It finally feels like May

Well, we're done with another week, and we're on to a nice three-day weekend. I know, my three-day weekend isn't super exciting since it is Memorial Day for everyone in the states, but that's not what have the day off for. We had our "End of war/honor those who lost their lives in war" day here a few weeks ago, when we had Tuesday May 8th off for the end of WWII. This Monday off is the "Recuperation day" of the weekend of the Pentecost. It's like the Monday we had off after Easter to recuperate, except not many people(or really, no one) actually celebrates the Pentecost. But hey, we're not about to complain about an extra day off from school.

We finally got some nice weather here. This whole month of May has felt like November with cold winds and rain and fog. But this week, the sun finally broke through, and I was able to go to school from morning to afternoon without even bringing a sweatshirt as a precaution. Everyone around me complains about how it is too hot, but I'm just so happy to finally be freed from lugging my huge coat everywhere that I don't care. And besides, I think my body has lost the ability to say "I'm hot" because I have spent the entire year practically shivering. Boy am I going to get a shock when I head back to 100 degree California in just a few weeks. Luckily I'll be escaping to the mountains and the ocean for the first few weeks back as I go to summer camp.

We have all been enjoying the nice weather(partially from fear that it won't last) in eating outside for lunch and dinner, as well as working and doing homework under the sun. Also, since we are farther north than back home, the sun goes down really late. Last night, it was practically 10pm and it felt like 7:30pm.

Something cultural I learned the other day: You know how in the USA we say "If you bring the umbrella, then it won't rain, but if you leave it at home it will"? Here, they are the opposite. They say that "if you bring the umbrella, it will encourage the rain and it is better to leave it at home." Interesting, huh?

So, a rundown of the week. With just 2 weeks of school left, classes are starting to wind down as teachers count how many hours of class they have left. For example, since we only have Spanish 2 times per week, we only have 4 hours of class left, so the teacher doesn't want to start too much. In one class, we have so little time left that we are just going to watch a movie for our last few hours. Other teachers, however, are pushing harder than ever, determined to finish all of the material. In history and in French, we are moving at lightning speed and being assigned classwork as homework because those teachers don't have a choice: the material will be on the Bac whether they finish teaching it or not. In history today, we did in one hour what we normally would have done in 3 hours!

So, Monday was a normal school day, with a test in my "History in English class." In the afternoon, after class, I went to the track to try to get back in soccer shape, especially since handball is done. Oh man, I did not realize I was so badly out of shape. I mean, I had been jogging in the park at least 2 or 3 times a week and playing handball, so I thought I'd be ok. I tried to do some of the normal stuff we do for soccer conditioning, and I thought I was going to fall apart. I couldn't finish half of what I used to do. Oh well, I guess that's a small price to pay for this year.

Tuesday was our Scientific day, like every Tuesday. We had Bio, math, and swimming in the morning, and physics, physics lab, and bio lab in the afternoon. Tuesdays are very exhausting, but we learn a lot in those science classes. At the pool, it was the evaluation day, and they did it like how the kids are evaluated for the bac, except we only did 2 swims instead of 3. Basically, you swim 50 yards and get timed, and then you have to estimate an interval of 3 seconds, and if your time is within that three seconds, you get the self-evaluation point for that race. Then you have 10 minutes or recuperation where you have to swim constantly but not fast. And then you do it again. You have to do one lap with two strokes(changing at 25 meters), another lap with 2 strokes(at least one of which is different that your first lap) and a third lap where you can do what you want. Full points for boys is under 40 seconds for the average of the three laps and for girls in under 44 seconds, I think.

Wednesdays are language days, since we have English, 2 hours of french, history, and spanish/german. In french we continued our poetry analysis(which, as you can imagine, is not very easy for me) and in history we are studying colonization and decolonization, and they just skip right over what happened in the middle. I also had my French oral on Wednesday afternoon. It went well, but considering I got to choose the text I was tested on and the jury knew I was american and had fun asking me questions about America and my time in France rather than testing me on the documents, that is understandable. I mean, it is a 10 minute exposition where the jury(just some french teacher not from the school) gives a question, you have 30 minutes to prepare, and then you respond. Mine was "by what means does Voltaire critique his time?" and my supporting document was the beginning of The history of the travels of Scarmentado written by himself. Then there is a 10 minute interview where the jury is supposed to ask you about the complementary documents we studied in class. That was when she preferred to ask me about America, why I was in France, why I had had trouble with the theater section, why I had liked the mystery novel section, whether I read Murder mysteries in the USA, whether I watched them on TV, ect; so I only ended up talking about the documents for like 4 of the 10 minutes. The first oral, I was basically treated like all the other kids by the jury except that I had given a list of texts in advance. Here, it was much less formal and more fun, but I felt less like any other French kid. Speaking of being just like everyone else, we did get our anonymously corrected history tests back, and I got 13 out of 20, one of the better grades in the class(the average was about 11.7) I even got 1/1 for spelling and grammar, when there was a french kid who got 0!

