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!