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!
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.
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.
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