Thursday was a normal Thursday except that we ended an hour early. Like I talked about before, when teachers are absent, there aren't substitutes(unless is is going to be a prolonged absence.) Class is just cancelled. On Thursday morning, the English teacher was absent, so our math class was moved to the English time, and we got to leave early. That is what is cool about the "One class of 30 kids with whom you have all of your classes" system, because had we all had other classes later, that wouldn't have worked. Friday, our SVT teacher was absent, so we got to finish at lunchtime, so her class was cancelled.

In Philosophy class, we finally actually did something logical and structured. Since the beginning of the year, that class had been complete chaos where the teacher just comes in and talks, half the kids don't listen, other kids shout out, he writes nothing on the board except a word or two, and in the whole year I had taken 5 pages of notes. One day he told us Descartes theory to prove the existence of God. One day we talked about the difference between a political regime and an ideology. One day we talked about the difference between the state and the nation. Well, we finally did something structured an logical: syllogisms. We learned the first four formulas of the 16 valid syllogisms, and I think we will probably continue that when we next have class. For those who don't know, the famous syllogism is the BARBARA, or the AAA, and an example is All men are mortal, all Greeks are men, therefore all Greeks are mortal.

So, to finish off this post, I was recently interviewed by someone at my school to put an article in the school paper. I was worried they would ask tricky questions, but it was easy stuff like my name and my decision to come here. I was also worried they'd use my responses word for word, but she promised to tweak them here and there to correct the language mistakes. And, she wanted me to come in and take a picture with friends from my class for the paper, so here you go. Have a good memorial day weekend.

The photo for the interview

A Very Busy Week

Well, here I am again, ready to report about yet another week of my life in France. If you're getting tired of these posts but read them anyway because you are my friend and/or feel obligated, don't worry. There are only about 7 weeks left to my 10 month adventure here. And, there are only three school weeks, so if you're tired of hearing about what I learn in SVT, don't fret. Now, with that being said, on to the discussion of my week(well, I guess it's more of a monologue than a discussion since no one ever comments on my posts, meaning that I'm probably just talking to myself. Anyway...)

As the title suggests, I had a very busy week. Monday morning was back to school and meant catching up on the missed tests after the handball tournament. We started Monday morning with 4 hours of French. This one was about poetry, and the question was "'Does a poet have to engage in his time and lead men to combat?' Answer the question in using poems you read in class, the poems provided(since first there were 5 poems to read and a quick question to answer) and poems you know. Also, be sure to explain your notion of the role of a poet during the essay." It was especially complicated for a few reasons. Firstly, I understood basically nothing in the poems, so using them was going to be difficult. Secondly, we hadn't studied any poetry yet this year except one little poem. And finally, I don't really like poetry much so I didn't have much background to use. But, in the end, I think my essay turned out pretty well. I know I've talked about it before, but the french format for a persuasive essay is Thesis(so yes) Antithesis(but no) and then Synthesis(the answer which combines yes and no.) So, I first said that poems could be an effective way to lead people to combat(using poems about starting a revolution, poems about reacting to genocide, and poems about the environment.) I followed with that not all poems are written to make us go to combat(haikus, Shakespearean sonnets, and other examples.) And at the end, I said that although not all poems are supposed to lead us to combat, they are supposed to make us think; the role of the poet is to make us think.

Anyway, Monday afternoon, I made up my 3 hour english test. Except, I finished in 2 hours, and since my teacher is nice, she let me go early. It was so nice to be able to crank out 500 words in about 10 minutes without any effort during the English test after working so hard for each sentence that morning with my french test.

To stretch my legs out after the whole day of sitting in a chair writing, I decided to go for a walk. There is a fair in town right now, so I strolled around to check it out. The fair is set up in two giant parking lots right in the middle of town. The lots seem so much bigger with all of the rides crammed into the space. It is just concession stands and rides, and apparently the fair just travels from town to town all year long. I guess it comes to Valenciennes about 2 or 3 times per year. The rides are your typical fair rides, thinks like bumper cars and lots of things that spin you around in lots of circles. The concession stands sell lots of fun and fatty things, lots of candy and churros and waffles and crepes.    

The traveling arcade that is part of the fair.

A form of merry go round. If you are wondering what the hanging minnie mouse is for, it is because they attach a pompom to it. Then, as the kids go round, the operator pulls up and down on the rope and the kids try to grab the pompom. Whoever gets it gets a free ride.

The giant chocolate stuffed donut that I got from the concession stand. It was a giant, plain donut, which the guy cut in half, filled with chocolate, and then microwaved. It was super yummy.

