Normandy, WWII

"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon" - Napoleon Bonaparte

 D-Day, Normandy beach, WWII. We all have studied it in our history classes in High School but D-Day has a completely new meaning after being on and around the beach the soldiers stormed.

Imagine having to climb that huge hill.

The soldiers were true heros. Standing on Omaha beach looking up the hill where 67 years ago stood the German soldiers brought a whole new meaning. For one the hill was so steep that Sarah and I got tired just from walking up the hill on a paved path. The Germans had such a large advantage over the French, Americans, Canadians, and British that I think the first soldiers to get out of the boats must have known they were going to die. It was amazing to think at how brave these men must have been.

The American cemetary

The cemetary where the Americans lie today is so beautiful and peaceful. The white crosses and the silence remind us of actually how many Americans lost their life that day. You could feel the weight of that day. The soldiers rest on American soil. The land that the cemetary is on is considered the USA. (so techinically I was in the U.S. for a while!)

Crosses that went on seemingly forever.

After this cemetary we went to another beautiful cemetary for the Canadian soldiers who lost their lives. I liked the crosses here better, they told the age of the soldier and even had a quote or saying ingraved that the family of the soldier had wanted on the grave. It reminded you that it was not just the soldier affected, it was their kids, their wives, everyone around them. You could see how much each and every soldier was missed after they were gone, you could see the sadness.

Canadian Cemetary

After the two cemetarys we went to a museum at Caen. We ate our lunch outside the museum. We had sandwiches and crackers that are a specialty of Bretagne. The museum was very interesting. I liked seeing the perspective of the war from a different countries view. I also learned a bit more that I did not know from my History class. I find that history is taught in the states as much more of this is what the US did for the war, not this was the war. Anyways I learned about how we, meaning Canada, US, France, and Britain bombed all the major French cities on D-Day after Britain was bombed by the Germans. The cities that were bombed, including the city I was in Caen were complete recks after. Buildings were toppled and burning.

American Flag!

The crosses went on forever it seemed.

This is at the top of the hill looking out over the water

Walking down to the beach

Almost there!

There!

Museum in Caen

On the bottom it says "He gave his life so we might live"

Host Dad- Thanks for bringing us!

The day was so nice and Sarah and I were both very tired after the day. We did not get home until pretty late and I went to bed so after I got home. Thank you Mr. Berthoux for taking Sarah and I on this wonderful adventure, we both appreciated it!

Did I just say this is NORMAL?

France ended up playing New Zealand and lost 9-8. Such a close game to bad I could not watch all of it though. I was playing in a tennis match at the same time! I won my match 6-2 6-3! Which is a very good score if you don't know anything about tennis. Anyways on the same day Michigan State University beat Wisconsin in a super close match, I can't watch the games here so the next day I watched a clip of the last throw. That was a simply amazing pass.
Anyways that was my little sport rant.
So for this whole week and part of next week I am off school! I get a break from school about every 2 months. It is really nice but at the same time everyone I am friends with lives outside of Dinan by atleast a few minutes if not up to an hour away! So I have not really hung out with anyone from school other than Sarah.
Every Friday for the last two hours of the day all the students in the "junior science" class go to this one huge room that would be compared to probably the size of a small gym, we sit down, and take a test while teachers walk around the room. You are not allowed to bring anything but you pencil case. They give you one peice of scrap paper and then your test. I always finish early either because of a lack of knowledge and understanding (because of the language) (some kids write a whole page about one question, I write one or two sentences usually) or sometimes its because its English and I understand perfectly so I can finish super fast. What ever the case I ALWAYS finish early. So with an hour or so to spare I make oragami! I usually take the scrap paper and just start folding it to make something, once I make something I unfold the paper and refold it to try and make something else! It is somewhat productive, I mean I am making use of my resources and learning something? Anyways, everytime I do this it seems as if the teacher has no idea that I am foreign. They always come up to me, look at my test and kind of role their eyes and walk away. For some reason that always makes me giggle.
It is starting to get colder. It is 60 degrees right now! I think here though 60 degrees feels more like 50 or so because it is so humid.
I ate a Danon yougurt today, when I looked at the package I relised it said Danone. At first I was like oh thats different, then I remebered that if they did not have the E on the end everyone would be walking around calling it Dano yougurt. They always drop the last letter of a word. :)
I have begun studying French again using livemocha.com. If you ever need to learn a language its a super good website and they have just about every language you can think of and the best part is it is free!
Sarah and I baked mug cakes! Which I will link her blog so you can read about them if you want :)
Lately life has just been "the norm" for me. Nothing super exciting, I don't think. It is funny to think living in France is just "normal" but it really is. :)

Vive la France!

