French Alps

Well I figured it was about time that I updated this. So I have been in France for almost 3 weeks now and have done a week and a bit of school. School is incredibly boring. It has only academic classes. WHICH in my opinion is poop. It is possible for people to learn in different ways! Oh well at least I get plenty of drawing time in my classes.

This is one of the entrance ways to my school

Like Spanish for instance, I don't speak Spanish and the rest of my class has been taking Spanish for 4 years so this means that for 1 hour two times a week I am submitted to the horror that is translating English to French from French to Spanish. As I said, I don't know Spanish so this is very difficult.
Then there's Philosophy. The people who actually speak French don't understand this class so I don't see much hope for me. Good thing I have a whole whopping 4 hours of it a week! -___-
And then there's lunch. My favourite part of the day. They have a cafeteria where I've got this little card I swipe and get a lunch. I actually don't mind the food there. But maybe that's just because I don't have to make it. either way its the almost only part of the day when I can actually talk to the other kids there without being subjected the the glares of teachers.
Since all my classes are with the same group of students I like to think I've made a couple friends and I eat lunch with them everyday and follow them to my next classes because I don't really know where any of them are. Frankly I don't even know how they know where they are because it seems that everyday they have been moved to a different room. I don't get it. But if I every show up late I just do the exchange student act and tell them I was lost. :p
I get to school by taking the bus or walking. It's a pretty long walk of 45mins but I don't mind I like doing something. In my opinion though the bus schedule is weird and they come at awkward times but I make it work by walking or bumming around till the bus comes.

So even though school hasn't been great I got to look forward to the Rotary weekend I had coming up. It was a 3 three day event in Briançon in the French Alpes, which by the way are B-E-A-UTIFUL!  And they reminded me of home. Good ol' BC :) I got to skip out on school on Friday to catch the bus and we picked up the rest of the 13 exchangers along the way. In total we had 7 Americans (all from different states), one Mexican, a Bolivian, a boy from Japan, a girl from Korea, a guy from Brazil and then one other Canadian. We stayed in a hostel with one room for girls and one for boys. The first night we just got to know each other and stayed up late talking. We pretty much became instant friends because the amount of understanding we have with each other is amazing. The next morning we were going river Rafting and then going to some hot pools in the afternoon.

All of us suited up for rafting! :)

Sarah (Alaska)

Cathy and I. From New York

This is where the hot springs were

Model of the hot springs

Walking to the high ropes

High ropes

The Rafting was super fun and we had 3 boats, a couple over-boards, lost paddles, lost shoes :p, and a whole lot of fun. I have to admit after I had a couple of warrior wounds. After we had lunch then headed to the hot pools and they were VERY welcome after our crazy rafting. That night we exchanged cards, pins, and met our Rotary district president and a few other Rotarians. We took some nice pictures with our blazers and flags. That night we stayed up late again of course. :) The next and last day we walk over to a place called Adventure Parc which was a high ropes course. It was great! They had a whole bunch of zip lines and even a bike! That was in the sky! :O I know! So cool! All in all it was a wonderful weekend where I met some of the most wonderful people and we are planning to get together at the end of October because we can't wait till the next event so we're going to plan one of our own!

You're pretty much all caught up now. I'm back to school, blah and I'm missing my exchanger friends but still look forward to making some friends here too.
Nothing too exciting is planned till not the following weekend but the one after. I'm going to Paris with my family! It should be lots of fun and I'm very excited!
So till next time!
Bisous,

Rebecca

#2 Bisous from France!

Hellllo everyone!
SO I have been in France for a week today and I'll just tell you, it's been quite the roller coaster! From being so busy for the first few days to my past 2 being really quite quiet. Both my host parents are back working and I go off to school tomorrow!
I have also learned 3 new things about France:
1. I have not yet seen a four way stop here. I don't even think they exist! And really I've only seen maybe 4 stop signs. It's all about the round-about here. They are absolutely EVERYWHERE.
2. Driving at speeds reaching up to 140km/h is completely normal! So my h mom really stressed to me how important it is to be careful when crossing the street.
3. I never knew this but, people in France really aren't that tall! I tower over pretty much all the females and a good portion of the males too. What can I say? I'm a Howes.  :)

So now I'm going to start off where I last left off!

