries in a single evening than ever before in my life. Why? Thanks to Pauline's family's amazing garden. The garden was here mom's pride and joy, and she had even won a prize last year.  They had tons of different plants and flowers. It was really one of the most amazing gardens I had ever seen. There were 2 different kinds of raspberries growing all over the place, a cherry tree, strawberries, gooseberries, lemon bushes, and tons of flowers. There was a vegetable garden and a huge lawn. The raspberries were perfectly ripe and they told me I could take as many as I wanted, that they always had too much. So, I picked and ate to my heart's content, and then did it all again for breakfast. It was incredible. I even picked some extras and (with difficulty) refrained from eating them all to take to my host family.

I love berry picking. Nothing is better than a kiwi and raspberry salad for breakfast when the raspberries were picked 30 seconds before.

On Thursday, I had a chill day with not much action except making gaufrettes(thin waffle cookies, like what waffle cones are made out of.) They were really yummy, but I think I would add some vanilla extract next time. 

Friday was a day of good-byes. I went back to my school one last time to return my textbooks and saw some friends. We went for a walk and I hugged them good-bye. Then, in the afternoon, I went to the movies with Pauline. We went to see Ice Age 4 in 3D. It's funny. In this year, I have been to the movies more times than in the last four or five years back home. I went to see Bienvenue à Bord, Hollywoo, Intouchables, Hugo Cabret, Star Wars 3D, Ice Age 4 3D, Lion King 3D, and Titanic 3D. At the end of the movie, when we said good-bye, Pauline was on the verge of tears. I know I'm really going to miss her and everything she did for me this year. I still remember dissecting a rat with her on just the second day of school, and it feels like just a few months ago. And there we were, hugging good-bye in front of a movie theater. I just can't believe this adventure in France has come to an end.

On Saturday morning, I said goodbye to my host family in front of their house, and then rode with another AFSer and her host mom to the train station where we would meet the other girls in our region and take the train to Paris. It was a really emotional time for a lot of people as they hung out the train windows to wave to their host families, and quite a few were crying.

Here's the whole group of AFSers, host families, and volunteers in front of the station.

We got to Paris around 12:30 and then waited around for the bus to take us to the hotel. Once at the hotel, we found the 230 other AFS kids all coming back, got out hotel rooms, and then had "debriefing activities." I don't know what those were like in the other groups, but in my group, we didn't do much except just talk about random stuff. We ate dinner together one last time, said our goodbyes, watched 2 short films about AFS, and then were dismissed by airplane to go to bed.

Sunday morning, I got up with my roommates and 6:40am, took quick showers, and then went down for breakfast. While dinner the night before had been rather unsatisfactory, breakfast was AMAZING. We got to eat in the hotel restaurant, and it was a buffet type of thing. The chocolate croissants were literally too hot to hold as they came right out of the over, and they just melted in your mouth. At 7:40, we met as our group of 25 and walked through the hotel and into CDG airport. Why only 25, when there were like 40 Americans in France? The others got to take a direct fight to JFK from Paris, and we had to pass through Zurich, meaning that even though their plane took off a few hours later than ours, they got in sooner. Anyway, checking bags was madness, because as to be expected, many people did not follow guidelines for weight, and were frantically having to repack. My suitcases passed with no problems, so I just got to sit back and watch the others struggle. Once through check-in, we were on our own to get through security and find our gate. We were sort of stressed about making it on time since the AFS volunteers had held us back because someone had been caught with vodka, but it ended up not mattering because our plane was delayed.

This was where things got really interesting. Our plane was supposed to leave at 1100 and get in at 1215, and then our next plane was at 100. Well, our plane didn't end up pulling out of the gate until after 1200, so we spent the whole ride stressing about if we would miss our connection. Luckily, the held it for us, and we literally ran through Zurich airport with our carry-on bags. And it wasn't just one gate to the next one over. We had to take the little tram thing to change sections and pass through a passport checkpoint and everything. I ended up feeling kind of bad for the swiss boy on the plane next to me since I was a little sweaty from the run. The swiss air personnel were funny. They knew we were coming, and sort of lined the pathway from one escalator to our gate, pointing the way and telling us to calm down. It was ironic that we ran and everything to get onto the plane, and once we were all settled, the flight attendant got on the P.A. and said, "While the passengers have indeed finally arrived, we are still waiting for their luggage to be transferred, so it will still be about 20 minutes."

The flight to JFK was nice, just like our flight going to France back in September. We got pasta or chicken for lunch, and then a pizza stick and ice cream for "dinner" about an hour before landing. We got in around 4:30 pm New York time, and then followed the crowd through immigration control. The officer checking our passports was actually funny and friendly, and sort of carried on a conversation with us as we went through. We knew we were back in America when a lady dropped something and the man next to her said "Yo, miss, ya' dropped somethin'" instead of what we would have been used to in France, a very polite "Excusez-moi madame, mais je crois que vous avez perdu quelque chose"(Excuse me Ma'am, but I believe you have dropped something) At baggage claim, my bag was one of the first to come out, so after just a little longer, I found another girl who was also ready to go and we breezed right through customs. There were 2 AFS volunteers waiting for us with instructions on what to do next, but mine was easy. I found my mom waiting in the crowd of people right after customs, took my letter from the AFS folks, said "That's my mom," and then ran around the barrier to give her a big hug.

At that point, I finally felt like I was back in America, and back home, even though I was in New York and not California.