Week Seventeen

Vacation is sweet.

Christmas is quickly approaching. It’s weird that I’m going to spend Christmas and this holiday season away from home. This will be the first time that I haven’t been with my family for Christmas. The day of Christmas also marks four months here. It’s actually shaping up to be a pretty big day. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this holiday is celebrated differently in these two countries.

Last week was my first of three weeks of vacation. I took last week as my week of rest. Meaning that I stayed up late and slept in. I know it was probably not the best use of my time but it was really nice to get some time to relax and not have to worry about school or anything. This is what dominated a majority of my week but I tried to do something productive at least once a day.

Thursday night was my Rotary club’s Christmas party. It was hosted at a woman who writes fairy tales’ house. The party was fun and it was nice to talk to everyone in the club about what I’m up to and what my plans are for the rest of my exchange. The husband of the hostess plays the piano and the couple had put together a piece of music and songs that went with one the fairy tales of the hostess. It was a very cool experience and it was cool to hear her work.

Friday afternoon was the Christmas party at my school so I went back for that. It started with a trashcan drumming performance by the kids who take music. It was intense and very loud. I’m sure the people in downtown could hear the drumming. After the drumming, the principal said a few words and then all the exchange students had to introduce themselves and say “Merry Christmas” in their languages. I’m pretty sure that is all I’m going to be known for from now on. There was a concert after, the kids were very talented and it was well done.

Saturday evening we hosted my host families at the house for appetizers. I helped my parents cook the food before hand as well as the five foie gras for Christmas. It was great to see my families again. We ate and talked. My host sisters really seem to get along. I hope that we can continue to do these sorts of meals throughout my exchange. I want to stay connected to my host families.

Sunday I wanted to go to the Bolshoi’s broadcast of the Nutcracker at the movie theater but it was sold out! I couldn’t believe it and I was a little depressed. This is the first year in a while where I haven’t watched or participated in a Nutcracker. It was very strange not having my life dominated by the Nutcracker this winter. Sunday night there was a parade downtown of three women who sang in these huge skirts. Also downtown there was a plastic “ice skating” rink and an ice sculptor. I said this before, Christmas is intense is France.

I saw on Facebook this week that a kid from my school in the US was in Paris for vacation. I don’t know why but that struck me as very odd. I guess that for me France has been this place that is solely mine. Everyone that I know here is someone I met on exchange or through exchange. It felt like a different planet and it was really weird that someone from my life, even someone I don’t really know, was here, in my new world.

Week Sixteen

La semaine des compositions. Finals week. For the other kids I’m sure that these tests seemed daunting and scary but they were all right for me; much less stress inducing.

Monday was our last normal, complete day before the vacation. It was a normal day but my art teacher ended up not being there again. We all went to the classroom expecting it to be a normal day but she never showed up so we got to leave. I realized the other day that we haven’t had class more often than we have had it. We even have a replacement. She came for two weeks and then wasn’t there Monday. I’m not sure how much art we’re actually going to end up doing.

Tuesday I finished right after eating lunch. This marked the official start of finals week. Tuesday my class had a three-hour economics test, which I didn’t have to take, thankfully. Wednesday was four hours of history. I had to take it but a much easier version so I left after an hour. Thursday was three hours of English and an hour and a half of science. English was obviously very easy and I finished in an hour, science wasn’t horrible but I know I didn’t do well. Friday was two hours of math. All in all it was sort of an exhausting week but now I’m on vacation for three weeks so I can’t complain too much.

Friday night my host dad said that we were going to an authentic American restaurant to eat dinner. I didn’t know what that entailed but it turned out to be McDonald’s. It may not seem like that big a deal but this was the first time I’d been since being in France so I was pretty excited. It was a pretty good meal and it turns out there are some pretty big difference between McDonald’s France and McDonald’s US. For one, you order exclusively from a screen. The atmosphere is also a lot more advanced, you can tell that they put a lot of effort into it; this might be why they can charge so much more. The sizes are also very different. The largest drink is 0.5 liters, for comparison in the US the size small drink is .45 liters. That means that our small is almost the same size as their large. That’s sort of incredible.

Saturday felt very strange. In Indiana my mom got married. I’m really happy for her and I’m glad she did it but it felt weird being on the other side of the world. We were running errands all day, it was weird to be doing stuff that was so normal and then have that be happening at the same time. We sort of celebrated the wedding from afar though. As part of our errands we went to a winery to by some gifts for people in the family and some clients of my host mom. While there we tasted three different types of champagne.

