It's Vacation Time

Ha ha! to all of you people going to school in the USA. Today is Friday, so for starters, I only had 5 hours of class. And, vacation has officially started for me. It has for all of us, except Lucas, who has school tomorrow. I did have to take a really hard SVT test which included writing paragraphs about the communication between the brain and the ovaries and how neurohormones affect the menstrual cycle. Sounds like fun in English, right? Now, imagine trying to do it in French. Needless to say, I ran out of time(everyone did, and the other kids were doing it in their native language) but I think I might have done ok. It was hard to be organized within my paragraphs because it took me so long to write a sentence that I would forget what I had written in the previous sentence and what I had been planning to say. But, I mostly understood the documents, and I kind of felt like I knew what I was talking about. So, overall, not awful. And when the bell rang and I turned the test in, I got to console myself with the fact that I have 8 days off of school. My host family and I are going to their grandparents’ house for a week which should be fun (well, all of us except my host father, who has to work.) We are leaving Tuesday and coming back Tuesday so we will have a day to get ready for “La Rentrée,” which is next Thursday. And Monday, my friend Federica from Italy is going to take the bus to Valenciennes, and we are going to explore town a little bit. I can guarantee that we will hit at least one(and possibly more) bakeries. And, when you go to a bakery with someone else, you get to get two things and split, so you don’t have to choose just one.  Enough rambling, the point is: I’m excited for vacation. Although, I am sad that Halloween is during vacation and I will not be trick-or-treating or dressing up. My English teacher came to school dressed up with a long purple coat and a purple witch’s hat, and it was nice to know that at least one other person at the school will be thinking about Halloween on October 31st.

Although, the school sort of had an unofficial Halloween on Monday. We had the annual cross, which is where all classes stopped after lunch. The entire student body walked over to an athletic track nearby. And then, it was races. First, it was all of the girls in 2nde. Then all of the boys in 2nde. And so on. The course was a lap and a half around the track, a lap outside of the track, and another lap and a half around the track, which added up to about 1.5 km. Well, being Miss Competitive, I decided that I wanted to win. I succeeded. I beat all of the other girls in 1ère!  I got a medal and I had to do the bis with the director of the school(who had run with the 1ère boys and was consequently quite sweaty.) Everyone got a mars bar at the end, but I got two because I won. My friends were joking that I had changed the history of cross at my school, since how many Americans would be down in the books as having won the cross at a Private French High School. It was a really funny experience. Some of the teachers showed up in spandex running shorts and ran the cross. Some of the students dressed up, and it reminded me a lot of the Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, where some people come in crazy costumes and others are there to win. Overall, it was a really fun afternoon(made even better by the fact that I normally have 4 hours of class on Monday afternoons, but we skipped them.)

And they're off! The boys of 2nde running the cross.

Some costumes.

I won the cross, and I was also the only one of the top 3 that bothered to hang around for the medal ceremony. They had to go track down the other two girls to give them their medals. And, our school's director in his fancy spandex running shorts. He ran with the 2nde, 1ère, and Tle boys.

The top three girls from Première. I tried to shake their hands after the race, and they looked at me like I was crazy. And, you can see lovely northern France weather.

Some of the many dressed up runners, although I think the warrior gets my prize for being most crazily dressed.

I had a bit of an AFS weekend last weekend. It started on Saturday night when I went to a local theater show. It was in Ch’ti, which is the local dialect of the north. A lot of the regions here have a local dialect, or version of French. Of course, that made the show practically impossible for the 5 AFS students there to understand. But, it was still fun. My host family hadn’t wanted to go to the show, so I went with two other students and their host mom. Afterwards, we went back to their house and had a sleepover. Tita, from Mexico, had made a lemon pie filling dessert, topped with whipped cream, and she had made one for me, since they knew I was coming for the night. I stayed up late talking to Federica, and it was fun to be able to be honest about our experience here, since it is really easy to relate to other exchange students. In the morning, we went to the AFS hike that our chapter had planned. It was more of a stroll through the countryside, but it was great to hang out with the other students. At one point, a cow managed to get itself on the wrong side of the barbed wire of its pasture, and it was mooing loudly, trying to get back to its companions. Luckily, my host dad and one of the other host dads came to the rescue and opened up the barbed wire so it could go back in. The cows were so funny. When the lost cow got back in, the 4 cows galloped around their pasture like 5 times, mooing happily. After the hike, we went to a pottery shop where the artisans showed us the kiln and explained the process of making pottery at their workshop. After that, we went to a park and had picnic. I basically sat there and ate for about two and half hours. We made sandwiches on fresh baguettes. We had chips and cookies. We had bread and butter. Each family brought a different dessert, and we could try practically all of them. Cookies and cakes and mini waffles and everything. The adults and some of the students started playing pétanque, or boules, which is a very traditional french game. And some of the students played basketball. The weekend was fun, and it was nice and small, since it was just my chapter of 8 students and their families, and a couple of girls from the chapter next-door, instead of the 35 kids from all of the northern chapters.

Federica and our breakfast set-up. Notice the Nutella taking center stage.

Afs friends from Switzerland, Italy, Argentina, Italy, and Malaysia.

My friend Nicole and the picnic setup.

Alexis watching as Clara's boule threatens to knock his away from being the closest.

One of the AFS volunteers throwing her boule. Everyone else hovers around and oohs and ahhs for good and bad shots.

