Halfway?!



Coming up is the end of January, which marks about the half way point of my exchange. Insane, I know. Time goes by incredibly fast, but I still have a whole five months left (thankfully)! Unfortunately, it's also the end of the exchange for the semester kids, which means Madeleine, one of my good exchange student friends is leaving this Saturday :(. So Madeleine, Kenny (another exchange student friend), and I had a nice "last day in Paris for Madeleine" two weekends ago (because last weekend we had an AFS thingy) and tried to finish up some things that she wanted to do before she left. We went to the Catacombs first thng in the morning, which was really awesome in my opinion. They're like these underground passageways and caverns that's basically a huge underground cemetery with dead people from centuries ago. The bones are stacked up all nice and decorative, it's kinda gross and morbid but at the same time it's really amazing, espically to think that it's all there under the streets of Paris. There are an estimated six million people down there, six million! It was definitely a little creepy, but I had a fun time with Maddy and it was certainly cooler than seeing the Mona Lisa :).

It was just so weird, bones and bones and bones.



Rough translation: If you've seen a man die a few times, always consider that the same fate is waiting for you.
Boo.



This stuff just goes on and on, it's crazy.

We then went to the Jewish quarter to get Falafel, apparently the best in the world or something. I wouldn't know because I had no idea what the heck it was in the first place. So here's a picture.  



Those aren't meatballs, it's fried green stuff but I honestly don't know what it is.



It was pretty good, and Maddy was set on getting her Falafel, so mission accomplished. We finished up by hitting La Defense (northwest of paris) to do some shopping. France has this month long thing called "Les Soldes", or the sales, where everything magicially becomes a lot more affordable. I was actually really impressed, there's plenty of decent stuff that's pretty cheap. I'm also going again this weekend with some friends. I told myself that I wouldn't spend too much money in January to make up for everything in December, but then these darn sales came along :). So that finished off our nice day in Paris.

We had our AFS weekend a couple of days ago, at the same place as last time, a really cool house/hotel thing right on the Seine river. As always it was fun the see all the students I hadn't talked with for a while. It was also cool to sit down for dinner and hear everybody conversing in French, something we couldn't really do last time.

Though I've improved a lot, I still have a long ways to go before I'm fluent. Sometimes I feel like I'm just not picking it up very quickly, and it can be a little discouraging sometimes, but I'll keep working at it. Other than that, life is humming along. I mostly enjoy school and can pretty much follow my classes (except Spanish and some stuff in French class). A couple more weeks until another holiday (how I love their break schedule here) when we get to go skiing again, so I'm difinitely looking forward to that.

Oh, and I just googled what Falafel actually is. The round things (which I guess are the actual falafels) are fried crushed chickpeas. Well, I'm glad we all know that now.

Hope everyone has a great week,

Lauren

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years! I have quite a few things to catch up on, so I'll be sorta breif.

I got to spend a couple of days in Paris with (I'm never sure how to refer to people on here because it depends on who's reading) so with the Flerchingers/ my best friend and her family, when they visited in December. I had a really great time and it didn't feel like three and a half months had passed since I'd seen them! We did all the classic stuff like climbing the Eiffel Tower and doing to Louvre and just had a good time together.

 This church is near Notre Dame and has awesome stained glass windows.
 Up on Notre Dame

 In Versailles. That Palace is amazing!

 The Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

 So after a second goodbye (easier than the first one, but still hard!) I headed back home to Villepreux. Christmas was just a few days away so we were busy finishing up decorations and cooking. Most of our relatives showed up on Christmas Eve. We all walked to mass together, which was cool because I hadn't been to the church yet.

We came home and had a big seafood dinner. I had a great time with eveyone, eating, talking, and playing fooseball (a gift from their grandpa). At midnight we opened all the gifts, I got some lovely things from my host family and relatives that I didn't even expect, it was so nice! Then we went back to the table at about 1 am for dessert, which was delicious (of course). Elisa made the classic "Bouche de noel", or a log cake that was really yummy, Ludo made macaroons, Lucie and I helped with truffles, among lots of other stuff. Then we stayed up a little longer hanging out, testing our gifts, playing Just Dance on the wii. It was so much fun, I really had an awesome French Christmas :D

 Cheers!

 I can't get these pictures to turn for the life of me, your gonna have to cock your head, sorry :)  This is me with my host siblings and cousins.

 At the table

Our cute little Christmas tree (sideways, gosh dang it) with all the gifts. Most people headed out the next day so we had a couple lazy days to hangout before heading off to Geneve, Switzerland to go skiing. The skiing was great and we had mostly beautiful weather. As always I love seeing snow :) I don't have pictures with me now, but I'll hopefully get those posted soon. We walked around Geneve for one of the days, window shopping and looking at all the cool (and mega expensive) watches and jewlery. We spent New Years eve there as well, it was fun to see everyone out on the street with music and dancing. At midnight we watched a great fireworks show over the lake then headed back home to sleep.

Voila, that pretty much covers Christmas break! I'm glad that I have such a great host family that does all this cool stuff I get to experience. 

One last thing, we had the neighbohrs over last weekend to eat Galettes de Roi, or king's cakes, which is a french tradition for New Years. Each cake has a little thingy (called a fève) that you put inside, and who ever gets the fève in their slice is the kind/queen and gets to wear the crown.

So happy New Years to everyone!

Lauren