Post Euro tour

Coucou tout le monde!

After getting back from Euro tour nothing seemed as…incredible? For a little while but that soon wore off because Anne (3^rd h.mom) kept me busy. Especially since May is filled with holidays we took advantage of those days to sight see a bit.

The weekend that I got back I went to the gym and then to Aix with Anne and Denis (3^rd h.dad) and saw a movie. Apparently the euro tour really did tire me out because I dozed off a few times during the movie. It might have also been because it was a Chinese movie subtitled in French and my brain just couldn't handle it. As soon as we got home after I pretty much went straight to bed.

Then Wednesday May 1^st happened to be a holiday so Anne, Denis, Louis (h.bro) and I went to Les Baux de Provence which is about an hour and a half drive from Fuveau. In Les Baux there is this castle that happens to be made from lime stone blocks that are carved out of the mountain just below where the castle is built. So what they did is in the caves made  from the carved out blocks they pretty much turned it into an art gallery where they project images and paintings of the walls and floor which are pretty much completely flat and accompanied by music. The ambiance was really quite neat. I think it’s a very creative idea and use of the space to bring a sort of new life to something old.

After seeing the caves we made our way up to the castle. The castle was moderately crumbled but they had some catapults set up and we even made it up in time to them being launch which was really cool. They were dressed up an everything.

The following weekend Anne, Denis and I went to a really awesome market just outside of Avion. We didn’t have too much luck with the weather because it was raining a fair bit but I did but a really awesome bracelet! This lady had a really awesome booth set up or jewellery she had made out of utensils. There was spoon necklaces and earrings, knife bracelets and I got a bracelet made out of a fork! It’s really awesome and I looove it. J I was very happy with my purchase. The lady who owned the stale even said that the fork itself is a silver fork from the 19^th century. So that’s kinda neat.

After, we went to Avignon for lunch at an Indian restaurant. Saw the gardens and the bridge of Avignon which collapsed half way across the river and to this day it only make it across half the river. There’s even a song written about it!

On the drive back I mentioned that this weekend marked me being in France for 8 months and Anne said that we needed to celebrate! So if I wanted to have some friends over to celebrate I could. So I planned a soiree for the following following weekend. 

So the Friday of my soiree I went to Aix to get Maggie (an exchanger from Nice who was taking the bus in). And of course she forgot her phone at home. Great. Specially since she was suppose to phone me when she got to Aix so I could go and get her. After much walking around (at least an hour) I finally found her and we made our way back to my house. 

The next day Maggie and I went back to Aix to meet up with everybody else. There was Lucca, Dylan, Bobby, Clay, Sarah, and Paulina. We hung around in Aix for the day and then that afternoon we headed back to my place. I'm not gonna lie I was pretty excited to get to show off Fuveau to everyone because I think its pretty nice. That night we got pizza and we stayed up late playing a game called Werewolf. The next morning was a kinda of rainy day and everyone slowly went home catching their various buses. 

The follwing week there was holidays on both the 8th and 9th which also happened to be Dylan's birthday. So on Wednesday Ime, Shin Hae and I all went out to Fourcalquier to celebrate it. We stayed the night and then the next day I ended up staying another night because I didn't have anything else I needed to do. Dylan, Bobby and I went for a walk around the village and went on a mini hike up to the citadel that's perched on top of a little mountain and you get a pretty good view of the surrounding area. After we went back to Dylan's, made some really awesome pizza and banana bread and then I left to catch my bus to head back home. 

Sunday I went with my host family to the island Porqeroles which is an island facing Toulon. It was a pretty sunny day but there was also quite a bit of wind. The island is pretty much a vacation biking island that has lots of trails all over the place. 

The four of us rented bikes and had an awesome time biking around. After eating lunch Louis and I went off on our own and did a little bit more so of some mountain biking. 

 

We ended up in this cool gorge called le gorge du loup and it was ridiculously windy because of how the land was shaped the wind would come just right up and could pretty much almost blow you over. We really did spend an awesome day and I'm so glad we went.

The following weekend Anne and Louis were going to a wedding in Lyon so I went with them but I would be going to stay with Thibault for the weekend. We left Friday after Louis got out of school. The drive to Lyon is about 3.5hrs and I got to Thibault's around 8:30. 

And his house is gorgeous. Its practically a castle it has three floors but what they did is the split up each of the floors so now there are 3 families living on each floor pretty much like a mini apartment. That night we stayed up late talking. It was so nice to see him again.            

 

On Saturday we went into Lyon to see if we could find him a costume for him to wear to the monome. Which come to think of it I also had one at my school and I didn't write anything about it! He gave me a mini tour of Lyon and we stopped in a couple costume shops. At one of which we found a Mounty costume! : D After that we decided to go see a movie and we went and saw Iron Man 3. 

By now it had started raining so we quickly went and saw the old part of Lyon and then we took the bus back to his house. Now his parents were back and I finally got to meet them which was really awesome since Thib has met all of my family. His mom reminds me a lot of Thib. She's the kind of person you can talk to for hours. The next day we had pancakes for breakfast and mostly just hung around house because Anne would be coming to get me around mid-day. I had an awesome time with Thib and I'm glad that I got to see him on last time before I left back to Canada and I can't wait till I see him again. 

