2 Months Gone With the Wind...

The fact that 2 months have already passed, is rattling to me. I can't believe that I have already been in France for 2 Months! Learning French is on the top of my priority list right now, and I think that telling myself that I just have to speak French, no matter how dumb I sound, is really helping me grow. People are noticing my vocabulary, accent, and pacing are all improving very quickly... Still looking forward to dreaming regularly in French, but I know it will come soon enough.

Since my last post, I had a week of school, and a week of vacation. I have done so much these past two weeks. Class dinner, two amusement parks, A roadtrip to the South of France, Bordeaux, A vineyard in Vendée, and Vouvant (named one of the most beautiful cities in France), not to mention all the food I ate, and the fact that I read "The Hobbit" again! Great Book!

I'll start with school, we had another week of school filled with grèves, manifestations, and altogether inconvenience... but I don't mind, because half the time, class is cancelled! So as the week continued on, I got a letter in the mail from the National Mail Service in Paris, they said that they had detained my Package from my parents because it seemed that I had bought things from the US and had them shipped to France secretly to avoid taxes, which makes no sense because France like doesn't have taxes, haha, and they told me that I needed to E-Mail them a sworn declaration that it was like wholesome intent and not like tax evasion, plus I had to give them a list of all of it's contents and their estimated value and replacement value... It was somewhat annoying, but I was happy to do it, knowing I would soon get my package. I sent the e-mail and within minutes received a reply stating that the e-mail was received and everything was chill... moving on: At the end of the week, Friday night before vacation, even though I still had class on Saturday morning... all of my Premiere Literature class, my main class that I have most of my courses with, all went out to eat at a really good Brick Oven Pizzeria, It was SOOOO GOOOOD. It was really fun, every time that I do something outside of school with my French friends, I feel more like I'm supposed to be here. I feel more accepted, I feel like my French improves, and I just think it's altogether a great experience.

After a long 2 hours of class on Saturday morning, vacation had begun! I was so excited to head out the next morning! Everything was packed and ready the night before! Sunday morning we (my host mom, sister, and myself) woke up and left pretty much right away. We left the house before 6:45... I was tired, but caught up on sleep in the car, and when I woke up, caught up on reading "the Hobbit" which is fantastic, I know I should be trying to read in French, but I was fiending for a Tolkien fix... and in French I would not understand his roundabout way of writing. After about another hour of driving, we arrived at what seemed like an abandoned vacation town... I was told about a week in advance that there was a surprise for me on the way to the south of France... but they never told me what it was... after some driving and searching for a parking lot, we began to walk. I was very confused, but we crested a hill and in front of us stood about 25 futuristic looking structures and buildings; none of which matched one another, but still were all very cool. We had arrived at Futuroscope. Futuroscope is an Amusement park based around technology and virtual reality. It is like what Epcot at DisneyWorld would be if they re-did it like 5 years ago. It was really cool and really fun. there were a lot of virtual reality attractions and 4D Movies. I had a lot of fun, and it ended up being gorgeous out; as it was for the rest of the week too! The park was a great day and after we finished around 6, we got back in the car and continued to head south to the Vendee department of France, where my Host family's cousins live and work at a Family Vineyard.

