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?!

In the last 5 days...

Friday for half of the school day we ended up going to a small town, having a "picnic" in a gym with a sort of talent show, then taking a walk through farm land and apple orchads and to a spot overlooking the sea. It was really beautiful and the weather was perfect for it. We ended up just sitting and talking in this field for a long time and then went back to school. It was really nice to not be in class though.Friday night I went to a soiree with my host sister which was a lot of fun and I ended up talking to everyone. We had pizza and cake because this week has two of my host sisters friends birthdays! We danced and sung to English songs, it was a good time. Saturday Sarah and I went to St. Malo with my host dad for the tennis tournment. Saturday was beautiful out and we ended up watching the semi finals of the singles and the finals of the doubles matchs. The Open GDF Suez de Bretagne is a pretty big competition with 100,000 Euros prize money. Nice right?

Anyways that night I slept at Sarahs house and in the morning we got up at 6 in the morning to get on a bus to go with the Rotary of Dinan to a Monastery for the morning which was very pretty but ended up being a bit long for my liking, especially since it was all Latin and French. For lunch we went to a resturant and we were served quiche with mushrooms on the side I ended up eating it all and about 5 pieces of bread because I was still hungry and then they brought out the main dish. I did not know there was a main dish so I was almost full by the time this came out. This consisted of a huge piece of ham, potatoes, more mushrooms, and a steamed carrot. It was all good but I was so full I ended up eating only about half of it.

Then it was time for dessert, this I will show you a photo of because it was so good and so hard to describe. The bottom was a fruity sort of thing and the thing on top tasted like caramel and the sauce tasted like creamy melted caramel icecream. It was so good.

 After lunch we hopped back on the bus and drove furthur to some Ruins of the Romans. Since France is a lot smaller in land size than the USA people would just build houses on top of the ruins not thinking they were anything special so this Roman town is now partly a new town but with ruins scattered around. For example, in the middle of the town we went inside this newer looking church and they ended up having half of the floor taken out and it is now a place for tourists because their is an old roman "wash room"  

Inside the museum

under this church. We saw one of those really cool ampatheaters that the romans use to watch people being killed in for fun. It was pretty intresting. My next host sister which is Sarahs host sister right now, Marina, likes photography also so I let her borrow my camera and she ended up getting some really cute pictures of Sarah and I! It was nice to actually get to be IN the pictures this time! The only down side of this trip was that I ended up having a terrible cold show up and so I did not feel the best but I tried to not let it stop me.

Monday was rough, I ended up going to school but I was very sick. I would blink and next thing I knew I was drifting asleep. At one point in the day, I was so cold I had my sweatshirt and jacket on and I wished I would have brought more clothes and then the next moment I was taking it all off and using it as a pillow. I was tired so I ended up going home at lunch and sleeping the whole 2 hours of lunch. I ended up eating a quick something and hurrying back to school. When I got to school the bell had already rung and I was late for class so then I had to hurry up the stairs which only got me lightheaded. But by the end of the day I was feeling better.

Tuesday was awesome. Sometimes I really like the French school system better. If your teacher is not their you don't have class. So if your teachers go on strike for smaller classes, you also don't have classes! To bad they did not choose to strike every Friday right?! So I ended up going out with my host sister and hung out with her friends for the afternoon in the park.

The weather started getting cold here but now it has warmed up to 80 degrees! It is suppose to get to 90 something in Rennes this weekend. Summer is finally in Bretagne! Oh and only two months of snow, which I am in a way looking forward to because last year in those 2 months school was canceled 5 or 6 times because of the snow. A lot of people from my school travel by bus a long ways to get to school because my school is a pretty well known private school and so if it is snowing the buses apperently can't drive. That is kind of humerous saying because where I am from it snows a ton and school is only canceled if it is either really really cold or a lot of snow falls and the snow plows don't have time to clear the roads.

So this is funny let me translate:

The tennis player in a white skirt is like a cricket in a kilt but better.

Marinas photos

Thanks Marina!

The kids table



Amphitheater ruins







I survived!

Lived. Thrived. Survived. in a Foreign country for one month!
In one month I have done so much! I flew to France, saw a glimpse of the effile tour, been to the city of Rennes AND St. Mal two times, took a beautiful boat ride along the shore near St. Malo, Dinard, and a lot of other really pretty towns, met so many intresting and wonderful people, switched families, started school, made friends, went shopping, played tennis, and most importantly improve my French!
It is such a confidence booster and amazing feeling when I look back in the last month. At the begining of the month, I hardly understood anyone and if I understood it was because people spoke very slow and pronounced things very clearly. Now people can speak normally and I usually understand most if not all of what they are saying, I also can respond even though my grammer is not very good and I have developed a new skill of talking around a word I don't know or describing the word. I am looking forward to the months ahead of me in France and I am proud of what I have acheived in a month.

Rotary dinner

Last night, Tuesday night, Sarah and I were invited to a rotary dinner with our host sisters. It was a bit scary walking into the dinner because I did not know anyone except Sarah and my French was the worst of anyone in the whole room. Before going in to the dinner and all throught the dinner I had to keep reminding myself to not use "Salut=Hi" or "Tu=The informal way of saying you" since tu and salut is what I use normally with people my age and with people I know such as my host family. Everything with speaking turned out fine for me and the people were very nice. I understood most everyone and if I did not understand something I would just shake my head and it worked every time.
The meal was a bit confusing for someone who is not very food educated. I had 2 forks, 2 knifes, a spoon, and 3 glasses. We started with a fish and potato dish, then had rice and something that remind me of stir fry, then we had a lemon marangue personal petite pie for dessert, and we finished with an expresso. I have never really tried an expresso so I decided to take one, I tasted it and did not like it and then I put sugar in it and still did not like it. So I stopped drinking it and now I consider that 2 of the 3 times I have to try that. Since I tried it with and without sugar. If your not familiar with rotary they have a rule that you must taste everything 3 times before you say you don't like it, so expresso is 2 tries down and one to go!
It ended up being a very nice evening, I got to see my first host family again and I even got to meet my 3rd host mom! She is Scotish so she speaks very good English but she can also speak French so it was a strange mix between us speaking French and English. The meeting started at 8 pm and did not get done until close to 11 pm so once I got home I went to bed since I had school at 8 the next morning!