So, Tuesday I skipped school. I went to Lille to take a French test. It is an international test and if I pass, I will get a diploma that is valid for life that certifies that I have a certain level of competence in French. For example, if you have a C1, you can go to a French University without taking any language tests. And it is good to be able to put the test on a résumé if you are applying for a job with international relations.  I took the B2 level test, and I thought it was a bit too easy, and I should have taken a higher level. But, at least this way I feel like I am assured of passing, and after I continue taking French in college, I can think about taking the higher level. I will find out whether I passed at the end of the month. The test was similar to what I took as the AP test. We started with listening to a 3 minute recording twice, and then had a few minutes to answer some questions. Then we listened to a 2 minute recording once and answered other questions. Next was the reading comprehension, reading two texts and answering questions(multiple choice and free response.) And finally, we were supposed to write a 250 word persuasive essay about whether homeschooling was a good idea. I don't see how you can write a solid, organized essay in 250 words. I had finished my intro and one body paragraph with my 250 words, and ended up at about 600 words to get it all in. I hope they don't take off points for that. Wednesday, I had to come back to Lille to take the oral part of the test. I chose between two documents, had 30 minutes to prepare, then did a 10 minute presentation to a jury, then 10 minutes of question/response. I think it all went well, and I'm not that worried. Going to Lille those days, I felt so cool traveling independently. I was able to walk to the station myself, buy my own ticket, ride the train, catch the metro, and then walk to the university where the exam took place. It was nice to be autonomous.

Thursday was a day off, Ascension Day. To benefit from the holiday, my host family took us to Bruxelles.

 In the afternoon, we went for a walk in downtown Bruxelles. We strolled around the main square, up and down some of the pedestrian streets, and just did a big circle. Almost all of the stores were closed, but still did some window shopping. We also went to the galleries, which was fun because they are so unique with the ambiance of being outside but there being a roof. I particularly enjoyed the terraces of the cafes that were actually inside the gallery.

Wandering around the pedestrian streets, we saw typical Belgian cafes. Here, an accordion player was trying to earn a few euros by playing for these coffee drinking men.

This is the main city hall of Bruxelles.

The main square is 4 huge buildings that form a rectangular place in the middle.

The "outdoor cafes" inside the galleries.

We also went to see the famous statue of the little boy going pee pee. Apparently he is usually naked, but they dressed him up for the holiday. There was a huge crowd of people posing and taking pictures of this symbol of Bruxelles.

The famous statue

The street leading away from the peeing boy was basically chocolate stores and waffle stores.  Honestly, if I thought Brugges was a chocolate store on every corner, downtown Bruxelles was three times worse. Basically, one store out of two sold chocolate. Lots of the others sold waffles just like in the photos I had seen when I did a project on Belgian waffles in Eighth grade. They had all of the toppings lined up, and people walked around the streets desperately trying to eat the waffles without letting the chocolate sauce and the melted whipped cream run all over their hands(let's just say most people didn't succeed.) Although I didn't actually get a waffle, I think they are probably like the other waffles I have eaten in northern France. A lot of the specialties are the same in northern france and belgium. Personally, I have found that I don't like the waffles here because they are much too heavy and dense. I'm used to my mom's amazing light and fluffy waffles, so biting into a waffle here to get a mouthful of half-cooked dough is not super pleasant. Actually, I have seen how the waffle store in the mall of my town makes the waffles. They take a ball of dough, like bread dough, and put it into the waffle iron, rather than pouring in batter. The waffles are really, really dense. So, I'm planning to make waffles for my host family soon to share my family's tradition with them.

The 5 chocolate stores all squished into the corner next to the statue of the peeing boy had a giant chocolate version in the window. This store also had the waffle display in the window, too.

The super crowded chocolate and waffle alley that led from the statue to the main square.

The other sweet specialty of Belgium is speculoos, which are cinnamon flavored crunchy cookies. They are traditionally made in the form of St. Nicolas for the holiday at the beginning of January, but you can find them year round in the grocery store as just rectangular cookies. They are super yummy, and I'm hoping to bring some home with me. 

Today, I took my last of the grouped tests: SVT. It was 3 hours and 30 minutes long, and I ended up spending 45 minutes working on a certain exercise only to discover that it didn't change my answers at all. I was glad when it was over, because now all that is left is my french oral. It will be nice to finally be able to go to class next week without always being in catch-up mode.

Well, that's the update. I have my final handball match tomorrow, and then we are having a pizza party afterwards at our house. It should be cool. It is the first Saturday without "The Voice" in a long time, so it is good that we have something else to fill up our Saturday evening.

National Handball Championships

Well, I just got home from a very busy week full of tests and handball. Monday morning, I had an abrupt return to reality by starting the first day after vacation with a 4 hour history test. I wrote 4 pages about how Europe was the heart of the Cold War, wrote 3 pages about the difficulties in integrating immigrants in France of the 1970’s, and drew a completely random map about the “Spaces of France.” My map was completely ridiculous and I’m expecting 1 or 2 out of 5, but I was proud of my 2 other sections. Then, Monday afternoon, I had a 3 hour math test. It was long and complicated, and I didn’t have time to finish.