We arrived in Vix at about 8:30 I think, and unloaded the car. I was introduced to the family and shown to my room. After we "freshened up" we ate dinner, which was really good, and the wine-drinking began. I got to taste a bunch of different wines throughout the next couple of days, I really like wine! After dinner, we all called it a night; everyone was tired and ready for bed. The next day, in the daylight, I could really see the land that we were staying on. We were surrounded by Vine fields, green houses, and beautiful French countryside, it was awesome! There is a chateau directly next to the house I was staying at; it serves as a hotel, an reception center, and a receiving hall with the vineyard holds functions. It is really awesome! The first day in Vix, my host mother and I toured the small village and just generally explored the area, my host sister was working at the vineyard and would be for the next two days as a career exploration. After we toured the small town, which was indeed VERY small, the two of us went to LaRochelle, more after this story. After LaRochelle we came back to Vix and had dinner as a group. We had lamb, it was so tender and delicious, I actually forgot all about lambchops and feeling bad about eating it! The next day, my host sister went to work again, and Marie and I explored The Chateau, The small village of Vouvant, and the village of Fontenay le Comte... it was good day, and I got to take a lot of nice pictures. The third day, Wednesday,  all three of us said our goodbyes and headed further south towards Bordeaux. My host Father's sister lives in a small sub-urb with her husband, who happens to be the second in command at the same Vineyard where I had spent the last 3 nights, the father of the spouse of my family's cousin is the son of the president and creator of the vineyard; it is quite the family affair. Anyway, we arrived at their house, ate lunch, then they headed out for their own affairs, and the three of us headed to Bordeaux, "the little Paris", I was so excited. Bordeaux was great, we got back to the house around 9, ate dinner and then pretty much went to bed. It was a long day for all and everyone was tired, so we called it a night. The next day, we woke up, ate breakfast, said our thank you's and goodbye's, and left. We stopped before we got on the highway and bought sandwiches and drinks for a picnic lunch. It was the first bad weather we had had all week, and we were spending it in the car, so it didn't really matter too much. The ride home would be between 6 and 8 hours, it ended up being closer to 8. We stopped and ate our food, and everything was good. I finished the song I was listening to, and the last page of my book at the same time, as we were pulling in the driveway; great end to a great week! I walked upstairs with my hands full of luggage and entered my room to see a B-E-A-U-tiful cardboard box on my floor, Yay my parents package had arrived!

Day 1, LaRochelle:
LaRochelle is a medium sized port city that was used as a center for trade between the British and the French. It is full of old buildings, new buildings, character, and things to do. When we go to the city, we parked and walked all the way to the Harbor. on either side of the entrance to the harbor there is a tower. they are known as the Towers of LaRochelle, and they are a symbol of the city, and also a national monument. They are really big and old and they served many purposes throughout their lifetimes. My host mom and I explored the larger of the two towers and the lighthouse that stands next to the two towers on the end of a rampart. The towers were extremely intricate in design and were really cool to explore, the narrow stone staircases and the high wooden ceilings were really awesome to look at. after exploring the towers, we walked around the actual town of LaRochelle. It is really cool, kind of touristy, but cool all the same. We saw a lot of things, but didn't do anything specifically. There was a lot of shopping, but the same stores are in Rouen, so I wasn't totally interested in shopping. After a small chocolate cake, we headed back to the house!

Day 2, Vouvant/ Fontenay le Comte:
The second day started with a grocery trip to Fontenay le Comte, the small city next to Vix. After returning the groceries to the house, we ate lunch and then headed out for Vouvant. Vouvant was named one of the prettiest cities in France, there is a huge lake and really great views from the old walls of the fortified city. We quickly found out that there wasn't much to do, as it was off season, and that after looking at everything, there is nothing to do. All the shops were closed, but I took some great pictures. On our way home from Vouvant, we stopped in Fontenay le Comte again so we could walk around downtown. We explored the church which was crazy! The stained glass windows were awesome! and there was someone tuning the organ while we were there, so he was playing music the whole time we were visiting. It was really cool. After we left the church we did a little exploring around the town, then headed home. The day turned out to be really cool! It wasn't until I got home that I realized that it was October 26, the 2 month anniversary of my arrival in France! Spooky...

Day 3: Bordeaux:
Bordeaux was so sick! we parked outside the city and took the metro in, which was a great choice. We spent most of the day just walking around and exploring the city. We stopped at a few art galleries and I saw some really unique and creative stuff. We actually took an hour and a half long tourist train that drove around the city and you wear headphones and it tells you about different parts of the city... when there wasn't information running, they played the same classical orchestral piece over, and over, and over........ that got somewhat annoying, and I was annoyed that I had difficulty taking pictures from the bumpy train, but it was a good way to see the city. We also visited the Rue St Catherine, which is the longest commercial shopping street in Europe, that was pretty cool, and we visited the Opera House and the Public Garden, both of which were really awesome! Bordeaux, just like any other large French city, is really really cool at night. All the buildings are lit up and its really quite cool! The day went fast, but we did a lot and I was happy to have been there. We took the Metro back to the car and drove back to the family's house. All in all it was a great day!