I always thought that crutches would be the same no matter where you went in the world, but that isn’t the case. Here, well, I can’t really explain it, but I’ll post a picture. They are really different than American crutches.  

French Crutches

American Crutches

Soccer practices are going well. I scored in the scrimmage last week, and I won the shooting game on Wednesday. The other girls jokingly accused me of cheating, and when I asked how I had cheated, the said I had paid the goalie. It was funny that the jokes and the teasing at soccer practices are the same all over the world, or at least in France and the USA.

So, I got an answer about why we study birth control methods at our catholic school. The government sets the standards and all the schools have to follow them, private or public. So, we study birth control at our school.

The final of the Rugby World Cup are this Sunday morning, and France is playing New Zeland. Most people I have talked to think NZ is going to win, but they are still planning on watching. The consolation match was this morning, and the school had the game turned on in the lounge during break for the people who were really interested. I think I will try to watch the finals on Sunday of I can.

Carla Bruni, the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, announced the name of their daughter on her blog yesterday. It is Giulia. I had multiple people at school today telling me that I have almost the same name as the daughter of the French President. Personally, I don’t like the way the name looks with a “G,” but I am probably biased.

For anyone interested in grades: 15 out of 20 on my history homework about WW1, a big improvement since my 11.5 on the last one, but 10.5 on the history test. We have a 3 hour DS coming up in history and I know I’m going to have a really hard time.  21/20 on my English test(big surprise.) And we had another English test, but I might not get full credit, since one of the questions was translating a paragraph into French, and I don’t think I got the verb tense or all of the vocabulary right. 20/20 on my DNL (history in English) test. 18/20 on my physics test, but only 13 on my lab. French: So bad it didn’t get graded. My teacher is just going to underline the grammar mistakes for me, so I can work on improving the French.


My host mom made crepes yesterday for an afterschool snack, and when we got home today, there were donuts and applesauce filled pastries waiting for us.

Koh Lanta and pizza tonight, and no guilt about not doing my homework since I have 12 days to do it.

A Cookie a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

These are Matthis's usual after school snack. He has a bowl of milk and crushes the cookies up and eats them with a spoon out of his milk bowl. They are pretty good, but the cookie part sort of tastes more like a Ritz Cracker without the salt than like a cookie. But when you add the chocolate, they are decent. Still, in my opinion, there are better ones to be had.

Well, not really. Actually, a cookie(or multiple) a day makes your waistband a bit tighter, and makes you question your self control. But, so good. I'll get back to the cookies later. I have some other stuff to talk about first.

Matthis’s birthday was last week and he got some fun things. He got a box with 5 puzzles themed around “Cars 2,” and he got a skate with the two two wheels and you move your feet simultaneously to make it go. I did the puzzles a couple of times with Matthis and Alexis, which was pretty fun. And Alexis and Matthis tried to teach me to do the skate. I am really really bad at it, and Alexis just ended up towing me around the living room while I pretended that I was doing it myself. But, Matthis and Lucas are getting really good, and Alexis already knew how to do it. I thought I might have an advantage since I know how to snowboard, but nope.

Doing the Cars 2 Puzzles

Matthis wearing his baseball cap. Unfortunately, it is not super useful here in the north where the sun doesn't shine much, but still. It was fun to see him put it on when he unwrapped it. It was way too big and he had to tighten the back a lot to stop the bill from slipping right down over his eyes.

The skate:Matthis's birthday present. Its primary users: Alexis and Lucas.

I went to watch the end of Lucas’s soccer game the other day. it is so unfair that he can walk to his games and my host mom has to drive me 15 minutes to go to my soccer practices just because I am a girl. I guess title nine might really have made a difference in the USA with developing women’s sports. Anyway, when we walked up, the other team was taking a penalty kick, and Lucas informed us with his fingers that the score was 1-0 for them, but i was thinking that it was about to be 1-1 when the other team made their penalty kick. But, the keeper saved the goal. Then, a few minutes later, Lucas got a breakaway and he scored, so we all cheered. It was cold and rainy, but it was still fun to have someone I knew to cheer for.

It is really cold and rainy here. One day, I got out of the car and shivered, and they said, “Welcome to the north of France.”And, I was told not to expect to see the sun until summer. Well, the sun shone for a little bit today, but not much, and it was still cold. I can already tell I’m going to need to go on a shopping expedition to track down some warmer clothes pretty soon. I guess that will force me to buy something here to bring home, since I’m sure you all know I’m not much of a shopper except when it comes to food and REI backpacking gear.

Alexis and Edith had me try a couple of French cheeses one day. Alexis told me there are more than 360 cheeses made in France, almost enough for a different one every day of the year. I really liked Comté, and was not a big fan of Maroilles, which I was told is the specialty of the north and I couldn’t leave without having tried it. And while I’m on the subject of cheese, now might be a good time to mention circular graphics. In my history class, we were discussing documents and we came to a circular graphic with percentages and portions corresponding to the budget of a factory worker during the industrial revolution. And my teacher asked, “What kind of graphic is this?” and I was thinking, “It’s a pie chart.” Well, the french kids in my class practically shouted “C’est un camembert!”(Translation: It is a camembert) which is a type of cheese that you buy in a round. I wonder if that means they just don’t really eat pie here, or if they are more proud of their cheese than their pie and would prefer to use cheese to describe graphics, instead of dessert.

