So, moving on. I have to say, this was a pretty great but very different final full week of school. I’m used to USA final weeks which mean taking finals and then signing yearbooks all the time. Here, I haven’t taken a test in the last few weeks and finals don’t exist. The teachers must figure that the kids are going to study for the bac, so it is better to maximize class-time to help them review and answer last minute questions. In other classes besides French and History, the classes with the bac, we have sort of stopped working. In math today, we finished our last chapter, did some final exercises, and then I taught some girls how to play egyptian war while the teacher chatted with some of the other kids. In other classes we watch movies or talk about the French open tennis results. And we even had a party/snack in our last SVT class today. I mean peanut butter blossoms, and even my friends who claimed they don’t like peanut butter said they were incredible. I mean, peanut butter blossoms are one of my specialties, but I was still a bit worried given the general French aversion to peanut butter. And, since they don’t have Hershey kisses here, I was stuck using just pieces of chocolate broken from candy bars. Actually, an interesting thing to note: here in France, they call them squares of chocolate, even though they are actually rectangles. Like in a chocolate bar, there are 4 rows of 4 rectangles, so when you take a few, you actually say “Do you want a few squares of chocolate?” Funny, huh?(Well not really, but for a nerd like me obsessed with French, I think it is. But it’s kind of like the way we call Football football when it is a game we play with out hands. Oh, and speaking of football, I saw 4 guys at the local park playing American football today. It was super funny to see a football for the first time in ages. They weren’t very good, and the guy playing quarterback couldn’t throw a consistent spiral, but they looked like they were having fun.) Anyway, back to the snack. There were lots of super yummy things, like homemade brownies and chocolate cakes. And store bought candy and marble cakes and drinks. And my friend Laure made a caramel version of rice krispy treats where she melted caramels, marshmallows, and butter, and then added the cereal. They were super good, but two bites and you felt like you had just gained three pounds. But my favorite treat was a sort of brioche with a chocolate swirl through it. It was freshly made and still warm, since the girls that brought it go home for lunch so wrapped it in foil at lunch and brought it for our snack right after lunch. It was just amazing.
Even though I didn’t have a yearbook to sign, I still found a way to have my friends and classmates write me notes. I got a plain t-shirt with the school’s logo on it when I volunteered at the open house. So, I went to the local bookstore and bought special marker/paint pens specially designed to write on cards and fabric. I brought them to school and meant just to have people sign the shirt, but they were all very enthusiastic and wrote really long, nice notes. It was so touching and I am just so lucky to have had such a great class all throughout the year. I know I will keep my shirt and my class photo for a long time as a souvenir of the great year.
Now for some highlights from the week:
Let’s start with last weekend and the recap of the bicycle camping trip I promised. The trip was lots of fun, even though it rained and we didn’t get to do the challenge course. We met up and the old train station and rode about 25 km along an old railroad track that had been transformed into a bike path(if you know about rails to trails in the states, it’s the same idea.) Then, we turned off the path and biked to the campsite just a little ways from the trail. Our sagwagons arrived with our luggage and tents and we quickly set up the sleeping area. I ended up pitching three tents because I knew what I was doing thanks to years of summer camp and girl scouts. It was cool to help my friends out and teach them something new. After the tents were pitched and we had run through the showers, we piled into the cars to go out to dinner. We had originally planned to go to dinner on the bikes, but everyone was really tired so we decided to go in the cars. It was a good idea because we spent so long talking and hanging out at dinner that it was pretty dark by the time we got back. We went to dinner in Belgium at a friterie(fries restaurant.) There were 30 of us between students, host siblings, host parents, and AFS volunteers, so we practically took over the whole restaurant. We had a great time telling jokes and sharing stories as we ate. After dinner, it was back to the campsite and crashing into bed to be ready for the next day. In the morning, it was pouring rain so we quickly ate breakfast(freshly bought bread and coffee) and then packed up the tents. We decided to just start our trek back instead of staying at the campsite and doing paddleboats or any of the other activities. We took a different route on the way back, rolling along tiny trails with branches whipping our faces and mud splattering our legs, but it was more adventurous and lots of fun. We were a bit worried about lunch since it was still pouring, but we managed to call the town hall of a little town we passed through and they opened a public room for us so we had a dry place to eat. It was one of the girl’s little host brother’s 11th birthday, so his family brought us chocolate cake in the sagwagon. After lunch, it was back to the trail and headed home where our host families were waiting for us. Overall, it was a great trip with only a few minor bike problems: one flat tire, two broken sets of brakes, and one lost pedal.