France is in the finals of the Rugby World Cup! They will either play Australia or New Zealand! Go France!

Mont Saint Michel! Encore!

The school weeks have been going by pretty fast despite how long they are. I talk with everyone in my class and my French is improving very quickly. I am reading a 300 page book called L'egume des jours and I also wrote a page about why I chose to be an exchange student for my French class. I don't do a lot of my homework and stuff yet because it is pretty difficult and there is a lot of writing with it. Also school for me is not super important here for me, my main goal right now is to understand everything and to make friends. Though I do the homework when I have time. (My mom is probably not happy about that but its true) :)
This school week was kind of interesting though. Monday I was still sick and it was actually a lot worse, I would blink and next thing I know my eyes are shut and I am almost sleeping. I could not focus and felt really bad. I was so sick I ended up coming home and sleeping for the whole 2 hours of lunch. I ended up getting back to school at the bell, hurried up the steps, even though I was still sick, and arrived in my class to strange looks. Maybe because I had been sick all day and now I had a panicked, out of breath, I just woke up kind of look to my face? Yah that is probably it.
Tuesday there was a strike in a lot of schools in France, this is the first year in over 20 years for teachers at my school to strike but for the rest of the schools it happens almost every year. I think I heard they want smaller class sizes? Having the day off was so nice, it was a beautiful day something like 80* F or 30 * C and I ended up going out with my host sister and her friends to the park where we sat and talked for a few hours. Now the rest of the school week was really normal BUT the weekend was amazing.

So to talk about the weekend. I went to Mount Saint Michel again but this time with about 150 other exchange students. It was awesome. We walked on the sand surrounding the abbey and walked on what they call moving sand, which is pretty much just quick sand. If you run over it you are safe but if you were to stop while on it well you might die. No joke. So many times they were like you must listen this is dangerous you could die if you don't listen and no one would be quiet and I would be silently freaking out because I did not catch what she said. Also sometimes we would do something like try to sink into the sand and someone would come up to us and be like, "The tour guide told us not to sink very deep because you could get stuck and die" and we would already be up to our knees in the sand. The walk was long but it was a lot of fun. After we got back we took some pictures and then headed into the resturant to eat. I was thinking "oh thats weird we must be eating early!" Since we went into the dining hall at 6 pm when most of the time we dont eat until 8 or 9 pm. Well we sat around listened to a man tell us how alchol is forbidden and at the same time we are drinking alcholic cider. Cider here is not considered alchol but it has alchol in it, not a lot, less than beer but still. Then after he was done we watched some traditional Breton dancing and even got to try our hand at it! It was very intresting. That went on for about 3 hours or so and by the time we actually got the food out it was 9:30. Oh it was buffet style so I did not eat until about 10 pm but it was fine because the waiters kept coming around with bread, which I must have had 15 pieces. After the meal every country sung their national anthem, it was suprising to see how many people did not know there national anthem, in some countries its just not an important song. After this we had desert and then we had a dance until 2:30 in the morning. That night I didn't actually go to bed until about 4 in the morning and we had to be up for a 7:30 breakfast. We were all so tired all we wanted to do was sleep but we were kicked out of our rooms so there was no chance to sleep after breakfast. So I ended up going to Saint Michel and exploring. We went as far as we could up before you had to pay and ended up just sitting around talking to other students. It was fun but it would have been better if we had more sleep. Once we got back at 12 we ate lunch and then waited for our rides to pick us up. While waiting for our rides we were dancing to Mc Creu and got some strange strange looks from people, but who cares were foreign right?!