After getting home from my trip to the south of France, I went to bed, woke up in the morning and left to go to Parc Asterix, A theme park based on the French children's cartoon about vikings. It is really funny. The park was very family oriented, but fun none the less. It was a nice day out, and many of the rotary exchange students from my district go to go! It was a great day, we did a lot, and as per usual, I lost my voice because I talked so much, as did half of the other students. It's funny, when we can talk in English, we just don't stop haha... We took the bus back to l'Aigle and stayed there for the night before coming back to Rouen today in the afternoon. It was a long trip, but really fun, and I love seeing all of my friends!

The rest of Vacation, which ends on Wednesday, seems to be quiet time, which I am more than OK with, I had such a great week, and a few days of R&R is all I really need. Hopefully some of the other students will be able to come to Rouen on Wednesday! It would be really fun to show people around!

Paix et Fromage!
Jared

Soccer/Football...or lack there of

So you would think: France>Europe>Football(Soccer) but it is so much harder than you would think to just find somewhere to play...
Sports aren't important to the majority of people here. They only have gym for 2 hours one time every week, and they play like 4 sports collectively for the whole year. The have Intramural sports on wednesdays after school, but most schools only have one sport and this year its Rugby... and no one plays... so there isn't a point in going.

If I wanted to play soccer, I would need a club license from the united states, it cost a hefty sum of money, an awful lot of time, and the Fall season is already almost over... so Soccer in the Fall is out! I keep looking for different places that I can play soccer inside/outside/or both, but there is no luck to be had. My host family keeps telling me that I really just can't because, even if I could find a club, I don't have the time to devote to it... Maybe in the Spring when I am more comfortable with everything I can try to find a soccer club to join. I know that French Exchange Students in the past have not had this much trouble finding somewhere to play soccer. I think that maybe because I'm 18 I have to provide more literature on my ability to play soccer, but it's not like I wanna go traveling the world with a semi-professional team... I just wanna play some soccer!

Hopefully I will be able to go to a game sometime soon! My host dad coaches a semi-pro team, and I think we will go to one of their games soon. I also expressed an interest in going to a national game, like the premier league, and I think that its plausible and really not expensive (like 35-45 Euro). I'm hoping that before the real winter weather hits, that I will be able to see a Professional game! This is my venting about the lack of sports, I never thought of myself as somewhere very "sporty" until I got here and all I wanna do is throw a baseball around or shoot some hoops... BUT I CAN'T! It's so frustrating!
Maybe I'll find a new sport that I love to play here, that is more accessible, and blogging doesn't count... although there are blogging related injuries, such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome...

... oops. Major Recap.

where to start... The week following my last entry actually turned out to be awesome. I think that this blog is kind of a therapy; i told myself who I was and thought about what I needed to do to be who I wanted to be, and, as the French say, voila! it happened. My French has started to become more fluent, I'm making real friends here, that care about what I have to say and I care about their opinions too. My biggest fear was that I wasn't going to be able to find friends with any substance, but that fear has been overturned. I can actively participate in a conversation, and I can be funny again! woah, what a relief.

