♪ 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 

C'est la Vie

So I'm writing part of this blog to you while I sit in a courtyard in Aix en Provence. It's a large area in the newish part of Aix. There's a whole bunch of benches all around the outer edges of it. I'm thinking that maybe they have performances in the center of this courtyard because it's huge and would be an ideal place for a dance or music act. There are lots of people walking around and going about their daily...Aix day. So like shopping and eating and rendezvous-ing. 

Street performers

Random mob for something

More performers these guys were awesome!

So I'm sure some of you were expecting this blog to about the lovely time I spent in Paris but, it's not going to be for one fairly good reason. In my h.moms job every 5 years or so someone comes in and evaluates her while she's working and if she does well she gets benefits and a raise etc. So for this she had to prepare a lot of paper work. Which there was a lot of. I didn't see her all weekend! :P So unfortunately I didn't go to Paris but, fortunately my h.moms job thing went really well and we moved our Paris trip to the 19th of October.

It has now been over a month that I have been in France. Holy. My french is coming along well (at least I like to think) and I'm starting to get used to everything. How lunch is the biggest meal of the day, how everyone drives crazy and how everything has a chocolate version. I seriously mean EVERYTHING. I am also happy to report that school is getting betterish too. I talked to a counseller person at school and we organized my schedule around a bit so it's more beneficial to my...situation. I substituted my math classes for history/geography classes and my uncomprehensible Philosophy classes for French classes. So school is a little more enjoyable now. Bellow I've posted photos of my walk from school. It's only the 2nd half of my walk seeing as I only decided to do it half way home.

This is my bus stop! :)

You go right here to get to my house

Mount Saite Victoire in the background

My chemin

My house is kinda on a hill

this is it!

Voila!

So since my last blog post I spent one day of one weekend in Aix with Imelsy (exchange student from Mexico) and Bobby (also an exchange student from California). We walked around and saw the market got some yummy lunch then hung out with some ice cream. After we decided to go to the theatre to see what movies were playing. When we got to the theater we found out that there was another 2 theaters. We can a program and then found out that they even played movies in English with French subtitles so we decided to do that. Everybody's buses were leaving around 6 so that narrowed our selection of movies to one. Killer Joe. And if you're wondering how it was DON'T see this movie. It was a really weird movie that I'm not even going to try to describe because I don't even think I would be able to. That it was pretty much time to go and get on our buses. Imelsy and I said goodbye to Bobby and then her and I got on a bus to go to her place because I was going to spend a night at her house. The bus ride was maybe half an hour and then we were in her town called Rhonges. When we arrived we waited at the bus stop for her host dad to arrive. He came and picked us up and then we were on our way to her house. After stopping to get bread of course. The drive through Rhonges was short and it is a really charming little town. We made it to her house and I met the rest of the family and they were really nice. Shortly after arriving I found out that tomorrow (sunday) they were going to marsielles and then to the islands just off shore and if I wanted to and was allowed I could go with them!

 

This is the market

lunch time!

We made it to the islands fine without any problems. There were multiple little islands one had a prison on it, one a hospital and one mostly just had little cafés. (the one we went to).

We spent more of the time on this kinda like beach thing, went swimming it was a little on the not warm side but have no worries, I'm Canadian and had no problems. Ime on the hand who as I mentioned is from Mexico...bref, you get my point. (Side note: bref is a french term technically meaning brief but when used like this is kinda means etc, in short) After the beach we promande around a bit and it was suuuuppper windy at the crest of the island. Good thing I wasn't wearing a skirt this time... -___- 

I also went to my first Rotary meeting finally! The meetings are on Tuesdays at lunch and because the meetings in another town and my h.mom works during the day and can't give me ride I got to skip out on school and go to her job with her. She's a teacher at a school in Vitrolles. It was organized for me to go into the English classes at the school where I did a presentation on Canada that I made. It went really well and I did two different presentations. Just before lunch on of the Rotarians from my club and picked me up from my school and took me to the Best Western hotel which is actually right by the Airport I arrived in. My whole club is men but they were all very nice. I told everyone a little about myself and then I gave everyone a pin and one of my travel cards. Lunch was wonderful with 3 courses. A salad, a main course and then a desert. It's unfortunate that I'm apparently not going to another meeting till December because I was hoping to go at least once a month. Oh well maybe that'll change. I just go with it.

 This was desert and it was yummy

The following weekend it rained a lot! And I had my first soccer game! The soccer games here are set up a little different because at the beginning the starting line-up forms 2 lines and follows the refs out and then we shake hands before the game, do and cheer and then we go. We didn't win but that's okay because I had fun :) 

Also you may have noticed I'm skipping over the week days but that's because most happen in the same manor, school, soccer Wednesday and Friday. 

The next weekend I finally got around to going for a run! I went with my host dad who goes fairly regularly, about every other day. And we decided that we are going to try to go together more often which will be good I think! It'll be nice to keep running plus it'll keep me in good shape for soccer. Later that day I went to Aix: see far above. Then Sunday I went to the Gardanne market with my h.parents and then had another soccer game, we tied 2-2 against Marseille. (I have pictures from the market but I've already got about a million on this post so if you feel so inclined to see them they are on facebook)

This was the weekend that would have been Thanksgiving and I missed having turkey and seeing all my family but I did get to have a nice Skype chat with a pretty good lot of my family because lots of them were together for dinner. So that was really nice. 

You are now caught up! Next weekend holds a trip for me to Dignes-les-Bains where I'll get to see a friend from Rotary! YAY! And then the weekend after Paris! It has been a long time in coming and I look forward to it!

ps thanks for sticking it out till the end of this extremely long post. 

Oh well,

c'est la vie! 

Bisous to all,

Rebecca