Tuesday was a day off, so I mostly just chilled out around the house and prepared for the rest of the week. Wednesday morning, I had a 3 hour physics/chemistry test, which I think went well. So, you might be wondering about all of these tests crammed together into a week. Like, don’t the teachers talk to each other? Yes, they do. This week was our week of grouped tests, meaning we had a test for each subject during the space of a week. It is a practice for the Bac when all of the tests are within a short period of time. For most of the kids in my class, the tests started Wednesday morning and went morning and afternoon each day, the last one being French tomorrow morning. And a quick note while we are on the subject of French, I thought you guys might be interested to hear that I got 15/20, a really good score, on my last French essay test. That was the one where I wrote all about how American writers/speechmakers (like Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Luther King Jr.) helped to establish new freedoms. So anyway, I said “For most of the kids in my class...” so why did I start these tests last Monday? Well, Wednesday afternoon, the school handball team loaded into 2 cars and drove off to National Championships.

The team is me, three other girls in my class, my host sister, and 3 other seniors. We played three games earlier this year to qualify for the national tournament, which was this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The tournament was the best school handball teams from Catholic schools. At first, this seems like it would be easier than playing against all of the public schools too, right? Since there are less catholic schools? Well, not really. This tournament is actually harder because the “Sport Étude”(Sport Study) schools are allowed to participate, and they are forbidden to participate in the other tournament. Sport Étude is schools where instead of being in Science track, or Language track, ect, the kids choose from middle school to be in Sports track. They do about 10 hours of intense sports each week during the school day. So you can imagine, these kids have been playing handball together and having many hours of training together since they were in middle school. We ended up 3rd place in the tournament, beating out one of these Sport Étude schools in the consolation match, so we were really excited.

So, at first, I thought I was going to be bored at the tournament. I mean, 2 games per day, what else were we going to do. But, it turned out to be very busy. We got there in the late afternoon on Wednesday, having only had 2 hours to drive. One of the schools had come in a bus and driven 11 hours to get there. We checked in to the tournament, got our t-shirts, and then headed off to put our bags in the hotel. The rooms were tiny, like the size of a cruise ship cabin. We could barely fit out suitcases in the room, and to open the door to the bathroom, we had to slide our two beds together. Luckily, we didn’t really end up spending much time in the room. After a few minutes to settle in, we went off for dinner. All of our meals were included in the tournament fees, and we ate at a middle/high school cafeteria where the food was actually pretty good, but the portion sizes were too small for athletes playing two games per day. After dinner, we went to the “Welcome to the tournament” speeches and they did a random draw for the pools. Once the speeches were done, the coaches were to have a quick, 10 minute meeting and then we would be freed. That 10 minutes became 45 minutes, so we were quite pleased when the coaches finally came out and we got to go back to the hotel. Our team had an 8:30 am game the next day, so we went right to bed.

Thursday morning, we rolled out of bed, had yummy breakfast at the hotel(fresh baguettes and croissants) and then headed to our game. We lost 15-5, but the team we were playing was really good and ended up getting second place. After our game, we hung around to watch the next few games before heading off to eat lunch at the cafeteria. Since we had early games, our lunch was at 11:20, which actually turned out to be lucky because it meant we were in the process of eating before any of the kids from the school came, and we got first choice on salad and dessert. In the afternoon we won our game by 8 goals, watched a few more games, then headed back to the hotel to relax a bit before dinner. After dinner(this time we were the last ones to eat because our coaches were the last ones out of the meeting, so we didn’t even get dessert) we went to explore the town. The main square was completely empty. As in not one living soul moved as we drove through the streets. Eventually, our coach went into a bar and asked if there was a creperie in town, so we went there. It turned out to be this adorable little family owned creperie. The menus were just printed papers slid into pages protectors, but the covers were hand-decorated and there were little clip on butterflies and ladybugs on the front. The woman took our order while her husband made the crepes and their grandson ran around the restaurant until his mom came to pick him up. Since we were basically the only people in the restaurant, once our order had been filled, the woman came to socialize and ask us where we were from and stuff. The crepes were delicious, too. I got a crepe filled with salted caramel and it was just amazing. I was sorely tempted by the crepe filled with a scoop of coffee ice cream and homemade hot fudge sauce but didn’t think it would be very good for my handball playing the next day. Once back at the hotel, it was time for bed and relaxation as we prepared for another day of tough competition.

Our very first game in our awesome blue jerseys. Actually, I liked the blue uniforms the best, but since we lost both games we played in blue and won the 3 games we played in green, my teammates preferred the green.