The inside of a French fridge. Notice the entire shelf devoted to yogurt. They are practically obsessed with yogurt here. Personally, i find the yogurt to have a weird taste and texture. They have non-sugared yogurt, and sugared yogurt. Fruit yogurt and white cheese yogurt. Basically, if you can imagine it as yogurt, they probably have it. But, the yogurt isn't homogenized. There is a layer of water on the top, and then the yogurt itself is a weird fluffyish texture, but it is also a bit grainy. It is quite odd. And, you can see a wheel of cheese in the fridge, as well as our pizza for tonight's dinner, since it is Friday and Koh Lanta night.

                                                                              
We went to a movie as a family on Saturday night. It was called “Bienvenue à Bord.” Look up the preview on the internet, if you have time. It is about a man who gets hired to be the cruise director on a cruise and his disastrous first week as he makes a bunch of mistakes, having never even been on a cruise before. But, it was also involving some funny love triangles, so it was totally my kind of movie. I was really worried that I wasn’t going to be able to understand it without subtitles, but I was really pleased. i was able to understand the gist of practically everything, if not all the words. And I even understood some of the jokes right away and was able to laugh along with the whole rest of the audience. I laughed and smiled a lot during the movie, and during the typical post-movie discussion taking place in the car on the way home. My favorite joke is when Remy, the cruise director, is smiling and drinking alcohol as he watches his “rival” struggling, and his “rival” comes over and asks why he is smiling, and he says “I’m not smiling, I’m just forming my lips to the shape of the glass,” as he serenely raises the glass to his lips and takes a sip. My brothers were quoting that joke for at least 3 days afterward.

Here is a link to the preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvx7qS5wkn8

I had some free time on Sunday afternoon so to improve my French, I watched Harry Potter 3 in French. I put on subtitles in French, thinking it would help me really understand the words. Actually, it was really annoying. The subtitles always paraphrased what was really being said or used a different verb. So, instead of being able to link what i was hearing with what I was seeing, my brain spent the whole movie being frustrated, and knowing I heard one word and seeing a different word on the subtitle. I think from now on, I’m just going to listen to the movie without subtitles. I need to work on my listening comprehension more than my reading anyway.

I have discovered that I am actually really bad at making the kissy noises when I do the bisous. I thought I was really good, but then I realized that it is just the people I am touching cheeks with who make noise, and not me. I guess if you grew up doing them, you would be better, but I am horrible. And, its not really something you can practice in your free time. People give you funny looks if you stand around making kissy noises to no one. Actually, I really don’t like the bis that much anyway. It is a bit of an invasion of personal space for me. And, when I go to soccer and enter the locker room, I have to go around and touch cheeks with everyone before I can sit down and put my cleats on, rather than just being able to walk in and say “Hi, everyone.” I don’t like it much, but when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

So last week, when I said we didn’t watch Koh Lanta because there was a soccer game, well, we did watch that instead. France won 3-0, so Lucas won the betting. Matthis likes to make us guess what we think the score will be. I said it would be 2-1, but it was 3-0. We all said France was going to win, and Edith commented how no one had said Albania was going to win, but in that wholly French household, who would. I watched half of the Bosnia-Herzegovina vs France match with Lucas and Thierry. I guessed that France would win 1-0, but B-H scored in the 40th minute, so I was out. France managed to equalize with a penalty kick later in the match to get the tie, but no one won the betting because we all said France would win outright.

For SVT on Tuesday, we had to do mini skits. We had about 50 minutes to prepare and then we presented them. They weren’t really skits so much as informative conversation. My group was assigned to discuss options for a couple wishing to have a child even the the man had some difficulties. One of the other groups was a doctor and a women wanting information about methods of birth control. There were a bunch of different methods in our book. I find it funny that we go to a private catholic school where I’m pretty sure the policy is abstinence or rhythm, but we are learning about birth control pills. Since the beginning of the year, all we have talked about is male vs female, from embryo and development until birth, through puberty, where pleasure comes from in the brain, and now birth control and reasons for infertility. I feel like I am in an advanced, complicated Sex-ed/health class. It is all really interesting since it is really detailed, but still.

At my school, we have something called DS’s. That stands for Devoir Surveillé, or supervised work. They are tests that we have to take, but they are super serious. We have one DS each trimester for our level 1 language(English), our level two language(Spanish or German), History-Geography, Physics-Chemistry, and SVT. We have 2 each trimester for Math, and 2 for French. There are schedules posted around the school, and when you have a DS, you don’t have your regular classes during that time, you have the test. Our DS for French was 4 hours long! So basically, it allows the teachers to give us really long tests, something they cant do at rio where they only have 1 hour with us, or two on a block day. And we have assigned seats for the DS and you have to leave your backpack by the wall, and when you are done, you just have to sit there. It is really stressful for the kids here. And I find it really bizarre to be packing my backpack for the next day and be looking at my schedule, saying “ok, i have french, english, and math before lunch, and SVT and histroy after lunch. Let me grab my books. Oh wait, we have a DS this afternoon, so I dont have my afternoon classes.” Im always worried that my class will be “behind” because we missed that class, but we are all together so it doesnt matter. It isn’t like Rio where all of the periods of Montbriand’s chemistry are supposed to be in the same place. The teachers have a bit more flexibility. And after our break coming up, we start school again on Thursday, and I’m thinking “wait, we are going to be “off-schedule” if we miss our monday, tuesday, and wednesday classes”, but really, we are all one class, so we are all in the same place. It is so weird for me.

