C'est les Vacances!

It's officially holiday! And it is raining very, very hard. After a couple weeks of absolutely beautiful weather, we finally got hit with real spring and it's been pouring all week. At least the flowers are coming up. 

So, plans for the holiday: My host siblings are all taking a trip to Kenya, and since my host parents will be working, I have two free weeks to do whatever. I have switched plans about 5 million times in the last couple weeks, but I think I finnaly got everything figured out. The second week, I'm going to visit my friend Becca in Poitiers, (mid-west of France). I'm going to spend a couple days at her house and then we'll both come back to my house for a few days. She was also able to get some free tickets to a futuristic amusement park near her called Futuroscope, which looks really cool. Here's some internet pictures.

After buying train tickets to Becca's house, (I finally get to ride the oober-fast french TGV), I received an email from my Liason about somebody in Nantes who is hosting another girl during the holiday and was looking for someone else to come along so she wouldn't be alone all week. Since I still had the first week free and Nantes isn't super far from Poitiers, I figured, why not? So now I'm leaving monday to spend a couple days in Nantes, which seems like a pretty cool town. Apparently some other students responded to the email as well, so there will now be a boy from Brazil, a girl from Canada, and Tina, a girl from Norway that I already know (we are in the same region). It'll be like a big exchange student party! On friday I'll take the train from Nantes to Poitiers, and finally come back home the 24. I'm pretty excited  :)

Nantes is at the bottom of the left pink section and Poitiers is in the green section below that.

On the last friday of vacation, we, as in the whole family (the kids will be back from Africa), will leave for Germany to drop off my host sister, Elisa. She will be spending two months with a host family in Cologne. So we will visit the area a bit, then spend two nights on the drive back in Brussels, Belgium . I can't believe I get to visit Germany and Belgium! Ahhhhhh!! And I'll make sure to eat fries and chocolate :)

Backing up a little, here are some photos of Normandie last weekend. Unfotunately, I got sick with a fever and we had to come back a day early, which was really a bummer, but we still had a nice time visitng the beach and it's cool cliff thingers.

Madelaine and her host parents

Madelaine searching for a heart shaped rock.

We passed this castle and noticed it was "A vendre" (for sale). Anyone wanna buy a Château?

The next day we ate in town before leaving, the style of houses you see here is very classic Normandie. We also saw where Joan of Arc was apparently burned.

Despite the rain and being sick, I had a nice weekend. I was planning on writing a little more, but right now I have to go finish packing. Since I'll be busy for pretty much the next two weeks straight, no promises on when I'll write the next blog post. Au revoir for now, and à la prochaine! 

Bonjour to all! I'm going to try to keep this somewhat short, but I'd like to write about my last two lovely weekends.

Weekend 1: Fontainbleau

Madelaine, an american friend who I met at New York orientation and see semi often at various AFS weekends and activites, lives south of Paris near a town called Fontaine Bleau. We had been trying to organize something together and finally got it worked out so that I'd come stay at her house for a day or two. So two fridays ago I took a two hour train ride towards Fontainbleau where her family picked me up. We drove back to her house (and saw large dead boar that got hit by a car on the way), she lives out in the country side in an adorable house that's 300 years old! 

The next day we took an great bike ride through the counrtyside and visited a town nearby called Barbizon, which is famous for all the artists that lived and worked there. There was construction work going on in the middle of the road, which took away a little bit of the charm, but it was fun to look around the galleries and shops. Also the weather was absolutely beautiful. It felt so amazingly awesome to be biking through the French country side in the glorious sunshine! Sunday morning we drove in to the Market in Fontainbleau to buy meat and cheese and vegtable and flowers and such. I tried this delicious cheese thing, a specialty of Fontainbleau that's a mix of whipped cream and white cheese. Super yummy with a little bit of honey and strawberries.