Friday morning, our game was at 11:30, so we got to sleep in longer. We got up at the same time we had started out game the day before. And we played at the same time we had eaten lunch the day before. We won our morning game, putting us in second place in our pool and qualifying us for the semi-final that afternoon. After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to shower(since we hadn’t had time to do it before lunch) and then left again to watch the other semi-final. Our semi-final was a bit of a nightmare. One of our best players had gotten hurt that morning, and we were playing the team that ended up winning. The injured girl didn’t really play much, so we had no substitute and got slaughtered, losing by like 20 goals. But, we knew going in that we didn’t really have much chance, so we just tried to use it as practice. After the game, we headed to dinner, then back to the hotel to crash into bed. That night, the other two teams at the hotel were completely obnoxious and made all kinds of noise. We had an 8:30 am game and needed to sleep, but they were in the hallways, slamming doors, chanting, screaming, running, laughing until past midnight. Even after we went out and asked them to be quiet they wouldn’t stop.

Saturday morning was our final match. It was super intense, and the girl who was injured played the whole game anyway. She got pushed down again and her injured wrist was stepped on, but she played through. By the end of the game, at least three people were on the verge of tears from pain but all battled on. Our coach was really proud of our courage in fighting on and never giving up. In fact, the girl with the injured wrist went to the hospital on Saturday afternoon and it turns out she has a fractured wrist and is in a cast until early june. So, she won a medal with a broken wrist. And she scored at least half of our goals that game. We were losing at halftime, 8-6. But, we pushed through and ended up winning 12-11. We got the ball back with 20 seconds left and as we heard the whole gym start counting down “10, 9, 8...” we could not have been happier to hear that buzzer ring. We showered, watched the finals, got our medals, then loaded into the cars to head home, nurse our bruises, and most of all, sleep. But of course, we had to watch the finals of “The Voice” before going to bed.

Warming up before our 8:30 am 3rd place game. That why the gym is empty. For all of the other games, the teams playing before or after were sitting in all of the chairs on the side, cheering and making noise. Actually, the early games were nice because we could actually hear our coach's advice.

Getting our medals

"The Podium". Us, the winners, and the 2nd place team. Both the winners and the 2nd place team were from the same region, Brétagne, which had a reputation for being really good at handball.

The team: Top row from left to right: Mr. Hachet(he came to cheer and drive us), my PE teacher, me, Camille, Marie, Charlotte(our goalie who is actually a soccer goalie and had played just one handball game before the tournament), our coach. Bottom row: Aimée(Our coach's daughter who plays on our club team but doesn't go to our school so couldn't play with us. She came to support us for the 3rd place game,) Alix, Océane, and Tiphaine.

Well, I don't have room to bring the trophy home even though no one else wanted it. But, I am coming home with an awesome medal. Not bad, actually. In one year, 2 first place medals from Track and a 3rd place national championships medal from handball. Good souvenirs that don't take up much space at all.

So, I now have to catch up on the tests I missed while at the tournament. I have French and english tomorrow, then I have an international French language test on tuesday and Wednesday(to get a life-long certificate stating that I have this certain level of French which can be used when applying for jobs or whatnot), then Thursday is a holiday, and Friday I have my SVT test. So, another busy week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Eureka: I Found it...and a Vacation Recap

So, I finally found it: a chocolate chip cookie recipe that turns out fluffy cookies that stay fluffy and chewy even when cooled, rather than becoming as crunchy as a potato chip and flat as a crepe as soon as they cool. However, while pleased with the texture of these cookies, I found that they lacked flavor. That great caramel taste that I love so much was lost in this recipe. So, all in all, this isn’t THE ONE, the perfect chocolate chip cookie. So, my search for the perfect recipe continues, but next time I need a recipe for cookies that puff and hold their form, these are a good choice.

The fluffy chocolate chip cookies (The day they came out of the oven there were 50, the next day by lunchtime, there were 4. I guess that means they were well liked)

And, a funny story regarding this “Eureka I’ve found it” reference. So, if you’ve known me very long, you know I have a major tendency to get songs stuck in my head, and I remember them forever. I went through a period of singing the songs from RCTC’s Peter Pan which I wasn’t even in, just because I had been to the show a few times to watch my brother while my mom did volunteer hours. I learned the songs for school musicals and could still sing every word three years later. So, this little reference is from my third grade school play about American history and as I thought of the title, I immediately started singing the song in my head, incredibly surprised at how much I remembered of “Eureka, I’ve found it, and it’s been worth the wait. Eureka I’ve found it, this is the golden state!” So, now I have this stinking happy third grade musical song completely stuck in my head, and if you know me, you know that once I have a song stuck in my head, I sing it under my breath uncontrollably at almost all times and it doesn’t leave until I get a new song into my brain.

So, now on the the vacation recap. The first days of break were low key and we didn’t do too much. There was spring cleaning and painting going on. I made chocolate chip lava cookies, which we ate accompanied by strawberries and topped with more melted chocolate. They were fabulous, and I don’t ever again need to buy an overpriced molten chocolate cookie sundae at a restaurant since I can easily make them at home.