 

Side bar, the monome at my school happened right before I went on Eurotour and it is pretty much where everyone goes to school dressed up. Kinda like it is for us on Halloween. I went as a mime and I was really happy with how my costume turned out. The first half of the day is a normal day and then for the second half they had music playing and people were dancing and they sold crepes too! It was a nice way to end school before heading off on Euro tour.

 

The day I returned from Lyon is also the day that I changed into my fourth and final host family. I now only have 5 weeks left and its crazy. I plan on doing as much as I can in the time I have left.

See you all very soon!

Gros bisous,

Rebecca

EURO TOUR

Bonjour, hallo, ahoj, ciao!

Ever since Uncle Bruce and Vanessa came my time has just been filled with wonderful things. After Uncle Bruce and Vanessa left I had one more week of school and then it was two weeks of vacances which I would be spending on EURO TOUR! Woo

12 days, 48 exchange students, 6 countries, over 5000km, 1 bus. A million memories.

My voyage started the Monday morning of vacances where I met up with all the other exchange students from my district at the TGV station in Aix. We took the train to Paris and that's where we met up with the rest of our bus. And our bus tour went as follows:

Paris, France
Riems, France
Strasbourg, France
Nuremberg, Germany
Prague, Cheque Republic
Vienna, Austria
Venis, Italy
Milan, Italy
Charmonix, France
Geneva, Switzerland
Dijon, France
Paris, France

The bus tour worked by us travelling primarily in the morning to a new destination then having some kind of a tour/free time/eating time then heading to a hostel or hotel to stay for the night, getting up early, eating breakfast and then leaving again.

Riems, France - In Riems we pretty much just stayed the night and got to know everyone a little bit. We had exchangers from Argentina, Brasil, Bolivia, Canada, Columbia, Ecuador, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Tailand, United States, Venezuela and I think that's all.

Strasbourg, France - In Strasbourg we had free time and eating time and we were right in the centre of town where the Cathedral was. After free time we did a boat tour on the river which was pretty neat. They even had these...water elevators? They filled up a space with water with the boat in it to raise it up to the next space to the next level of river. We stayed the night in Strasbourg and then the next day it was on to Germany and our first boarder crossing!

Nuremberg, Germany - The next morning we had breakfast at 7 and were out of there by 8 o'clock. Once we were in Germany I put all my German vocabulary to work. Danke, hallo, keine, ja. And that was about as good as it got. As soon as we got to Nuremberg we went straight to a tour. We saw were Hitler did some of his speeches and the Nazi headquarters. We then did a small tour of the town and then we had a couple hours of shopping/free time.Germany is a clean country that is very...straight? If that makes sense but I really enjoyed being there and the weather was awesome.

Prague (Praha), Czech Republic - Praha ha ha the drive to Prague was pretty long but we spent a pretty big portion of the ride playing cards and chatting etc. so the time past pretty quickly. Once we made it to Prague we had to figure out how we wanted to pay for thing because the currency in Czech is the koruna which we soon came to call them, czechle dechles.
We could use euros in most place but for change they would give it back to you in koruna. Once we got there we went straight to a guided tour and our big group split into 2 little groups. By know I think a lot of us were not too interested in what the guides were saying and more interested in simply walking around and taking everything in. I wasn't too concerned with with king said in so in so chair in such and such year. I just wanted to see the chair, remark that it was a nice chair and move on with my life. For the tour we walked down through the town in a big city square kind of thing where there was a church on one side and across from it there was another large building that was set on some kind of timer and every hour or half hour it must have been there was this song the played and these little statue things came out and spun around. After seeing that we walk down and into the Jewish quarter. After we all met back up and went to the hotel which to our surprise we found that it had been invaded by Italians. It must have been a really big school trip because the kids must have ranged from 12 to 18 years old.
It was kind of neat though cuz we tried talking to a group of them for a while with a mix of French, Italian, and English and we were able to have little conversations which was kind of cool. The next morning we had another guided tour with the same guides as yesterday but today we had a lot more free time. After our guided tour where we mostly just walked around and saw a little bit more of the town we went to go find somewhere to eat. A group of people and I decided that we really wanted to have some kind of traditional Czech food. So we went to the main square and that's where we found this English guy who was hired to hand out fliers for some sort of club.
SO we asked him if he knew of any good restaurants and he said "yes".
After he tried to describe where it was to us he said "you know what, I'll just take you there"; It was super nice of him and he took us up this street and around a little corner to a restaurant that we probably would have never gone in. The inside at the back kind of looked like a dungeon. I order a traditional plate that I could even pronounce the name of let alone remember. Its was a meat that was marinated in some kind of special Czech sauce, potato dumplings, bread and sauerkraut and it was amaaazing. And also very cheap. After we did a little bit of shopping and then headed back to the hotel. One thing about this hotel that was pretty annoying and amusing at the same time was the dinning room staff. Since there was so many people in the hotel who, by the way did I mention that the elevator was so used that 2 of the 3 stopped working by the 2nd day and we had to take the stairs. Which would have been fine but of course we were on the 9th floor -__- Now back to the dinning room. Since there was so many of us the dinning room clean up staff was very efficient. So efficient that you would bring your food to the table set it down and realize you forgot a spoon, head back to go get one and return to your food to find it gone. Already cleared away. It was pretty funny watching people leave their food see it get taken away and then see their reactions to come back to their spot to find all their food gone. We left Prague after 2 nights in the hotel bright and early as normal and were off on our way to Austria!