Aix-en-Provence!
Holy! What  beautiful city! All the building are really old and the streets are all cobblestones. It's pretty busy and there's tones of people going about...whatever they're doing! There's lots of little markety places and stores and such. I saw a couple of different schools and my h.mom and I went into the Cathedral there. Cathedral Saint-Sauver. It was awesome and she had so much knowledge about it! She told me about when it was built and interesting things about the Cathedral. Like they are always built in a cross with the top of the cross pointing south ect. There was also a huge organ and she told me that there is always someone inside playing it.

Cathedral Saint-Sauver

The ceilings were sooooo high!

This is the organ.

The stain glass was AWESOME and almost every window had some

This was my favourite spot. When you came in this was just on

left. In the middle of these pillars was where they did the

baptisms. The photo above is the ceiling above it.

After coming back from Aix it rained a bit and my h.mom said "after it rains the next day is always really rainy". I thought hey no big deal! A little wind? No worries!

-____-      I was SO wrong. It was not a 'little' wind.

It's now the day after Aix and I look out my window and it looked pretty nice out so I decided to wear a skirt. Cool. Today I'm going IKEA and to my h.mom's work (a school) to help her set up a few things. As we leave the house in the morning we walk out the door and BAM I'm hit with a huge gale of wind. Now just imagine it. Me. In a skirt. In a gale. Yeah. Not fun. My h.mom just laughs because she forgot to tell me it probably wasn't a good idea to wear a skirt. :P Oh well. So now we head off to IKEA and it looks exactly like all the other IKEAs I've ever seen. Other then it's all in french. We get what we need then head off to her school. Turns out we didn't actually have to go to her school because all the things we were going to do that day the rest of the people at school weren't going to do it till Monday. Oh well. So we were there for a couple of hours and then decided to go to Marseilles to have a little tour. Although it was going to be a stay in the car tour because of the ridiculous wind. For those of you who don't know where Marseilles is, its a huge coastal city with a massive port. The drive there was nice and took only maybe about 10 mins. The ocean looked awesome and I can't wait to go. My h.mom is going to take me when there is a day that's nice enough. :) Driving through was really awesome. We drove all along the coast and even went a a tunnel that went UNDER the ocean. Ya. I know. We pulled over on a part of the coast so I could try to get some better photos and so I could look underneath the walkway because there's a whole bunch of little stores and restaurants under along the beach. If I thought is was windy in town holy it was absolutely crazy on the coast. The amount of wind that came up off the ocean was crazy! I went to the bannister and took like 3 photos and then had to head back to the car. It was awesome. If you ever plan on going to Marseilles you should also know that it is one of the most congested city in Europe. It took us like a half hour to get out of the city and then we started on our way home. 

Drive to Marseilles

First view of the ocean!

Tunnel that goes UNDER the ocean.

Church on a hill

port

Daivd's bum. :P 

After Marseilles I haven't really gone anywhere but on the plus side I found a girls soccer team! I went and played with them on...Thursday I think? And so now I have practice twice a week and games on the weekend! About half the team is the same level as my rep team so that's great! I'm just happy to be playing soccer again! So pretty much I just have to learn all their soccer terms now because I'm used to yell on the field a lot but I didn't know what to yell for the game so I just ended up saying ya ya! A lot. :P Oh well.

So it's been good so far. I had one day of being a little home sick but I kinda figured it would happen eventually but I'm all good now. I have my first day of school tomorrow and I'm nervous but also looking forward to meeting kids my age seeing as the only person my age I've meet so far is my host brother. 

 This is the cat Tigros. I can't pronounce her name properly

so I call her Kitty. She drinks out of the fish tank. I think she

likes the flavour. 

So until next time! 

Bisous to all! xoxo