Molten Chocolate chip lava cookies, topped with melted chocolate and served with strawberries. Pure bliss.

On Tuesday of the first week of vacation, we took a day trip to Bruges, in Belgium. It is nicknamed “Venice of the North” because it is so beautiful. We got the the city, which was crowded with tourists, parked the car, and then set off to explore.

The central square in Bruges.

The little bear on the right side of the crest in on the building is the symbol of the city.

We walked around for a bit before stopping for a snack. In France, there is at least one bakery on practically ever corner. In Belgium, it is a chocolatier on every corner, and since this was a tourist town, it was more like 2 chocolate chops for each corner. We went to the most well-known one, and bought some chocolates to munch on as we continued strolling around.

The window display at the famous chocolate store. I didn't get any pictures inside because it was too crowded with pushy tourists, but it was yummy looking.

Another Chocolate shop. As you can see, things are geared toward the tourists, since this sign is in English, not French or Flemish. To me, these looked like giant chocolate rice crispy treats, but I'm not actually sure what they were.

We briefly toured a cathedral, decided not to wait in line to climb the bell tower, and then headed off for lunch.

This is one of the few Michelangelo sculptures that is kept outside of Italy, and one of the prize pieces of this cathedral. It's the virgin Mary with baby Jesus.

Rather than eating at a restaurant in the main square (since we knew all of those restaurants would be tourist oriented) we found a tiny restaurant on a small side street. It was clearly a local shop, with its “regulars.” We arrived at 11:30 and there were still lots of people there with a cup of coffee and the newspaper eating their breakfast. The place was called “The Daily Bread” and it was all about...you guessed it: bread. There were also tons of jellies and spreads. The breakfast special was a couple of slices of bread and your choice of the jellies. But, since we were there for the lunch, the waiter kindly cleared away the jellies and left us with the menus. For lunch, it was all open faced sandwiches on the homemade bread.  I had a chicken, mozzarella, grilled zucchini tartine, which was super yummy. And since it was a bakery, we had to get dessert, too. Since we were in Belgium, I decided to go for something with chocolate and chose a slice of chocolate tart. It was basically a chocolate overload: a brownie crust, topped with chocolate fudge filling, with chocolate ganache on top.

After lunch, we decided to do the famous boat tour on the canals. We rode all around the city, looking at the architecture and listening to the guide. We were in the Flemish part of Belgium, so the guide first said everything in Flemish, then in French, and then in English. But, his accent was so strong that I had to listen to both the French and the English to understand, because if I just listened to one or the other, I’d only understand about half. It started hailing on us about halfway into our 30 minute tour. We hid under one of the many bridges, but after waiting 10 minutes with no change in the weather, the guide just handed out umbrellas and we continued. (Sorry in advance for the excessive number of canal pictures, but it was just fun to get to see the city from the different angle of being on the water.)

And we're off!

My personal favorite picture

After the tour, we walked around some more, going to a former Béguinage(a place where nuns live together) and finishing the designated tourist walking tour. (Plus, of course, taking more pictures.

So, we toured the town by boat, then walked next to the canals on foot and basically did the same tour again.

We finished off the day by going to a little café and getting Belgian Waffles before heading home. To be honest, I was not impressed with the famous waffles. They were nice and fluffy, but the inside was uncooked and gooey. Actually, I think that in all the time I have been here, I haven’t eaten a single waffle that I would say was sufficiently cooked through. I guess it just means I will appreciate my mom’s waffles even more when I get back and she makes them for me.

Sorry, my digital camera doesn't have a macro lens so it doesn't work very well for close-up food photos. But, this is my attempt to photograph a Belgian waffle bought in Belgium for you.

On Thursday, we started our trek across France to Toulouse and my grandparents' house.

So, a quick note about freeways in France before continuing my talk about vacation. Here, you often have to pay to use the freeway. As long as there is a road that runs parallel to the freeway, you will most likely have to pay to be on the freeway. I’m not sure exactly how the system works, but every so often, we drove through toll booths(like when crossing a bridge) and our little machine went beep. I think it’s like a fastrak for the bay bridge, and the number of kilometers is recorded and your account charged.

Days were slow-paced and relaxing, with the only real meeting times being meals. Everyone sort of did their own thing. Days always began with breakfast, each person getting up when they wanted and people sort of cycling through the kitchen.

My host grandma makes homemade jellies and jam, and the pantry was completely full. We had the choice of multiple jams each morning on the multiple choices of local, fresh bread.

The lunch and dinner meals were long and fun, with multiple courses and cheese platters with local cheeses. Plus we often had desserts, whether it be my homemade cookies or bakery cakes or my host sister’s chocolate strawberry tart or store bought cookies and yogurt.

When we had good weather, we ate outside. Looks like we were eating in a local park, huh? Except with all the comforts of having the kitchen just 5 steps away. The only problem: we couldn't leave the cheese platter on the table for more than 5 minutes or the creamy cheese would become a giant puddle on the platter.