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| Getting ready for the camping trip. We had nice weather on Saturday, but lots of rain on Sunday. |
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| Pitching the tents |
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| Doing what AFSers do best: taking photos. This one is in the friterie. This is America, Chile, France, and Malaysia. |
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| Another restaurant photo: Italy France America |
Here, if the video works, is a video of all of us singing "Happy Birthday" in our native language for Sylwia's host brother.
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| This was our meal: Fries and a sausage. Here, the joke is that everyone knows what is in the sausage but no one says it, just like Americans with Coca Cola. |
Monday was a normal day of school with a movie in both my English class and my DNL class. In English, we are watching a Micheal Moore movie about guns in America, and in DNL, we are watching a movie about WW2 in V.O.(version originale) so it is actually in Dutch with french subtitles.
On Tuesday, I had 3 hours of class from 9-12: math and 2 hours of PE. In PE, we went to the pool for the last time, but since we had already been graded, we could do what we wanted. We used the water slide and the boys did flips from the blocks. We got out the water polo balls and played monkey in the middle. And 7 of the boys in my class threw both of the PE teachers into the pool, which was hilariously funny. After PE, I went out to lunch with my friends. We went to the pasta bar and actually got a table(something really rare since there aren’t very many and we normally just take it to go) so once we had finished eating, we stayed and talked for a long time afterwards. We didn’t have to rush back to class so we just hung out, and it was really nice to just be the three of us and be able to talk and really listen to each other.
I went to the bakery the other day on impulse. I think I was really beginning to realize that my time here is ticking down, so I needed to make sure I got one last palmier before I left. Actually, I was really disappointed. Not with the palmier, but with the fact that after the large number I have ordered here, you would think I would be able to order them correctly. But no, the baker still had to ask me to repeat my order, which frustrated me that my accent is still so bad.
We lost the nice weather I was so excited about last week. It has been raining off an on all week. We are in a period of 5 minute storms, so we will go from blue sky to pouring rain to blue sky in the span of 7 minutes. And I think the weather has decided it doesn’t like me and wants to make sure I get my fill of Northern france’s rain before I leave. The day I went to the grocery store to buy the peanut butter for my cookies, it was sunny when I decided to go and went to get my coat. As I stepped outside, it started to sprinkle, and as I left the store with my bag of groceries, I felt like I was under a cold shower. And as soon as I got back home and started to bake, the sun came back out. And the exact same thing happened today as I got ready to walk to guitar. It was just sprinkling as I got ready to go, so I grabbed an umbrella. And as I walked back outside again, the shower came again. And once I was back home, no more rain. It just doesn’t seem fair.
I watched “Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis” the other day, the number 2 most successful film in French cinemas behind “Titanic.” It is about a man who gets sent to the North of France to work as a punishment for bad behavior. And it is all about the stereotypes and the images that people of the South have of Northern France. Like that it rains all the time, or that they talk weirdly. It was really cool for me because I actually understood the jokes after having lived in the North for this whole year. I was proud when I even understood when the characters were speaking Ch’ti, which is the “dialect” here in the North and is slightly different from normal French.
Well, I guess that’s it for the update. I have 1.5 days of school left, which is just incredible. I just can’t believe this is all coming to an end.
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