I saw my first manifestation on Tuesday. We were leaving school to walk to the bus to go to Sport when there were police sirens. I looked down to the main street, and there were a bunch of people marching and carrying signs, with a police escort. The line kept going and going. There were so many people. I asked my friends why they were demonstrating, and they said “I don’t know, people are always demonstrating bout something here.”

I finally did a bit of sharing about American culture. I talked a bit about the political/election systems in France and the USA because the primary of the socialist party candidates was on TV. Apparently, this is the first time that they are having a primary. And i talked about how we have primaries too, and how they are cool when both parties are having primaries. So yeah, a little bit of sharing about politics without really getting into the meat and potatoes of the real politics. Today, I had my computer out when Matthis and Lucas were snacking, so I showed them some pictures, including the picture of me, Yulia, John David, Kathy, Andrea, and my mom on the San Francisco Duck tour. And then I came across the picture of me, my mom, and John David at his graduation. I asked Lucas about whether there were any sort of graduation ceremonies for students here. He said that if you get between a 10 and a 15.99 on the bac, you just see your name on a list and that is it. If you get more than a 16 out of 20, you get to have a small ceremony where the school presents you with a little card or certificate, but it is small. Then, I showed them my picture and explained about our graduation, sashes and cords for high G.P.A.s, and how you get to “walk in graduation” and have your name called and walk across the stage and get your diploma. It was cool to explain that to him, since our graduation ceremony in something that you can see if American films, and it is a cool process with the symbolic cap with the tassel.

I had lunch with a girl named Ophélie(I now know three Ophélies) on Wednesday. She found me on facebook and said that she wants to be an exchange student with Rotary next year, and it is so cool that I am at her school when she wants to go abroad and be in my position. She was really nice, and we are going to have lunch together again to talk some more. She is in 1L(language) instead of S. She only has 1 hour of math every two weeks. But, she has 8 hours of English a week, including an English Literature course. She told me that their first unit was on Harry Potter, and they got to/had to read some of it. Why didn’t I choose to be in L like my host mom tried to tell me to do? Or right, because two hours of French on Wednesdays almost wipes me out, and she has a lot of French. Plus, I like SVT and Physics-Chem and math, so I think I’m in the right section for me. Unfortunately for French students going abroad, they have to repeat their year when they get back, since the french schooling system is so structured and there is no flexibility. So, on the one hand, their grades abroad absolutely don’t matter at all, but, they have to graduate a year late.

And finally, cookies! I have a feeling that my blog might become my cookie blog, with pictures and comments about all the cookies I try. But, I guess that is ok. I was all set to make some chocolate chip cookies for my host family, but then I opened the pantry, and saw the box of chocolate chip cookies. So, I guess I’ll have to find something more uniquely American that hasn’t been spread to Europe yet. I might try pumpkin pie, since thanksgiving is coming up soon. Maybe I will write percentages in it and tell them it is a pie chart. (50% of the pie for me, 10% for Matthis, 10% for Lucas, 10% for Alexis, and 20% for my host parents. That seems fair, right?)
                                                                             

The chocolate chip cookies I found in the pantry. Very symbolically American, but that doesn't make me less disappointed that my chocolate chip cookies won't be as exciting. These are pretty good though, as store bought chocolate chip cookies go. They are the thin and crispy kind, but they have a good flavor.

Smarties, which are like m&m's, but smaller and not as good. The only kind of m&m's they have here are the peanut ones that come in a yellow bag. I bet the US grocery stores have all of the halloween m&m's out right now. I'm sad to be missing halloween. For years that was my conversation starter. What should I be for Halloween. This year, I don't get to think about it, since I won't be going trick-or-treating, or to any halloween dress up parties.

Store bought mini palmiers. Nowhere near as good as the full-sized one I bought from the bakery, but still great. I especially like the outermost layer that is coated in sugar.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but stayed tuned for stories from my AFS hike and picnic this weekend.

I'll leave you with some photos.

My host family's cat. I'm not a big fan of the cat, not being a cat person anyway. it gives me evil looks and follows me around just looking at me menacingly. I miss my dog, Cyrus, especially when I am cold at night and he could be sleeping with me, keeping me warm.

One of the classrooms where I have English and Spanish. Not very exciting. It reminds me of the end of the school year when the teachers start taking down the posters to get ready for summer, and the walls are bare. That always makes me sad. here, there aren't any posters or student work being displayed. It just feels like the school has no personality, whereas I always felt like our classrooms at Rio had unique "personalities."

Lucas's rubix cube collection. A 2x2, 4 3x3's, a 3x3 mirror cube, a 4x4, and a 5x5. I can do all of them up to the 4x4. I haven't learned how to solve it or the 5x5 yet.

My AFS friends. Sylwia(Polish), Nicole(Swiss), me, and Tita(Mexican). In the background, you can see Frederika, who is Italian. The 5 of us, plus Fabiana, Ling, and Clara make up our chapter of 8 students.

Traditional Friday Post

Yep, it is Friday and I am posting on my blog. Why Friday? I only have class after lunch so I come home and I usually have the house to myself, so I don't mess up my integration by blogging on Friday afternoons.

First of all, the McDonald’s here is really weird. They have changed their theme colors from red and yellow to green and yellow. So, the big signs that you can see from the highway, or whatever, are green with the golden arches, instead of red. And, their commercials make them look super gourmet and like all the ingredients are really fresh. And, the nice dollar menu double cheeseburger is about 3 euros, and 1 euro is about 1.40 dollars. So yeah, so such thing as a dollar menu here.