I did some really fun things during the trip, although I have to admit that I got really bored at times. I went one day to the big market.  There were tons of stands selling local stuff, like olives and garlic. And then there were the cheese trucks. Some sold multiple kinds of cheese, while others were dedicated to a certain type, like only goat cheeses. We even ordered freshly-made pizzas from the little truck with an oven in it. So then, of course, we were forced to kill 20 minutes wandering around while waiting for them. Which meant more time to explore.

The big outdoor market place. A lot of the stands were under that roof, but there were too many, so they were spread out all over the surrounding streets as well.

As you can see, they were selling chickens. There were even cages with pigeons. It almost felt like the county fair with all the poultry in cages.

The olive stand, one of the local specialties

Another evening, I went to a professional soccer game.  It was #1 Montpellier vs #7 Toulouse. Montpellier scored in the 2nd minute and then it was 0-0 for the rest of the game. So, it wasn’t the most exciting match of the century, but it was still cool. Rather than going into all of the gory soccer details which I’m sure most of you don’t care about, here’s a few cultural points. Firstly, there were way less treats than in the USA. In the states, the main reason most kids go to a professional baseball of football game is to bug their parents the whole time to get a ballpark treat. Here, there was maybe one snack bar for each three sections. And all they sold were 4 types of sandwiches, french fries, a few candy bars, and drinks. But, the sandwiches were actually really good, and not that overpriced either. Secondly, there were practically no souvenir shops. I was planning to try to pick up something silly to bring home, but even though we walked past at least 10 sections of the stadium, no souvenir shops.  Finally, I’m not sure what the rule is in US soccer stadiums, but here, they weren’t allowed to show the fouls on the replay board because it could have caused controversy if the referee had made a mistake.

Here's the stadium before the game started. Once the game had begun, it filled up quite a bit, but there were still plenty of seats. We had good, close-up seats because everyone was afraid of rain so had bought seats further back to be sure that they would be under the cover. We were lucky it didn't rain, since we were right on the edge.

We went on a hike one day, starting from a little village. At first, I thought we were hiking into the wilderness, away from houses and cars. We hiked for a few hours, and then suddenly our hiking path crossed a road. And, we saw houses all around. We had arrived at a lake with secondary residences surrounding it, and lots of people fishing. We ate lunch at the lake, before heading back down the mountain.

The lake where we ate our great lunch of sandwiches made on freshly bought baguettes and cheese we had brought, followed by cookies for dessert.

This was an enclosure for a family of goats at the beginning of the hike. But, somehow these two little ones found a way to get out but couldn't get back in. They walked along the outside while the mom called to them from the inside.

Another afternoon, I went to a medieval town to go to a museum. It was super weird to think about the fact that the town was completely built before the Americas were even discovered by Europeans. But, obviously civilization had to exist before the united states were discovered or who would have sent the ships? We visited a cathedral constructed almost entirely in bricks, rather than in stone. It was much more simple than the others I have seen, because there wasn’t any carving in the brick, as compared to the stone cathedrals covered with carved-in statues. The museum was interesting, too. We went to see a certain exhibit about a painter. It was funny for me because in each room of the exhibit, there were laminated papers that told the story of the painter’s life at the time of the paintings, and explained certain pictures. And each time, there were plenty of papers in spanish, english, and german, but none in french. When I did find in french, I would read in french, but as soon as I put it back, someone would anxiously snatch it up. I felt guilty reading in english, but at the same time, I felt guilty taking a paper in french while there were others who needed the french, and I could take the english.

The all brick cathedral.

The beautiful town looking down onto the river.

A village on the hillside. They were built like this to be safer again invasions.

So, the 2nd and final round of the election is finished. The winner was François Hollande, the socialist candidate and the challenger. The voting was on Sunday, and the 2nd round is always the first sunday in May.  During the week of vacation, there was a debate. It was quite different from the American presidential debates. First of all, there was only one, rather than the many in the USA. Secondly, both candidates were in dark suits with a white shirt and a dark tie, rather than the reds and blues symbolic of republicans and democrats. The colors are apparently symbolic here too, but the candidates chose to wear “presidential, non-partisan” outfits. And, considering that one of the big themes discussed was partisanship and how the new president would need to “regroup” the french people, it was probably a good choice. The debate took place in a tiny TV studio, with just the 2 candidates face to face across a table and then the 2 TV journalists that were controlling the debate. The journalists’ only jobs were to make sure the candidates got approximately equal speaking time and to make sure they didn’t spend the entire debate on one theme but moved through the multiple planned ones. Beyond that, it was mostly just the candidates talking to/attacking each other. There was no live audience, but there were apparently about 18 million tele-spectators at the peak. The debate didn’t start until 9:00 pm and then continued without stop until about 11:45 pm.  I managed to watch from start to finish, understanding probably as much as I would have understood had it been in english, only getting really confused when they started in on the economy and tons of statistics and terms that I didn’t understand for measuring economic growth. The debate was very free flow, so different from the American versions with exactly 2:30 for a response for each candidate per question and then a timed rebuttal and all of the structure. Here, the candidates interrupted each other, talked over each other, insulted each other...at points it was just funny. There was one moment when one candidate asked the other a question to which he didn’t want to respond and they went back and forth with “Answer it” “No” “Answer it” “No” until finally the one responding said “Look, I’m not your student, you aren’t my teacher.” In my opinion, the journalists controlling the debate didn’t really do their job, but at the same time, the candidates didn’t respect them. They would try to make them stop interrupting to let one candidate catch up on his time, but the other would interrupt again after 30 seconds. They would try to ask them to move to a new theme, but the candidates would say “Just one more phrase about _______” and then they would continue 5 more minutes on said theme.