France gets really intense this time of year. They take Christmas decorations and events very seriously. If I haven’t mentioned it before, there are about fifty Christmas trees down the main street of downtown. They also pipe in Christmas music throughout all of down town. During the weekends they have events going on all the time and there’s a Christmas market that runs all the time. This weekend there were three stilt walkers dressed all in white taking peoples Christmas wishes, three chimney sweep mimes, and a dancer inside a giant snow globe. It was definitely an experience. It’s been cool to see how differently Columbus and La Roche look at Christmas.

Saturday night, Öykü came and spent the night. It was nice to see her again. She came because Sunday we had to go to Nantes for outbound orientation with all the other exchange students.

Sunday, we had to get up at 7 am to go to Nantes. It was a fun day nonetheless. We basically we’re there to answer the questions of the kids who are going somewhere next year. We also had a lot of time to talk to each other and see what everyone had been up to. It was sad because I had to say goodbye to most of the oldies who will be leaving soon; I will really miss having them here, they are really great.

It’s been a great experience and I love being here experiencing these things. I love being able to go down the street and buy real French bread. I love being able to go downstairs and speak French. I love being able to do things the way real French people do them. It’s been an amazing experience thus far and it is flying by. I am already almost four months in and I can’t believe that. It’s going to be hard to go back.

Week Fifteen

I ripped my pants this week. I was trying to do the splits in the courtyard at school. we can just say that it didn’t work out exactly as planned. But that happened at the end of the week. Let’s start at the beginning.

Beginning of December means the beginning of an advent calendar. Apparently they are a pretty big deal here. People say that they are really just for kids but so many people have them and they aren’t just the kind you put candy into they are store bought awesome ones. Mine is made by Milka.

School is winding down for me for the holidays. This coming week I have the equivalent of finals in my classes. Every test is at least three hours long and my grade has about two or so a day. They start on Tuesday. I don’t have to do them all, just Math, English, and a smaller history than the rest of my class. I’m thankful I don’t have to do the real things because that might have been a little too stressful. This means that during the coming week I have a lot of free time. The week after my grade is doing internships all week and I don’t have to do one so I get an extra week of vacation. The two weeks after that are the actual winter break which is going to be a nice break from the regular school grind.

Wednesday, I started French lessons with a man from my rotary club. I speak pretty good French but I think that this will really help with pronunciation and nail down some grammar. It was a good lesson and I think I’m going to learn a lot from him throughout the year. He generally gives courses to the exchange students. I don’t know why he waited so long to offer them to me but I’m glad that I got the opportunity to start them.

Thursday during school we took a test in math during class. I wasn’t super confident about it because I hadn’t understood everything we had done. I even gave up early and started writing a letter but I reread the instructions and I realized I knew how to do the exercise and finished it. I was really proud of myself because it wasn’t something I had ever learned and it is pretty complicated. Derivatives, you try learning about them in French, they are hard enough in English. We got the tests back the next day, which I thought was amazing. If we had taken a test like that in the US it would take a solid week or two to get back the results. It turned out that I actually did pretty well, 16/20. I even got a question right that no one else in the class got right.

Thursday night the district governor came and talked at the Rotary meeting. My second host sister was there which made it fun. You could tell that the governor goes around to all the Rotary clubs in the district and gives the same speech. It was all about the history of Rotary and it’s projects. It was cool to see and meet him but he wasn’t super interesting.

As I said before, Friday at school I ripped my pants trying to do the splits. I had confidence in the pants because I’ve done the splits in them a lot of times before but this time was the breaking point. I started to go into it and then I heard a crack and they were gone. This was at lunch and I still had four more hours of classes after. I decided to just let it happen and sat in class with my crotch out for four hours. It was definitely an experience. I posted about it on Facebook and got almost as many likes on it as my album or all my pictures from France. I mean it’s cool but this is not what I want to be remembered for! You can see the picture below.

Saturday, we ran a lot of errands and were out of the house most of the day. I bought some new pants to replace the ones I had to throw away. While we were at a best buy type of store I weighed myself and found out I have gained some weight. I’m just taking it in stride and accepting it. Although, I was feeling a little bad about the weight gain so I ate a couple macarons to compensate for the sadness. I’ve resolved to not weigh myself until I go back. It won’t do me any good.