We have pizza every friday night with my host family, but it is always different. The first time we ordered pizza, and the second time we had grocery-store take an bake pizza. Last week, my host mom made a pizza from scratch, well mostly from scratch. She made the crust from scratch, and it was really cool and really yummy. The sauce wasn’t exactly a sauce but more of just a lot of tomatoes, but there were good spices. And it was cheese and ham on the pizza. It was fun.

I have always heard about Mars bars, but I didn’t know what they were. In Harry Potter, when Harry is on the train for the first time and the trolley comes to his compartment, it says that he was going “to buy as many mars bars as he could carry.” Well, I bought one from my snack bar, and it turns out they are just Milky Way bars with the same name. I guess I should have made that before, but I didn’t. While I’m on the subject of candy, another funny thing. They don’t really have normal m&m’s here. They only have peanut ones, you know, the ones that come in the yellow packaging. If you want plain chocolate covered with a candy shell, you buy Nestle Smarties, which are basically plain m&m’s.

I went to the grocery store a few days ago and spent some time looking around. It is amazing. They sell tiramisu in little packages, and you can buy chocolate mousse. And the cookie aisle!!!! I will try to take some pictures next time I go. Oh, it was so awesome. There were rows and rows of all kinds of cookies I have never seen before(and some I have seen.) They sell my favorite, palmiers, in little packages. And they had these shortbread cookies topped with caramel and then dipped in French chocolate. I can’t wait to go back and buy cookies. Maybe I should try to eat my way through the whole cookie aisle by the end of the year. What do you think? I can walk to the grocery store, so when I finally get around to cooking and baking for my host family, at least it won’t be a hassle to try to go look for ingredients. I am going to try to learn to make palmiers while I am here because I think it would be fun to make them for all my friends back home, since they are very very traditional french.

I miss Rio quite a bit. I didn’t really think I would, but I do. I miss a lot of the little things that made it comfortable and easy. My school here is so different, and I sometimes wish I could just take a few days off to go back to Rio and be able to eat outside and see different people in each class, and actually understand what the teachers are saying. So many things that I liked about Rio and didn’t even realize it. But, that just means that my crazy, insane, stressful, exciting, and awesome senior year will be even better because I will know how to appreciate all of those little things that all my Rio friends won’t realize they miss until they go to college and it is too late to come back for one more year of high school. I’m bummed about not being there for playathon. This will be the first playathon I miss since 7th grade, and of course, it is the one with the theme I have wanted for the past two years. Oh well, what can I do?

Here is another stereotype. When I came, I thought it was normal for French families to drink wine with dinner every night. I had heard that even the kids can drink with their families, and that is totally normal. I asked my friends at school, since I already noticed that my host parents only have wine occasionally. They said that some people do drink a glass of wine every night, and others don’t, but that it is more the older generation that does that. I asked about kids and they laughed. And i said that I had heard that kids as young as 12 sometimes drink wine at home with their families. And my friends just laughed and said no, not really, maybe sometimes on holidays.

I got my in-class history test on the industrial revolution back. I got a 10.5 out of 20, which is passing! Yeah!  He wouldnt even let me use my dictionary, so i totally bombed one of the 3 questions because i didnt even understand the question let alone how to answer it. And what is more, 10.5 was the average score, which means that I am just as good as about half the class. Back home, being completely average would make me scandalized, but here, i wanted to jump up and down when i saw that i had passed and brag about my 10.5. But, I restrained myself because some of the people around me had gotten 10’s, so I didn’t think that would be very nice.

Ok, now for some serious business. I know my blog sounds happy and great and like I am having fun and discovering new things all the time, but I think it is important to let everyone know that that isn’t always the case. There is an adjustment period, and for a while I just really wanted to go home. I think everyone gets homesick and it is just a challenge I had to work through(that was maybe tougher for me than for others because I am so close to my family), but you don’t just “fall down the rabbit hole” right into fitting in. You really have to have your senses on high alert as you try to figure out what is ok and what ins’t and how to fit in. I have gotten into a rhythm now, which is nice for me, but I still have to tell myself to see things in as positive a light as I can. I really have to work for the highlights of my day, but when I do have something special happen, I know I worked hard for it and deserved it(like getting a 16 on my SVT homework.) So yeah, I am having a great time here and I am discovering new things, but it is a bumpy process trying to settle in to a completely different style of life.

I had my AFS orientation last weekend. We had to draw a chart of our emotional feeling throughout the journey. Mine was like a roller coaster, compared to other people who had one small down and then all up. But, I dont think they were being completely honest. There are ups and downs to every experience. The food at the orientation was absolutely awful. Completely horrible. And we did a lot of activities that I have now down 4 or 5 times. But, it was really fun to hang out with my friends from my chapter. There were 35 students there from the three most northern AFS chapters. We played a giant game of human knot which was fun, and we “succeeded” but with cheating, so I don’t really count it as succeeding. So yeah, there were ups and downs to the weekend too, just like with everything else.

Ok, that’s all for now. No Koh Lanta tonight because apparently there is a soccer game that has been deemed more important, so I’m not sure what we will do with our friday night, but I know we are having pizza because I saw it in the refrigerator. Oh, and it was Matthis’s birthday on Wednesday and I gave him a baseball cap from Hawaii.


Happy Birthday(a few days early) Olivia!!!!

