#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