Another Exchange student left on Tuesday, this time Australian. They’re on a different school schedule than us too so she was in the same boat as Felipe. She posted a really nice and thoughtful thing on Facebook. It was really reminiscent of her year her and she talked a lot about how she’s grown and how much she’s loved her year abroad. It made me sad to see her leave but she did it very gracefully. I know she’ll be back in France one day; she loves it so much. I’m really going to miss her but I just have to remember that having friends all over the world gives me a good excuse to travel.

Week Fourteen

The weeks are going by so fast. Sometimes it feels like time crawls by, at school for example, and then it’s the weekend and another whole week has passed. This week I officially passed the three-month mark. It’s a big milestone and it usually means that a lot of things will start to get a lot easier. Generally people say that the first three months of exchange are the hardest and that those are the months that will be a struggle to get through. I didn’t have much of a problem with the first three months and if this exchange only get better and better then it will be, without question, the absolute best year of my life thus far.

Monday, I had school until five again. For the last six weeks, two of them were vacation to be fair, my art teacher hasn’t been at school because he’s depressed so I’ve been finishing school two-three hours earlier each week. I thought I would finish three hours earlier than normal but I found out that they got a replacement for my teacher so I again had art. I was a little depressed because I had to stay so much longer but it was nice to fall back into the normal routine and it was nice to have art again. In addition that teacher is so much better now, so it’s kind of hard to be too bitter about it.

We had several amazing meals this week. It’s times like these that I am really grateful I chose France. Whenever we have company at the house we tend to eat really great food. We had company this week so we ate homemade foie gras, served with some other type of duck organ and some type of duck meat. Wasn’t too into the foie gras but the other organ was really good! We had an orange cake with homemade crème anglaise for dessert. It was a beautiful meal. We also ate steak flambé for Wednesday’s lunch. To top it all off we had raclettes for dinner one night. Raclettes is basically cheese that is melted and then poured over meat and baked potatoes, it’s heavenly.

Thursday marked two important days; Thanksgiving and three months here.

Let me just start by saying that there is something really strange about being in another country for a holiday that is so solidly American. Obviously, no one knew when it was or really what we did on Thanksgiving. It was a little sad to not eat turkey but I survived on leftovers from the week and school lunch. It was cool being able to explain to everyone what it is. I talked with my entire family for the first time in three months that night. It was really nice to see them all. Everything was okay on Friday though because we had Turkey for lunch. I’m not sure the people who planned the menu knew happy they would make the American at their school.

For the past month there’s been an Irish girl going to my school. She left on Sunday but it was nice to have yet another person here who understood my struggles and problems. The Swedish girl, Irish girl, and I all ate lunch together on Friday. It may have been cheating a little but we talked in English the whole time. It was nice to be able fully express myself and say exactly what I wanted to, if only for a little while.

Three months is a huge milestone. As I said before three months is where they say things start getting really good and much easier. These last three months have been so incredible and I’ve gotten to see and experience things I never thought I would or didn’t even know existed. In the spirit of Thanksgiving I would just like to say that I am incredibly grateful and thankful for this experience. I truly believe that this year will change my life. Maybe that’s putting too much stock in this experience but I don’t think I’ll be let down. I’m accomplishing things I never thought I would. I’m doing things I never even dreamed of doing. I’m seeing things that I didn’t know existed. That is what is most amazing about this experience. It exposes you to so many things.

Saturday I went to see Öykü in Sables d’Olonne, we’re becoming really good friends. I would say that she is best friend here. Saturday we went to a fair downtown, which was fun and incredibly overpriced. After the fair we walked to the beach and hung out there for a while. It’s really cool being right next to the ocean and being able to spend so much time there.

Sunday we hung out at the house for most of the day but that night we went to a play; it was actually two short plays. They were actually pretty funny. Öykü and I obviously didn’t understand everything that was being said but we understood the stories and the bigger things. I got back to my house at a reasonable time. It’s really nice being able to take the train often. That is one of the things I like best about France. It’s so accessible.

This year is an incredible experience and also an incredible opportunity. I’m so lucky to have had the people in my life I did when I did. I came to know about Rotary because a friend of mine went of exchange to Argentina and suggested me to my sponsoring counselor. It was a series of incredible coincidences and I’m so happy they played out the way they did.   

My House

Foie Gras

Breaking Those Rotary D's

Fair