After a great week of school, weird to say right, I got to go to Mont St Michel! What a treat! I was so excited all week, not only just to see my friends from America, Columbia, Mexico, Canada, and Germany, sorry if i forgot your country... but I also got to see one of the most magnificent pieces of architecture/masonry in France! For the past weeks I had been planning on driving out with Hunter, an exchange student from Michigan, but at the last minute I found out that I could not, and that I would be put on a train the following hour and sent to Basse-Normandie to meet the Rotary chair, who I thought hated me because he stared at me the entire first conference while delivering the rules to the new exchange students, and spend the night at his house alone, so I thought.... The thing about Rotary Exchange is that there is a lot of stuff you don't find out until it is already happening... I arrived in Bernay by train, after frantically packing a bag for 2 days of mud trekking and exploring, and met Jean-Ronny, the district chair. The 35 minute ride back to his house was quiet, he drove like 125km/h, which is a lot for country roads in France, and when we arrived at his home in L'Aigle, there was a small Roatry soirée going on. Three families, two chairpersons, and 3 other exchange students, who were conveniently spending the night! Phew I wouldn't be alone. After Hors D'oeuvres, the families left and it was just the chairpersons and the exchange students. Halfway through dinner, the District Chair's wife dropped her fork and gasped, then exclaimed "je n'ai fait pas le COUSCOUS!" at this everyone at the table erupted into laughter, because we had all been thinking that the meal seemed kind of small... we continued to eat while she quickly made the couscous, then we finished the meal. for desert we had something delicious, they were like Pepperidge farm Pirouettes but actually french and fantastic! We stayed at the table for about 3 hours just talking and laughing. I got to talk with Anne, Majo, and Laura about their experiences so far with Rotary, it was really cool. After dinner, I had realized that Jean-Ronny didn't hate me, and that he was actually rather fond of me. He gave us our sleeping arrangements, The three girls in his youngest daughters bedroom, the small bedroom, and me, alone, in his only son's bedroom, the biggest; he said the man gets the best room... I really don't agree with the amount of sexism in France, but why stop them from giving me something fantastic!? the four of us stayed up way to late talking, it was so good to talk in English! We woke up in the morning, drank coffee out of cereal bowls... that was odd, then headed out for Mont St Michel. The ride out was gorgeous, and in true French fashion we stopped at two different locations to buy café/thé/chocolat chaud. Once we arrived the fun began!

It was great to see everyone! We all ate a bagged lunch, and just got to meet people from all over the world who had come to the western side of France! After lunch, we took buses down the road to the actual island, we were told to retire our shoes under the bus and prepare to get dirty... the tide had just gone out, and we all walked out into the bay surrounding Le Mont! we walked out to an island that was about 5 km from Le Mont. it took us 5 hours to walk out and back! EVERYONE had to pee, it was kind of awful... but the views were great, and I met a lot of cool people. We returned and got to freshen up, then we had dinner. The dinner was awful, it took way too long, there wasn't enough food or drinks, and we had to listen to Every country's national anthem.... it got kind of boring. after the national anthems, the principal plate was served... it was COLD SALADS, and fish with head still attached, needless to say, everyone was disappointed.
after the meal, there was a dance... it smelled way too awful, so the district 1640 kids, holla, all went and hung out together until about 2:45. It was so fun! and at this point everyone was hoarse and needed to sleep... we woke up at 6:45 for breakfast which was doubly delicious because of how awful he night before had been, and then we headed out for Mont St Michel, the interior!

I felt like I was in a mixture of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, it was literally fantastic! I love Europe, the content of my photos just seems so much more interesting here. We visited the Abby at the top, it was so cool! I was just so impressed! We got ice cream souvenirs, then headed back for lunch and goodbyes. Lunch was great, we had soup, fries, and chicken.... among some other great things! After a bizarre dance rehearsal, everyone said there goodbyes and headed out.

the following week, this past week, was equally as awesome, but almost too fast, I don't remember half of it. I think I was jealous because my real family was on vacation in America, in my favorite place in the world, Martha's Vineyard. Anyway, there was a blocus, or blockade of the school, on Friday. There have been a lot of strikes and protests. The now president wants to change the retirement age to 62 from 60, but the people that are 60 right now have to wait until they are 64 to retire; when the people who are now 58 are 62, then the retirement age will be 62, but they are filling the gap with elderly people' the whole thing just seems bizarre and flawed. Needless to say, everyone in France hates the idea. There are 40,000 person protests in Rouen at least once a week, and there is often no school, shortened days, or classes missing, and the best part... NO SUBS! No teacher, No Class! The closest I have been to the protests is seeing them in the newspaper here though. There all these warnings for Americans traveling in France and Germany to stay away from large groups of people, terror threats and stuff... Which is frustrating, but hey whatever, that's life.

