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.