An Amazing week

Over this year I have had many amazing experiences but I believe that this last week and a half has topped them all so far. First, I went on a bus trip! The bus trip was with about 35 other exchange students from all over the world. The trip consisted on a 3 day trip around Paris and then the rest of the week en route and in side of Barcelona. Ever since arriving my best friends have always been other exchange students. I think that is somewhat normal for exchange students though since all exchange students are going through the same thing and at roughly the same time. So I was already very happy knowing I was going to be spending a week with 35 other exchange students! 


Eiffel Tower!

During the trip we stayed in beautiful hotels, had nice leaders, and had a lot of free time to do what we wanted. For the most part we had nice guides from whom we learned a lot. My favorite parts in Paris were probably the Effile tower and our walk around Paris. My favorite parts in Barcelona were having free time to explore and also the Picasso museum. I am not a huge art fan or anything and frankly I did not know that much about Picasso other than he is a very famous painter. The museum and the guide were both very interesting. The things Picasso did at my age and even younger are absolutely extraordinary! 


Castle of Versallies- we could not go in the garden because of ice

For the return to Paris we did an all-nighter in the bus. The trip ended up being quite fun though, we were all telling ghost stories and jokes until 1 am when they told us we had to try to sleep. I did try but I gave up after two hours of failed attempts. So I listened to music and talked quietly. We ate breakfast at 5 am outside of Paris, then went to the train station and said our goodbyes.

After the trip ended Sarah and I were to stay with a family for 3 more days to see more of Paris. The time there was also good other than being exhausted from the bus trip. We got to see things we did not get to see with the bus trip like Moulin Rouge, Sacré Coeur, and we got to watch the Eiffel Tower twinkle which only happens for 5 minutes. The family we stayed with had a daughter who went to the USA with AFS last year so it was cool to hear about her time and learn more about AFS.

Now I am back in Dinan, I have three days left of vacation and then I return to school. I am not looking forward to going back so soon even though I have been off for almost three weeks due to illness and then the vacation also. In France the students get two weeks vacation every six weeks, which is something I think I like quite well. This also means in six weeks I will be on another amazing adventure doing close to the same thing but I will be traveling by bus for two weeks all around Europe!



Le Louvre



Starbucks-Le Louvre

One of her first times with snow! (She is from Brazil)

Nightly Parties

France loves American culture

While I was sitting around the table with my family eating McDonalds I came to realise that the American culture is becoming more and more prominant in France. Sometimes here I feel like the French may be more patriotic for the USA than some of our own citizens. They wear American flag shirts and scarfs, listen to English music, watch Hollywood movies, and recently have started to enjoy McDonalds.
The menu has some different desserts and sandwiches than I have seen before but I think the biggest difference is here McDonalds is not really for the convienence. In my family in the USA we would eat McDonalds if we were running late to something or if we were traveling and needed to get back on the road quick. Here McDonalds is not like that, the people don't even understand that it seems. When I went we actually went out of our way to go to McDonalds, to bring it home and eat it as a family. Not that that does not happen in the States too but atleast for my family it does not happen very often. Though why would the French need the convienence, they are quite laid back people when it comes to food. I mean they take a whole 2 hours out of their work day for lunch! At my school I think we had something like 35 minutes to eat in the States!
No, McDonalds does not get healthier or even taste better. It is the same high calorie, high fat food as in the USA. It seems so strange that the French I know, the ones who love their good food and desserts. The ones who if you make food and they don't like the taste will tell you. They actually like the taste of McDonalds! Maybe that is just a weird concept for me since I have never thought McDonalds was very good to begin with but I find it very strange that the people the most food forward the people that hold food to a very high standard love McDonalds.
Anyways if you object to this in any way leave a comment. I really would like to figure this one out!

Hablo (un poco el) Espangol

Sometimes I think about what my life would be like if I was placed by Rotary in a different country. I have a feeling all exchange students think about this at some point. All they would of had to do was say your going to one higher or one lower on your list and life would be so different. For example my top choices were France, Thailand, Argentina. All 3 choices would have been life so completly different. I would have met different people, had different families, wore different clothes, and even spoke a different language!
 If I would have been placed in a different country the French language would have still seemed so "foreign." Now French feels so normal and I have changed to learning Spanish as my next goal. Spanish is now the "foreign" language. In fact I learn Spanish through French from my host brother and through French school.
At the begining of the year I thought these people were crazy, why put me in a Spanish class when I am in a foreign country and can't even speak this language fluently? Even now I don't consider myself fluent but I know enough and can say what I want to say. (Yes, I have become GREAT at talking my way around certain words that I don't know.) A foreign language IS a lot of practice. You have to care and work hard at it to even understand. The only reason you learn the language on exchange is because you know if you don't life will be a lot harder for you. I think I have become a bit "hooked" on wanting to understand everyone in the whole world. While that is an close to impossible goal I am taking baby steps by learning Spanish! Also I thought I would profit from my Spanish host mom and my Italian host dad! :)

I am afraid.