So Long but Still So Short

I just finished my fourth week of school here. Every day feels like it lasts a week, but at the same time, this week felt like it flew past. And this month felt like the longest month of my life, but at the same time, it feels so short when I consider that I only really have 9 months left of this once in a lifetime opportunity. My brain is having a very hard time wrapping itself around this concept.

“Once in a lifetime.” I tell myself that phrase a lot. Like when things are tough, I know I can work through it and it will all be worth it in the end. When I don’t really want to do that really hard history geography homework, I tell myself it will make my French better. And when I want to buy two pastries at the bakery instead of just one, hey, “it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” to spend a whole year living in a place with a different bakery on every corner. And today, I had the best elephant ear I have ever head, and since that is usually my pastry of choice at most bakeries, that it quite an honor to bestow on this particular elephant ear. Except here, they are called palmiers, and they don’t have any cinnamon.  Arggh, I am already starting to have typing issues because I type words in French without realizing it, like “particulier”, rather than “particular”, because that is how you spell it in French.

What's in the bag? The suspense in killing me!

Yep, you guessed it. An elephant ear and a chocolate croissant, or to use their french names, un palmier et un pain au chocolat. As you can see, the elephant ear is missing a bite. I told myself I was going to wait until I got home to eat it, but while I was waiting at a stop light, the elephant ear just jumped out of the bag and into my mouth. There was really nothing I could do about it.

One thing that really surprised me is how good at ping pong my whole P.E. class is. Our teacher grouped us into pools by level last time and then we played everyone in our pool. Once my pool had finished, i was watching the lowest pool. The two people were having a really good rally. And my friends who claim they don’t like sports and don’t like ping pong can give me a really good game. I feel like if we did a ping pong unit at Rio, there would probably be some people who don’t even know how to hold a paddle, let alone really have a rally.

I did some tongue twisters with my friends during break. It was particularly hard because at first, I didn’t know what the words meant. But if you want to have some fun, try saying “Un chasseur sachant chasser sans son chien de chasse et un bon chasseur” ten times fast. After you’ve done that, try it in english. “A hunter knowing how to hunt without his hunting dog is a good hunter.” It’s a bit easier, huh? They told me another one about the socks of the duchess being dry(something involving chaussettes, sèche, and duchesse) but I didn’t really understand it. And I taught my friends “She sells seashells by the sea shore” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” We were all laughing and repeating them under our breath during our next class.

I have finally reached a point where I can sometimes guess that a word needs an accent on a certain letter, even if I have never seen the word. There are a few patterns I have noticed, but a lot of it comes from the sound and just getting used to it. When I first started studying french and learned that there were 5 types of accents(è, é, î, ç, ï -and these can all be on other vowels too, except the ç, obviously) I thought it was hopeless. But, I sometimes get them right now. Small consolation, but everything counts. And I have gotten to the point where seeing words that should have a “ç” with a normal “c” is weird for me. Like at school, the boys bathroom says GARCONS, instead of GARÇONS, and it just looks funny.

It is so nice to really have stuff to write about it my blog and not enough time to write it, rather than the reverse. Before I left, I was like, “Oh, I should practice writing my blog” but you can only say “I’m so excited” so many times before it gets a bit repetitive. I hope my stories about random little things that make life different aren’t too boring for you. But, if they are, oh well. I have fun writing them, so I’m going to keep doing it.

A Much Slower Pace

Life here moves at a much slower pace than I am used too. Back home, I never had two minutes together to stop and rest. I loved my crazy, hectic schedule, and aside from the time when i was writing english essays, I was usually having a blast being busy. Here, things move slower. Not just for me, but for everyone. Most people just have one extracurricular, and there is time to sit around and watch TV. The homework load isnt crazy, so I sometimes just sort of find myself wandering around. Sundays are especially relaxed and we get up when we want(except Lucas who has soccer games) but we usually have a nice family lunch together. Well, I’m not sure I can say usually since i have only been here for 3 sundays, but it seems to be a pattern. Today we ate outside and enjoyed some of the last bits of sunshine. With my extra time today, I thought of some more things to add to my blog

I was messing around on the computer today, looking at the AFS webpage(since one of my friends has told me that they are considering a semester abroad.) I was on the page about going to France, looking at the info about the semester program, trying to figure out when the 1st semester kids go home and when the second semester kids come. I noticed the little sidebar with links, and one of the links was “read student blogs.” I clicked on it, wondering if the blogs of any of my friends from the national orientation would be on it. It really freaked me out when the very first thing that opened on that page was “Julia’s First Week in France,” followed by the picture i posted on my blog of me and Mindy and Laura in front of the eiffel tower, and then the picture of me and my host family. And then there was a snippet of text from my blog where I talked about my host family. And you could click on “read more” and it took you right to my blog. And it said created by AFS, which I thought was a bit weird, but then I realized that while it was all stuff from my blog, someone had changed the order and picked out specific things. Actually, I was a bit peeved because the block of text they chose is not my best writing, but whatever. I guess it goes with the picture they liked(me and my smiling host family) so I will forgive them(whoever the them is that made this condensed version of my blog) And I know I didnt title anything “Julia’s First Week in France.” So, needless to say, it was very weird for me to see my blog being used as an advertisement for AFS. I don’t mind and I am very flattered, but I can’t help wondering why they picked mine, rather than any of my other friends with very good blogs. And mine was the only current blog on that page. The other two “featured blogs” were about saying goodbye and how much the students had loved their year in France. Actually, it was cool. I never thought I would see my picture on the AFS webpage.

