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.