Vienna, Austria - We were only in Vienna for one night and that day we only had enough free time to eat and then we were off on a tour. For lunch we decided to go the traditional way again and we found this little tucked away restaurant and I got Weinerschnitzel which I always thought was a weiner BUT its not! :O Its actually lightly hammered veal slices, slightly salted, and breaded with flour, whipped eggs and bread crumbs. It was really yummy and was served with potatoes. After going back to the bus we did a tour. All the buildings in Vienna are really huge and majestic looking and we even went to the most famous amusement park in Austria, Prater park and went on the Ferris wheel! After we went on a walking tour and soon there after left for the hostel. Next morning was another early day and also one of our longest days on the bus for we were on our way to Italy! The next day on the road when we stopped for lunch I finished my traditional Austria meal with a piece of apple strudel which was really good.

Venice, Italy - We finally got in to Italy late in the afternoon to a little town just outside of Venice. Our hotel was right by the ocean and as soon as we got there we spent a good two hours hanging out on the beach taking pictures, playing Frisbee, running around and talking. This was one of my favourite evenings. Next day we took a boat to Venice. The weather wasn't too great but the city really is very beautiful and unique. We took a guided tour as soon as we got there but by now I was getting a little tired of guided tours and we most talked and enjoyed the scenery on our walk. After that we had the option of paying to go on a gondola ride. I went cuz I figured if I'm going to be in Venice I have to go on a gondola. It was pretty neat seeing the town from a different perspective  and the gondola rowers are really quite good at manoeuvring those big long gondolas. As we got off of our gondola it started to rain. And rain. and rain and pretty soon it was pouring out. We spent the last bit of our free time mostly jumping in and out of stores trying to stay out of the rain. Soon enough we took the boat back to the hotel for the evening.

Milan, Italy - The next day it was off to Milan for the day. We had free time to eat and then we had to meet back for, take a guess, another tour.And saw this really beautiful white cathedral. But we didn't end up going inside because knees and shoulder can't been shown and I of course was wearing shorts.

This was the only place, other than Prague, that we were staying two nights. The next morning was another early rise for we were heading back into France to Mount Blanc and Charmonix where to get to we past through a super long tunnel that is 11.6km long.

Charmonix, France - Charmonix is a little ski town and there there was still lots of snow up on the mountains and people skiing too! There we took a train ride to the top of Mount Blanc which is the highest summit of the Alps in Western Europe. 
At the top we then took a gondola and some stairs and we actually got to go inside of the glacier at the top! Which was pretty much a big huge ice tunnel.
 
After we came back down we loaded back on the bus to drive to our next hostel where we had a really nice lasagne dinner. We left early the next morning and I forgot my newly bought shampoo and conditioner in the shower. -__-
















Geneva, Switzerland - We were only in Geneva for the day and we had a tour planned in the United Nations building. The tour was actually the most interesting tour we had on the whole bus trip and the building was decorated with gifts from countries that are members of the UN. There was tapestry from China that was 3D from no matter what angle you looked at it from. There was marble floors, paintings, poetry and wooden pillars that were all gifts and they really gave the UN a neat feeling and sense of union. After we had a little free/eating time. And I bought the most expensive sushi eva but I really wanted it after having not had sushi for 8 months I just really needed some. 

Dijon, France - After our day in Switzerland we did an evening drive to Dijon where we would spend our last night together. As this was our last evening everyone wore their vests and we exchanged pins and cards. Here I got everyone to write on my French flag. And then, afterwards, there was a planned dance for us with a DJ and everything! Everyone dressed up nicely and boy did we dance! And of course we were all shown up by the Latinos. I stayed up really late and finally went to bed at about 4:30 which wasn't so great because the next morning we had to be ready to go at 7:45 so I got a whole wonderful two and a half hours of sleep and bonus We all slept through the alarm, missed breakfast and pretty much packed in 7 mins and went straight to the bus. The bus ride was the quietest one yet. And I'm pretty sure everyone slept for the first 2 hours of it. After nap time everyone started passing around flags to be signed and books to be written in.Once we got into Paris we had to start saying goodbye to everyone since we were all getting off a different bus stops. It was a really happy/sad moment to have to say goodbye to everyone and there were some tears shed. The past 2 weeks had been truly wonderful and I was lucky to have met so many great people from all over the world.

Paris, France - The train ride home was another quiet one and we all slept for the first little bit. For the last hour or so of the ride we played cards and joked around. We got into Aix en Provence around 9:30 where I met back up with Anne and when I got home I went straight to bed because after such an amazing two weeks I was simply dead.

Gros bisous to allll,

Rebecca