I can now say that I have successfully read a French book (well, sort of.) I read Dom Juan by Molière for my French class. Originally, I wasn’t going to red it. Most of the time I have absolutely no idea what is going on in French class, so I wasn’t going to bother. But, I found the book and decided to try. I also found it in English, so I read the two side by side. I would read a scene in French, and then go back and read it in English. Most of the time, I had gotten the right general idea. However, there were a few times when i was completely wrong about what had just happened and i was quite confused when I read the english. And, it was cool to see that by the end of the play, I was understanding more of the french than I had been at the beginning. Thank you, Molière, for using the same words over and over again. There is one part of the book where two country people are talking to each other, and they are using horrible grammar and i had to remind myself to try to focus on meaning and not try to pick up any saying from them. But yeah, it felt cool when I finished and i read the last couple of scenes without needing to read the english.

Speaking of reading in French, my youngest host brother, Matthis, has been reading parts of Le Petit Nicolas for his class. He was telling my host parents about one scene in the book where Clotaire gets in trouble, and I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, he is talking about Le Petit Nicolas. I remember reading that scene.” So thank you, Mrs. Murray, for having us read it in AP French so that I could feel like smart and know what he was talking about.

We took our individual photos on the first Friday of school. It was like and amy drill or something.(Not that I would know, but still.) They had our class line up in alphabetical order, and we walked into the room one at a time. They took the picture super fast. There was a stool in front of a white backdrop and they said “Sit, turn your head, smile, next.” And that was it. I think we did the entire class of 30 in about 5 minutes. But the funny thing was that my picture turned out really well(for me). I decided to buy my photos. i think they will be a fun souvenir. Show them to someone and say, “what do you think is special about this picture?” and they will say, “Ummm, nothing.” And i’ll be able to say “This is my school portrait from the year I spent in France.”

Even though I am a demi-pensionnaire, meaning i eat lunch in the cafeteria, with permission from my parent, I can eat lunch outside of school. On Friday, some friends and I went to town for lunch. Most people wanted to eat at McDonalds, but I really don’t like McDonalds(plus I had just gone there with my host brothers.) Ophelie was really nice to me and she offered to take me somewhere else and then we could come back and meet up with the McDonalds crew. We went to a pasts bar where you got to choose your side, your sauce, and your dessert.(Actually, it reminded me a lot of the little pasta section of the buffet on the pride of america, except that the pasta was already completely cooked) It was really really good and they were really quick with service, even though the line was pretty long. We got back to the McDonalds before the first one of our friends had even started ordering. Eventually they all got their McDonalds and we headed off to the little park by our school t sit down and eat. It was quite pleasant except for the pesky wasp that was way too attracted to my pasta. Thank goodness Laure came to my rescue. She trapped the wasp in her empty chicken nugget box and he bothered us no more. I really enjoyed the pasta because at home, I eat pasta about 4 nights a week. Really, no joke. Here, we dont have much pasta, and when we do, there really isn’t tomato sauce. They serve it with gruyere at the cafeteria, and my host brothers eat it with mayonnaise. But I got bolognese sauce on my pasta, and it was great. It totally hit the spot. Actually, today at school we finally got some pasta with tomato sauce. Well, it was more like tomato water that they poured on my pasta, but still. It was nice to finally have something that reminded me of home.

After lunch, we went back to school for our last hour of class(SVT) and i got my test from the previous friday back. I had a slightly different test than the rest of students, but it was still the same concepts. I got a 10 out of 10 and my teacher told me it was really really good. And even though she is my SVT teacher, she took the time when grading my test to fix my French mistakes too. Let me tell you, it is hard to explain in french the development of the genital apparatus of a fetus when you have never even studied it in English. But it felt good to really pass the test without getting help.

I think I must be a really typical AFS student. I hit some highs and lows exactly when my AFS handbook says you might. Well, actually, I hit a bunch of highs and lows everyday. I think my emotions are just on rollercoaster mode and my brain blows everything out of proportion. Oh well, at least it means highs and lows when i get back will feel so mild.

So many things are really different here. I know I keep saying it, but I just keep finding so many things that I would expect to be the same and they aren’t. Science is different, and it keeps throwing me off. I have taken 2 years of chemistry and I had to ask the teacher to explain the electron labeling system to me because it is different. I was like, why does it go K2L6 for oxygen, rather than 1S2 2S2 2P4. I know that probably does not make much sense to those of you who haven’t taken chem recently, but it freaked me out. And the symbols for the elements are the same, but the words are different. Looking back, it’s like, “Duh, of course they would be different” but I just wasn’t expecting it. Oxygen is oxygène, hydrogen is hydrogène, and so on. It is not that different, but i still catch myself writing it in english on my papers. And they switch their commas and periods in math. 5 thousand 7 hundred 43 dollars and 17 cents, written (5,743.17) would be written like this: 5.743,17  ugh, it drives me crazy. and they write european 1’s that look like 7’s, and they asked me how come I don’t put the bar on my 7 so it doesn’t look like a 1. Well, if you use an american 1 then you don’t need a bar on your 7 because they look totally different.  Ok, enough ranting about how my math and chemistry are being messed up. At least I can follow what is happening in those classes, which is more than I can say for french class.