The Fontainbleau Market

Madelaine and her oh-so-french grocery carrier

So many cheese choices! (sorry, no cheddar)

Later on Sunday on the way back to drop me off at the train station, we drove by the house and then the grave of Claude François, a famous french singer. The "Elvis of France" as my host mom described him. I had watched a movie that just came out about him (good thing, because I really had no idea who he was before), though I did already know this song, here's a link:
See if it rings a bell :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_YSydDh3Vo

Part 2: Reims and Chateau Thierry
A few days after getting back from Madelaine's, her family called offering to take me to Normandie with them during easter weekend (which is this weekend coming up), which is really awesome. When I was asking my host mom about it, she said yes and then offered to take Madelaine with us for our visit to Reims with AFS  (which was this last weekend). So Madelaine and I had been trying forever just to plan one weekend together, and then we end getting to do stuff three weekends in a row!

There's reims, Chateau Thierry is a smaller town nearby

Normally AFS plans a little walk in Paris the first sunday of each month, but this time they planned  visit to a Museum and an American Cemetery in Reims, a town east of Paris, about two hours from where I live. Since that's a long drive for one day, we made a small trip out it and left saturday to look around ourselves. It's champagne region, so saturday we drove by the vinyards and all the champagne houses. We also visited the Vranken House of Champagne, which had been fixed up and renovated by this super rich couple. The house was amazing, with hand painted walls, old decor, and a rug with real gold in it. We finised with a champagne tasting, which was, of course, very delicious ;)

Giant bottle cap and cork

My host mom and I

Inside Vranken

In another champagne house, these things just cracked me up

heehee

This one's my favorite :)

The next day we visited the house of Jean de La Fontaine, a french writer who wrote a bunch of fables, including The Tortoise and the Hare, and The Country Mouse and the City Mouse. I knew all the stories but I never even knew they were french in the first place, let alone that they were written by this dude. So that was fun to visit, I also had a great time talking with the local high school kids that came with us. We took a break to have lunch in town before heading to the cemetery.

Tine (from norway), me, and Isla (from Finland)

I didn't order this myself, but this is steak Tartare, raw beef with a raw egg.  I'd always heard of it but never seen someone actaully order and eat it, so I had to take a picture. 

We then drove out the cemetery, which is from WWI. AFS actually stands for American Feild Service, and  started as an organization in WWI of ambulance drivers. A couple people from the original AFS are buried here, we visited their graves along with the grave of Joyce Kilmer, the man who wrote the poem "Trees", I've always loved this poem:

TREES
by: Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

 THINK that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

 

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

 

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

 

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.




Some more photos:

Add caption

Voilà! I'm sure you'll see a new post soon about the trip to Normandie this weekend, I'm also planning a trip to the south of France for next holiday, which I'm really really really excited for. I've been so incredibly lucky to be doing all this traveling lately, I'm so grateful for all these oportunities! Only three months left, gonna make the most of it! 

Carnaval!

      Last Tuesday our school celebratred Carnaval, or better known as Mardi Gras. Because the actual day was during holiday, the school celebration was set for the first Tuesday after break. For this long-anticipated day, everyone dresses up, it's a lot like Halloween but not so creepy. We had spent the weekend getting our costumes finished up. I went as a cheerleader, or as a "pom-pom girl" as they say in french, Elisa went decked out in American flag wear, and Ludovic went in Clemson football attire. I felt a little funny walking to school that morning with my pompoms but I got fewer funny looks as I got closer and joined the rest of the costumed school. It was great seeing everyone dressed up, hippies, boys in skirts and makeup, cowboys, a few LMFAO robots, waldos, and a bajillion other stuff.

     We went to classes as normal until 4:00, when everyone gathered in the common area for a little show. Each class paraded in front of the school, with judges deciding on the best dressed class. Then individual people or small groups could perform. There were a couple groups that danced, others paraded in their matching costumes. It finished off with awards to the best dressed guys and girls, with prizes of giftcards or cookies or coca-cola.  

