Week Eight

The last week of school before the vacation was last week.

Monday was very short and relatively easy. The kids who are going to Boston left over the weekend and my Anglais-Euro history went with them so no class this week. On top of that my art teacher wasn’t there and I didn’t have a class before art so I got to go home from school three hours early. Last weekend I found a cool place to slackline and went back on Monday afternoon. For those of you who don’t know, a slackline is similar to a tightrope but made of essentially a tow strap and ratchet. I got into it in the US and am now continuing to do it here.

Tuesday night I borrowed my host dad’s bike and went for a bike ride. I almost didn’t do it but I am so glad that I did. I found so much amazing stuff and discovered so much about my city. I am getting pretty comfortable navigating the areas around my house. I took the bike and basically took any turn I found interesting. I found an amazing park bench where I wrote in my journal, a great place to watch a sunset, and I trail that leads to a gravel road, which leads to an amazing fields. As I was returning home I found a field full of cattle that was literally right next to town. It sort of blew my mind that something so rural could exist so near to a place that is so urban.

Wednesday I did four hours of sport. I had an hour and a half at school, one hour of pilates, and an hour and a half of Jazz. It was great and it makes me feel very active. I know that gaining weight on exchange is normal and I shouldn’t worry about it but I think that doing things like this or going on a walk or a bike ride can really help me prevent some of that weight gain.

Thursday night I went to a dinner with Rotary. It wasn’t that interesting, but it was fun. The point of the evening was to watch a presentation of someone who works in some aspect of law enforcement. His presentation incredibly boring but it was nice to go to the Rotary meeting. As I have discovered however, Rotary in French is a very social thing and while the point of the meeting was watching this presentation, there was a lot of time allotted for socialization. I found this to be the same in the US, at Rotary meetings are generally nice to go to because they generally care about you and are interested in what you are doing. I would say that my best language practice when I first got here was at the first Rotary meeting. It’s a place I feel very comfortable speaking French.

Saturday night to Sunday was Cécile’s birthday party. Öykü, another exchange student from Turkey who is living in Les Sables d’Olonne, came. It was nice to be around another exchange student. I feel by far the most connected with the other exchange students. It’s nice having someone who shares your struggles completely and understands what you’re going through. I took Öykü slacklining and then showed her all the things I discovered. It was nice getting to share that with another person. I’ve been taking these adventures by myself and that’s nice because it gives me time to think and relax away from French but it’s also cool to show another person.

Two things happened this week to make me realize that my French has actually improved a lot in the almost two months I’ve been here. I’ve known about this party since just after I got here and when I found out about I thought there would be no way I would understand what people were telling me. However, I actually found that I understood a lot of what was said and was able to have some real conversations. Also, before leaving I watched a video of an exchange student speaking in French with English subtitles. Before leaving when I watched it I relied solely of the subtitles and didn’t understand really any of the French but I watched it again and I could understand everything she said without looking at the subtitles. The video is here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndrOE_ZoazE. Next week is my two months here and that blows my mind.