Funny thing that came up in my english class today. We were reading press articles about juvenile crimes. Great happy topic, isn’t it? One groups press article was about violence in schools and how the solution taken was to have armed policemen at the school. And a lot of people looked at each other like, “Huh, wow, it must be really bad if they need a policemen at the school.” And my teacher was said, “yes, it is an american thing” but most people still looked incredulous. And then I said, “Yep, we have a cop at our school sometimes, and our school is a good school.” My teacher explained that it is very weird for the French to hear about having policemen at schools, and when I can step back and look at it objectively, it is really really weird. It is not a prison, and we shouldn’t need cos at our schools. But I guess after going to Churchill for middle school, I just got used to seeing cops around school. 

When you think of stereotypes about French people, what do you come up with? One of mine was always that French people like their bread so much that you can see people walking around the streets carrying a baguette or two. Not in a bag or anything. Well, it is not incredibly rare, but it does happen. Here is a picture of Matthis with the baguettes we bought. In the top left corner of the photo, you can see the bakery where we buy them (and where I stop on the way home from school when I want a croissant.) It is called La Banette.

Another stereotype I had heard about the French was that they like to go on strike about little things, complaining about reforms that we made a long time ago. Well, the teachers are on strike right now. The teachers at my private school weren’t striking, but there is a big public high school right across the street from our. Literally, about 10 steps away. If you think Rio and Jesuit are close together, think again. We can hear their bells throughout our entire school. Anyway, my friends who had study hall said they could hear the chanting from the high school next-door. My friends tried to explain why the teachers were striking, and I understood that it was about reforms being made to save money, but that was about it. And I think I heard on the radio that kindergarten classes are up to 30, but my brain might have just made that up. So far, though there have been two strikes while I have been here, that haven’t really concerned me much, so I don’t have any experience with them, I just know that happenned/are happening.

A lot of people I know back home love Nutella. I remember working the crepe stand at open house and running out of nutella. But the big question always lingers...how do you pronounce it. I have heard so many debates, but I think I have an answer. On the radio on the way to school, I hear the same ad practically every morning. I have heard it so many times that I actually understand it. It is about how can a child do well in school if he is hungry, and he needs a good breakfast ect. And then they say(in french), “2 pieces of bread with nutella, a glass of milk, and fruit juice: a good breakfast for an active child.” And... they pronounce it “new-tella”, rather than “nut-ella.” So, I did my research for you, and that is my take on the issue.

Here’s a funny story about pronunciation. My school has a type of “lounge/rec room” and you can buy snacks and candy in it during lunch and at break. I went up to the counter and said, “Est-ce que je peux avoir un snickers, s’il vous plaît?”(Can I have a snickers, please.) And the lady said, “Vous voulez un...?” with a confused expression on her face. I tried again, “un snickers,” and she said, “oh, un snickers!” but she pronounced it “Sneak-hairs.” I think it is funny how they frenchify the names of American candy bars, and I will have to remember to Frenchify my pronunciations next time I am asking for anything American .

We did a lab in chemistry today where we extracted the coloring from “Sirop de Menthe”. It was pretty cool, but really hard. I hate being a free-loader, especially in labs, but I couldn’t really help my partner much because I didn’t understand the procedure. And a lot of the words are so weird that they aren’t in my dictionary, so I mostly stand around and stir occasionally. Oh, and I time with my watch. My partner and I didn’t finish on time, and since it was our last class of the day, we had to stay after a bit to clean up. Right as I came out the doors of the school, I saw my bus pulling out of the stop, a full 5 minutes early. It has been 7 minutes late for the past two days, but of course the day I wouldn’t mind it being late has to be the day it is early and I miss it. Rather than twiddling my thumbs for 20 minutes waiting for the next bus, I decided to walk home. I stopped at the bakery to reward myself for walking. I bought a chocolate croissant and decided i would take tiny bites and try to have it last me for the whole walk home. I did make it last pretty long, but not long enough. Right as I took my last bite and crumpled up the bag, I walked past another bakery. I almost walked right in and bought another one, but my feet managed to keep moving long enough for my brain to get control of my stomach. I saved the 90 cents and figure I can treat myself to another croissant another day.

More coming very soon.

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.

Some Photos

Sorry that the photos are coming in separately from the posts, but that is how my computer is cooperating right now, so...here we go.

These are my school friends. From left to right...Laure, Ophélie, Ines, and

Claire-Emmanuelle. Laure, Ophélie, and Claire-Emmanuelle are the ones who took me for a little tour of town on Friday. I eat lunch with them and our other friends every day, so at least it is a start.

This is the picture I promised of me and my host brothers playing ping pong on the dining room table. And this was also an opportunity for an english lesson as I taught them that the table was "narrower" than a normal ping pong table, but also "longer". and i made them repeat longer, length, shorter, width, wider, and narrower. Lucas had a hard time pronouncing "narrower," it was pretty funny.

Lucas doing a rubix cube. Sorry, i forgot to rotate it before i uploaded it and it takes forever to change it, so you'll just have to tilt your head.

Alexis and the inner spread. Notice the fantastic french baguettes sitting on the table just begging to be eaten. And the huge array of condiments. They pretty much put ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise or bbq sauce on everything. But the food is really good(too good in fact.)

Sorry for the blurry picture, my camera didn't like the lighting in the room. But, these are my host brothers goofing around. 

Sorry for the lack of pictures of myself. I'm sure you are all anxious to see that I'm happy but It is hard to be the photographer and still manage to have pictures of yourself. Maybe I need to hire someone to follow me around and take pictures of me. And my computer might say that i posted this at 200am, but it is really 1129 am here, so trust me, I'm not going crazy and staying up till 200 am just to write blog posts.