The newspapers the day after the debate broke down the speeches, judged people’s reactions, and pulled out certain quotes. I read a few articles, and I found that I really agreed with what most of them said, even though I really can’t say I care that much. But I noticed a lot of the same things the journalists did: Sarkozy spent the majority of the time speaking to the TV studio journalists, or to his hands, but often refused to look Hollande in the eyes. Hollande did a fair amount of interrupting, much more than Sarkozy, to a point that it became a bit ridiculous that he couldn’t even finish a sentence. Sarkozy didn’t ever really explain his propositions for the next 5 years if elected, since he had to spend much of the debate defending what he had done during his previous term. They spent a lot of time arguing about economic statistics and accusing each other of lying, when they were just using different criteria. They argued loads about Germany and its economic principals to the point that it felt like a debate about Germany at times. They didn’t ever really address the issues that people cared about, but instead focussed on the economy in general(not really proposed solutions) and nuclear, just barely touching immigration and the only international issue discussed was the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan. The articles tended to agree in saying that the debate didn’t really help anyone decide. Those people already decided felt that their candidate had blown the other one out of the water. And those people undecided turned off the TV just as ambivalent about their vote for the 2nd round as when they had turned it on to watch the debate.

So, I’ll finish off this section about the election with something nerdy and philosophical that I noticed while watching the debate, but which I’m sure applies elsewhere as well. Having heard politics being discussed a few weeks before the first round, and having gone to the voting office, I knew some political opinions and which candidates were supported. Just with those two little points and the comments I had been hearing, I found myself immediately drawn toward said candidate during the debate. I found myself looking to find fault with the other and see him as right. I found myself not listening to what they said but how they said it as I looked for aggressiveness in the “less favorable” candidate. I mean, here I was, a 16 year old american, having never even fully read their printed statements and I was already internally “rooting for” one candidate over the other. If the atmosphere around me just for the few weeks leading to the election could influence me so strongly, what does that tell us about the influence our parents have on us overall. I mean, look at going to the grocery store. If I go with my mom and she sends me to get the peanut butter, I’ll grab the jar of Skippy just because that’s what we always have. It’s tradition. I think our parents have a strong influence over our education choices just from what they say offhandedly throughout our childhood, the sweatshirts we see hanging in the closet, or the specific football games we watch. As we get older, we have more freedom to make decisions for ourselves, but our we really the ones making the decision? Entering middle school, we might have free rein over what we wear to school rather than our parents laying out our clothes for us, but aren’t we still influenced but what brands or styles our parents wear? I mean, do we really make these decisions for ourselves or are we just becoming the outlet of our parents. Rather than them openly making the decision for us, they might just inadvertently influence us to the point that we just make the same choice they would have made, whether to avoid disappointing them or because there influence has touched us so deeply that we actually believe what we are doing. So, bringing this all back to the elections. Is 18 really old enough to vote? A fair number of 18 year-olds still live at home and are subject to the influence of their parents 24/7. Even before doing their research on the candidates and reading the propositions, these teenagers have most likely been hearing their parents’ opinions. As they read or watch the debates, I’m guessing they have preconceived notions that are hard to shake and obtain objectivity, just as I did in watching the debate knowing basically nothing about either candidate going into it. I should have been the perfect objective observer, seeing as how I didn’t really know each candidate’s position, I should have been able to fairly judge their performances during the debate. But, I found myself unable to see them in an even light just because of a comment here or there tossed around. So, to my teenage friends out there, next time you are facing a decision, stop just for a moment and think, “Am I the one actually making this choice, or am I just following my parents?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying parental influence is a bad thing. Obviously, if growing up hearing your parents make bad remarks about drugs keeps you away from them too, that’s wonderful. But just make sure to actually pay attention. With age and freedom to make decisions comes the responsibility to actually think. 

Well, that’s it for this really long update. I have five weeks of school left, lots of tests coming up,  and I head off to French National School Handball championships this coming Wednesday afternoon. Should be a busy week.