I got to do some cool things this week in spite of the manifestations, like visit the Caen, D-Day Memorial. It was cool, I've been before, so it was a little boring, but the people that I was there with were cool. I went with my English class here, which is a different group of kids than my other classes, so it was good to get to know them a little better. Plus, there was a group of 9 Danish students who were staying in France for the week at our school as part of an exchange, which means that we get to go to Denmark in May as the second half of the exchange....score! It was good to be able to speak English and French at the same time, the transition wasn't as difficult as I thought, and a few times I had to act as a translator because the Danes had very little French skills (2 years at the most). On our "sortie" (fieldtrip) we also visited the Pegasus Bridge, which was the first structure in France to be liberated from Hitler's Control during the German occupation in WWII, it was ugly, but hey, it's history. After Lunch at the bridge we went to Pluto beach I think, Juno, Pluto... I don't remember, but it was really nice out, and actually kind of warm. A bunch of the guys in my class stripped down to their underwear and went swimming, I wasn't that daring, the water was way too cold haha. After a long ride home, I got picked up by my host mom and we headed home. The weather was actually really nice so I just hung out outside until it got dark. Good ending to a great day!

The day after Caen, was wednesday, my "one-hour of class" day. I love the short day, I can hang out with my friends after school, it's just really cool! I met up with Hunter and Sarah who live in Rouen like me, and Joelynn, from Elbeuf, a neighboring city. Rouen quickly found out what happens when you let three Americans and a Canadian loose in the city! We had a lot of fun, I can't wait to do it again. It is fun being able to have fun, and have people understand why you're having fun. Often times, the French don't understand American humor, and I end up looking like an idiot. More fun Wednesdays to come I think, if there aren't a million protests.

This past saturday was the Rotary District Conference a Honfleur, a small port city in western Normandie. The town was so effin cool! I had so much fun, it was cool that we got to skip half of the conference to explore the city! Honfleur is the home of the oldest wooden church in France, it was really cool! the windows were amazing! Around the church every Saturday is a huge open air market with vendors of all sorts. They had everything from cheese to sausage to strawberries and other fresh fruits and veggies. It was so awesome! There was also a fish market down at the docks; people sold fish right off the back of their boats as they came in from the morning voyage. I really felt like I was in an old port village in Maine or Massachusetts, or, well...France. After the exploration, we had to all return to the conference to listen to a guy talk about polio in French. There is nothing more difficult to understand in another language than medical lingo... The conference ended and we all piled into cars to go to a luncheon. After we finished eating our Duck and Mushrooms, which was fantastic, all of the Rotary Exchange Students had to perform a dance that we had choreographed the week before. The dance went with a mix of different genres of music, hailing from the countries that our students had come from.... it was really pointless, but I got to do the worm in front of 250 old men and women, so I'm not complaining. After the dance, the conference was over and everyone filed out of the building, marking the end of another successful Rotary Event, I miss my exchange student friends.

Sunday morning was chill, I got to sleep in. After getting up and cleaning my room a little, it was time for lunch. After lunch we all got ready and then went to the festival of gastronomy in Rouen. It was so cool to taste all of the local foods. All of the different homemade breads, jams, cakes, crepes, cheese, and sausage! Not to mention all of the hundreds of other sweets that were available to sample! After buying duck sausage and homemade jam, orange, blueberry, and chocolate/banana, we went home to make crèpes and pasta with Gruyere and Sausage, YUMM! If I didn't feel French before Sunday, I definitely do now!

And that brings me up to date... it's Tuesday and I don't have school. I'm very happy, Tuesday is my heavy workload day. This is why I love Manifestations! I just wish I could take the train somewhere and explore,but the trains don't run during strikes, obviously, so it's a tradeoff I guess. I get to catch up on sleep, blogging, postcards, cleaning my room, reading, and doodling though....Very important things for an exchange student. haha
















PICTURE LEGEND:
1) Le Mont St Michel.
2) The 10km hike through the quicksand on day one.
3) The island that we hiked to, while the tide is up around it.
4) The flags at the Caen Memorial.
5) Pont Pegasus, Pegasus Bridge.
6) The port at Honfleur.
7) Vegetables at the market in Honfleur
8) Stained glass window and chandelier in the old wooden church in Honfleur.