Week Eighteen

It was a very busy and important week of my exchange. First Christmas away from home and my first visit to Paris. Both went very well.

Monday we went to Luçon to see the family and to drop off some presents ahead of time as to not spoil the whole Santa thing. We started setting up this incredible Christmas city on the pool table. I’m talking train tracks, buildings, moving displays, and miniature people. There also Christmas lights everywhere. Turns out my host-grandparents are pretty festive people.

Tuesday did not feel like the day before Christmas eve. This season didn’t feel all that much like Christmas in general. I don’t know if it’s because the climate is different or if it’s because I’m away from home, but in any case it felt strange knowing that Christmas was so close.

The day of Christmas eve we went to Luçon to see the family and celebrate Christmas with Hugues family. I was extremely happy because the package of the presents for my host parents came the morning of Christmas eve as well as a present from another exchange student and one of my friends from the United States. In retrospect I got really luck to have received all that on the day before Christmas.

At five we left for Luçon. We got there and there was a small worry, the electric train wasn’t working because some of the fake snow had gotten stuck in one of the wheels. I set myself to that task and spent a while getting it running again. I hadn’t finished but it was time to go to the mass. It was my first ever mass. It was quite the experience. The church was completely full of people, there were people standing in the back all the way to the door. I didn’t understand much but I will say this, Catholics really like to stand up and sit down and stand up and sit down.  The mass started at 6:30 and lasted an hour. This put us back at the house at about 7:45.

People started showing up promptly and soon everyone but two people had arrived. In the mean time I had put myself back to work on the train and managed to fix it with the help of one of my host cousins. It was quite the success for us. We started the night with hors d’oeuvres and champagne, which is a very typical beginning to a French meal. A little while after this the kids, 18 and under opened their presents. I was glad to see that I did have some stuff under the tree, my host family got me some little stuff. We took a break after the presents. The couple still hadn’t arrived and my host grandma had forgotten to put the meat in the oven so we waited until eleven to start eating dinner. We started at eleven and didn’t totally finish until 2:30 AM. It was quite the night.

The next morning we got up at 9:30 to go back to La Roche to prepare the food and house for a Christmas day meal with my host mom’s family. My dad sent me some presents and I had some other stuff to open so all in all it was a great Christmas. We had a very nice meal and it was nice to feel the Christmas spirit. We were all in Pajamas by 7 PM. It was an exhausting two days. The next day was our pause. We took it easy and relaxed for most of the day. In the afternoon we packed our bags for Paris.

Friday we left for Paris at 8 AM. It wasn’t too hard to get up because I was so excited. It was incredible to pull into the city, knowing where I was, and seeing the Eiffel tower on the horizon. Paris is a truly incredible place. It’s so much different than any other big city I’ve ever been too. It feels so old and every single building is beautiful.

We stayed in a sort of residence hotel. What I mean is that the room had a kitchen and was a little better stocked than your average hotel room. It was sort of on the edge of town but it was really near a metro stop so it was easy to get into downtown. We were there for four days. It was crazy to see all these things that I’ve seen pictures of in real life. Some of the things we saw while there were, The Eiffel Tower (night and day), The Louvre, Notre Dame de Paris, Pont des Arts, Pont Neuf, Mont Martre, Centre Pompidou, the Champs Elysées, and the Opéra Garnier.

It was an incredible experience and it is truly an incredible place. I can’t wait to go back and see it again.

The day of Christmas marked four months in this country.  I am so happy to be here and so glad that I am seeing the things I am and doing the things I am. This will truly be something that I remember for the rest of my life.

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.