C'est la vie

Nov. 26 2012

Salut tout le monde!

I am now back in school and I am counting down the days until the next vacation, which starts on the 21st of December. The world is suppose to end that day but I hope it doesn't because I would like to enjoy my Christmas break.

I left off last half way through my last vacation. The 2nd week of my vacation was pretty calm but the Wednesday to the Friday I had my friend, Thibault from Lyon, come and stay. For those of you who don't know he was the exchange student in my town last year and we became very clost friends so it was wonderful to see him again. We didn't do anything too crazy but we did make some Eggers with REAL bacon. Happiest girl. Also the neatest thing was that because he's fluent in english and I'm pretty fluent in french our conversations switched back and fourth and it was totally awesome.

Eggers are wonderful... yum :)

                        I love this kid <3 nbsp="nbsp">

 School started up again and I got sick on Tuesday but that was okay because Tuesdays are my least favourite days and so instead I spent my day sleeping and hanging out. I was really looking forward to a mountain climbing expedition I was going to do with the school the Wendesday of the first week back but of course I get to school Wednesday morning to find that it was cancelled because of a bus driver strike. Cool. -__- 

The weekend came with a very laid back Saturday and a soccer game on Sunday in Nice. It was great because another exchange student from Vernon BC, Eamon, lives pretty close to Nice so he was planning on coming to the game to take pictures. But of course the bus was late, he went to the wrong stadium and he missed the game but we did end up meeting after the game briefly. We found each other in the funnest way too. After the game I called him and we tried to figure out where each other was to see if there was any chance of meeting up. We were pretty much only able to meet up because an ambulance drove past him and then ended up coming to the stadium I was at! So he just followed the ambulance and we were able to find each other! Crazy. 

The day ended on a sad note though. My family decided that we were going to put down our dog, Kyte. It was a really tough decision but she was old, the arthritis in back legs was so bad she couldn't walk and there were lumps on her body that may have been cancerous. We had the vet come to the house so I was there over skype. It was really tough. We had her cremated and when I come back we are going to spread her ashes. She was an amazing dog and I will miss her dearly.

Every year my h.mom, Marielle, takes her class to vollunteer with the food bank and my Rotary club gathering food for the bank so on Friday I went with Marielle to help out. It was actually pretty fun plus I didn't have to go to school =D yay

And yesterday I had another soccer game and I got put in net. We lost. Haha I only played 1 half but I tried my best! I was even doing pretty well till my own team somehow scored on me... -__- Haha

So you're pretty much caught up on my life. In two days with the school I'm going to go to a cross country race thing and I don't think its too long so I'm hoping to do pretty well specially because I've been running pretty often on my own. Souhaitez moi bonne chance! Everything is going well and I'm getting pretty comfortable with my french. In 2 days I will have officially been here for 3 months. Time is flying. Also I think I should mention a very neat thing that happened to me today. I found out there was an English club at school and  figured I should probably go and check it out being an anglophone and all. After getting to the meeting and talking for a bit I had that strangest realization that I didn't want to speak English! I was so used to speaking French with French people that speaking English seemed just wrong. I think the French-ness is starting to seep into my blood and I gotta say I don't hate it.

Hope all is well from where ever you are reading this from!

Gros bisous from France!
Rebecca Howes

1ère Vacances :D

Salut tout le monde!

So I guess I have moderately gotten into a habit of writing here every two weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up. I have decided that the best part of the schooling in France is that every 6 weeks you get 2 weeks off which I am most definitely a fan of. The last week of school went by fairly quickly and I signed up to go mountain climbing the Wednesday of the week I got back to school school and in my very last class on Friday, which was my english class, I did a presentation on Canada which went really well. I did it partly in English which was good for the rest of the class and partly in Franch which was great for me. Afterwards some of the students came and said the presentation was great and they really enjoyed it which was wonderful to hear. I look forward to doing it again in some more classes. During the last week I also got to meet a guy from England who is an assistant at the school in the English classes and we had a nice chat.

Now, I am pretty much done my first week of the 2 weeks of Vacation but it has been well spent thus far. The first weekend I went to a soirée at Bobby's, an exchange student friends house in a neighbouring town called Monfort, that is about an hour from me. The party had 8 exchange students and then a couple of his friends from school. It was a wonderful night and everyone brought food to eat and it was great. All the exchange students slept there and then next day we hung around, talked, laughed etc.

On Monday I went for a run and tried to find a trail that I ran on with my host dad a couple of weeks ago but obviously that didn't work out so well because I ended up getting lost for 2 hours and ended up in another town. -__-

Tuesday it was Ime's birthday (exchanger from Mexico) so we met up in Aix and hung out which was nice. On Wednesday moi et Ime met up again at my house and made nachos and watched a movie. It was really rainy that day so walking to my house we got a little wet. There were literally river on the streets. On Thursday I went with my host family to Dignes-les-Bains for my h.mom's dad's birthday. It was kinda cool because I got to met pretty much all the family of my host mom. We ate and sat around and talked and it was nice. And, finally almost all caught up, Friday I went to a friends house from school. We went biking and saw a great view and I hung out with her family etc which was wonderful. I stayed the night and then the next morning I made pancakes. It was really awesome and her family is very nice.