After living in France for five months I realised how hard it is going to be to leave this country. Of course there are the things that I miss my family, my dog, school. Yet when I return so many things are going to be different. I am not there to witness the changes in my friends and I admit it I am scared. I am scared to see the changes and accept them good or bad. I am scared of how different I will be. When I return, the changes in myself and in others will show themselves and I am terrified.
I also realised today that leaving my friends will be very hard. I did not think that I could become really good friends with people this quickly but I am afraid that I have. I miss my friends from the States but I know I will see them again. In France? I just don't know.
All of this being said, I think I have chosen a date to return! The 19th of June. I know that seems early to my rotary club here but I was already planning to be back for Grand Rapids and probably also the 4th of July. If I come home just a bit earlier, my parents are going on a backpacking trip and be back on my dads week off!

Blog Birthday!

My blog is one year old! It has been a whole year since I found out I was coming to this amazing coutry. One year since I started my blog. It is amazing how life has changed in just one year. Time flies. I now have only six months left. Part of me is excited to go home to my family and friends, senoir year, prom but most of me is sad that in six months I have to return to the "real world". I wont be able to speak French everyday with everyone, I wont be able to complain about school finishing after dark or complain about the mean man who does not let us in to the lunch room. I think the saddest thing is having to leave all of the other exchange students at the end of year. Unlike my French friends they will also return to their countries and while some of my friends are from other parts of the USA and Canada; Many of my friends are from other countries such as Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Norway, Finland, Spain, and Taiwan. Even though I would love to see all of them again I don't know how much of a chance I have at being able to travel that much in the future.

I think that these photos sum up my outbound and inbound years with Rotary. Some of these photos might be repeated in other parts of my blog but in honor of my one year blog voila.

The French Inbound and me at the second outbound conference

Bon Voyage party and the cool card Brooke created

My mom and me right before leaving.

First photo in France, the plane that took us all here!

All of the students on the plane. Some had to catch other flights to the South of France.

This is only from 3 or 4 districts. I will be meeting all the exchange students in France in March or April.

Rotary meeting with the president of the region.

On the boat to Jersey. I think the sky in this photo is so beautiful.

Okay I don't know why it is not straight BUT I owe my life to these two.
They are the outbound coordinators and they are amazing!

Because Christmas is such a big part of the year ;)

I am in the Daily Press!

I am in my local Newspaper!-->http://www.dailypress.net/page/content.detail/id/534139/GHS-junior-studying-abroad-with-Rotary-Exchange-Program.html?nav=5001

I thought that was a pretty good article.

By the way: If anyone is interested in exchange talk to me!

Joyeux Noel, Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas!

Christmas songs are in the air, the trees and lights are up all throughout the town but wait. It does not feel like Christmas! I think it has got to be the little differences such as no snow, my real family is not with me, and I have not had the "before" holidays like Thanksgiving and Halloween. Okay I had Halloween but it was very lame.

So Christmas here was set up pretty close to the same way we do christmas at my house. Go to church than after to one grandparents house, open presents, eat a meal, enjoy everyones company, and talk politics. The next morning we get a stocking to open and a couple presents from Santa and we open them, play with all the stuff we got, watch the 24 hour Christmas Story Marathon and finally for dinner we go over to the other grandparents house, open more presents, eat a nice meal, enjoy everyone, and talk some more politics.

Here it went like this: Go to a Catholic mass for 2 1/2 hours, then to one grandparents, opened presents, shared what we got, ate appetizers, ate a very nice meal with many plates, though one plate was not so nice though I will share that with you a bit later, then talked and drank for a bit and went home. The next morning we woke up slowly, once everyone was downstairs we opened our gifts from each other, then had 10 minutes to change for lunch at the other grandparents house went there opened gifts, ate appetizers and another meal with many plates, drank and talked and went home to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

So I guess it was not to different but I think being away from that "family tradition" just made it seem less of Christmas, though it was a lovely experience nonetheless. Now for the meal, the French are huge into food and Christmas happens to be the biggest, most done up meal of the whole year so of course we had a cheese plate, and a dessert, and a first and second plate and a plate with a substance only known to me as "foie gras." It was not horrible but definatly was not my favorite thing we ate that night. The next day we had the same thing so I asked if it was a tradition to eat this they said yes so I once again took a little bit of it (Thumbs up to me following the exchange students try everything three times rule right!?) and this time there was a semi-English speaker who told me it's duck liver. Yum! Duck liver. Come to find out it is actually specially fattened liver AND the specially fattened comes from the force feeding of duck and goose! Now I am not an animal rights activist at all but I find it funny how here if I even bring up hunting everyone is like you hunt because here there is not many animals to hunt so they are very protective of not hunting the few animals they have, so hunters kind of anger the general population. Yet they force feed duck and geese. Interesting right?

So this was pretty much my Christmas and thank you to everyone who sent me Christmas gifts and to my host family for getting me gifts also! Everyone is getting there presents from me when I get back because shipping is crazy expensive!