     The thing I loved most was seeing the entire school do something together (almost everyone participated). Remember that schools here don't have football games, school colors, spirit days, mascots, school t-shirts or pep rallies. I was craving some school unity! It was fun to do something different at school, and I had a totally great time. Here's some photos if you haven't yet seen them on Facebook. 

Marine, Ameile, Faniry and me

Esther and Nolwenn

The dudes

The class of 2°6!

Everybody in the common area to watch the show

California Gurls performance

Alright, that all, à bientôt!

Skiing and Carnaval!

Well, even a week or two late, I'm finally getting a post up of our ski trip over the February winter vacation! I love their break schedule here, about two weeks of holiday every six or seven weeks of school, I don't know why, but I really enjoy the timing. Anyway, I spent the first week of holiday relaxing, sleeping in, doing a couple things with friends, the typical break stuff. It was the next friday when we left for our ski trip in the French Alps, down in the south of France, right next to Itlay. The mountain we stayed at all week is called Isola 2000, here's a link if you want to check it out: http://hiver.isola2000.com/.

You can see where it is relative to france in the  lower right hand corner.

As you can see from the map, it was a very, very long ways away (remember I'm west of Paris), so we broke  the drive into two days, staying at a hotel for one night. It was cool for me to see some of the south of France, which has it's own distinct architecture definitely different from Paris.We stopped on the coast en route, had some McFlurries, and I got to take a couple photos. It was sunny and gorgeous (but definitely not warm enough to swim or anything). I was expecting such a huge weather contrast when we arrived at the mountain later that afternoon, but it was actually just about as sunny there as well.

Palm trees on the coast.

So shimmery

Later that afternoon, we arrived at the mountain, rented our gear, and walked around a bit before going to bed ready for our first ski day. It was spring skiing to the letter, the weather was warm and sunny everyday, and I mean warm. The hottest day got up 14° C, about 55° F! The mountain was pretty large and nice, even if they were lacking a little snow due to the weather. All three of my host siblings decided to do snowboarding, I had started out with skiis but I ended up switching to a snowboard as well for almost the whole week. I had only done it twice before, so I fell about five hundred times the first day or two, but I wasn't doing bad by the end :)

Lunch time! With typical sandwichs: Baguettes with butter, ham and sometimes pickles.

Lucie, me and Elisa

Like I said, we were right next to Italy. On one run you can even go over to the border. So I've offically been in Italy now!

This random sign in Italy in the mountains.

A picture of the Italien Alps haha

Me half in Italy, half in France :) 

On the lift, Ludovic, Lucie, Valérie, Elisa

Crêpes at the Altitude Café

We stayed in a cute little apartment, you just had to take a short Funiclar down the the ski runs. We even rented a raclette for dinner one night and a fondue pot for anther (both meals were delicious of course). If you're wondering what a raclette is, here's a picture. You mostly use if for the cheese melting and sometimes frying meat on top. Then you dump the melty cheese on potatos, with meat if you'd like (usually ham). It's really yummy, especially after a long day on the slopes.

 

They put on a nice little fireworks show that we watched from the apartement.

So after six lovely days, we packed up and headed home. Because the kids wanted to get home at least a day before school started, we did the return trip in one chunk. We left at 9:30am and didn't get in until after 1:00 in the morning! (ok, we did stop for lunch and dinner, took about 45 minutes to look at a cute town, and stopped for a little while that night so my host dad could sleep, but still). We ate lunch in this town famous for parfum, though the museum was closed. I left my camera in the car at the other town, which is too bad because it was a really adorable little village. My host mom might have took some, so I might be able to get those posted later.

Well, there you go! I had a really good time (except maybe some of the car ride), the skiing and the weather and seeing the south of France was all really awesome. I'm going to post again soon about Carnaval (mardi gras) at my school, which was really fun as well. Until then, au revoir!
Oh yes, I learned that gondolas are called "eggs" in french. I suppose they do kind of resemble them.
Hope everyone has a good week,
Lauren