   Getting all ready to go! :)

At the very top ^ :)

Then off we went!

For the next week I have a soccer game tomorrow and then on Wednesday my friend Thibault from Lyon is coming to visit me! He was the exchange student in my town last year and I'm looking forward to seeing him again. And then on Friday I'm getting together with a bunch of friends from school to go shopping and then after either seeing a movie, going bowling, or playing laser tag. My heart says laser tag but my wallet says bowling. :p But I guess I'll just have to see how much money I spend shopping because I really need a jacket because I didn't bring one.

SO,
à la prochain,
gros bisous,







Rebecca

♪ Ooo champs d'elysée ♪♪

Salut tout le monde!

So I just got back from Paris yesterday and I'll catch you up on the last 2 weeks.
The weekend of October the 13th on Saturday I met up with some friends and we went to Aix en Provence and hung out. It was really awesome because they knew where all the  stores were so we found a store that sold PEANUT BUTTER! And a book store that I got a french book at. We also went to this place called Tutti Fruiti where you get to pick your own frozen yogurt and then put whatever you want on top and then you pay for however much it weighs. That was awesome and it is now my favourite shop. :) So yummy.

They next day I had a soccer game in Aubune which is about an hour from here. My soccer team met up and then we all took a bus there. It was really nice to hang out with the team. They are awesome and everyone is super nice. It's kinda neat too cuz the ages on my team range from 16 to 23 I think because there isn't enough girls who play soccer to to make team with smaller age groupings. We lost 2-3 but it wasn't our best game and sometimes I find the team a little bit dysfunctional with is really frustrating for me because after games and stuff when we are talking in the change rooms it's difficult for me to tell everyone how I feel about the game because if people want to understand me they have to listen and its difficult to get a room of 14 girls to all stop talking when everyone wants to say their two cents. But it's okay I know it'll come once my french gets stronger.

The following weekend was...PARIS! :D We left Friday morning to catch the train, that travels at 300 km/h so we made it there in 3 hours. When we got there we took the metro to our hotel only to find out that the room that was meant to have 2 beds, for my host brother and I only had one and that wasn't really going to fly. But no worries they said they could fix by "casser le lit" which literally means 'break the bed". So I'm not really too sure what happened there but all I know is that when we came back to the hotel there was two beds. :p After checking in at the hotel to leave all our bags we went to promenade in the streets of Paris. We took the Metro part way to Champs d'elysée and we walked the rest. The champs was filled with people walking everywhere and there was so many different stores. And the song was right, "au soleil, sous le pluit, a midi ou a midnuit il y a tous que vous voulez au champs d'elysée" sun shine or ran there's people on the Champs d'elysée and unfortunately it was the latter.

At the end of the champs d'elysée is L'arc de triomphe. Which honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. We went to the top of it and got a pretty good view of Paris.

But it wasn't as good of a view as the one we got from the top of the Eiffel Tower. :p We took an elevator to the top and then stop at the other two levels on the way down. On the first level we sat and had a drank and just chilled out. At the bottom of the tower they had all these bears that were painted by someone from every country to raise money for something. We found the one for Canada. I guess what I also found really neat is because we were going to all the touristicy places you probably could have found someone there who spoke almost every language. So that was pretty neat. 

The following day we went to the Louvre, we didn't go inside though because I'm going to Paris again with Rotary in December and we're going inside then. And we went to le hotel de la ville which was huge and very Parisian. After was Notre Dame de Paris which was HUGE and old and very beautiful. You weren't allowed flash photography so you're going to have to excuse the ambient photos.  

This banana split was real yummy :)

 Notre Dame was so beautiful

Later that day we went on a tour of the France stadium which was actually really cool. Plus I got to see the jacuzzi in the change room that they filled with champagne after france won the cup in 1998 :p

Here they even played the music and we walked out onto the pitch with it. I can totally imagine the rush that the players must get from a full stadium. It would be amazing.

The next day was our last day and we left by 12 because we had a 7 hour drive ahead of us. My host dad was working in Germany and then met up with us in Paris with the car. We went and saw La Defense before leaving which is the new part of Paris with all the skyscrapers ect. The drive home was fairly calm but we had a nice courtyish view the whole way home. 


Now I'm back home and this is the last week of school before we get a two week break. YAY :) I'm starting to feel pretty comfortable with my host  family which is really great. 
So that was my trip. It was awesome and I'm so thankful that my parents took me. Hopefully I'll get to make them pancakes soon! 
A bientot et gros bisous,
Rebecca