Paris, Noel, Très occupé

Coucou readers!

Sorry I haven't written anything in like a month...my computer had a virus and wouldn't let me log on. I finally got rid of it, YAY!
Before going off to Paris with Rotary I attended my second Rotary meeting with my club. This time there was I few more Rotarians than the first time I went. The meeting was pretty much the same as last time. I chatted with a few Rotarians then we ate lunch. Which was a three course meal and yummy as usual. Some people talked about club projects etc. and then it was mine turn. I give everyone an update about how my exchange is going etc. I brought my laptop so I could show some of the many pictures that I had taken. It went well. After the meeting I went with one of the Rotarians to E.Lecric, where he works. Its kind of the equivalent to a Super store; He owns the whole thing and they're in the process of building a new building with parking etc. I got to have a tour and then learned all about the inner workings of the store. It was pretty interesting. I had a hard hat and everything!

Since I last wrote nothing really exciting has happened, just school. Then on the, 16th I think it was, of December I headed off to Paris with Rotary. I met up with the other exchange students at the TGV station (Train de Grand Vitesse) in Aix and it was wonderful to see everyone. The train ride is about 3 hours and we arrived in Paris on Friday around lunch and stayed till Sunday afternoon. On Friday my district (15) and I went to have our bagged lunches and drop off all our stuff at the youth hostel we were staying at.

                                                             Canadian exchangers! <3 font="">

 After that we walked to the subway and made our way the Garnier Opera. This is the Opera that the phantom of the Opera took place in. We even got to see the phantoms box! We had a whole tour of the Opera and it was really amazing. In one of the halls there was a bunch of mirrors and I didn't even realize until I took a second glance. I just thought the hall was huge!

After the Opera we went to Les Galaries Lafayette. Which is pretty much a huge HUGE shopping mall compiled of multiple floors and some wonderful Christmas decorations. When we walked to the centre there is this huge Christmas tree that's covered in sparkly lights that change colours. It really felt like being surrounded by light because all the walls we gold and also covered in lights. It was really beautiful.Then we headed back to the hostel to have supper and then spent the rest of the night talking, playing cards and hanging out. Hanging out with exchange students is always a fun time. :)

The next morning we got up and had breakfast in the hostel and then walked over to Le Cité des Sciences, which is this science centre that has a Divinci exhibit that was kinda neat with models, demonstrations, videos and such. After doing this we met up with another district of about 40 exchangers. It was really wonderful to meet some other exchange students. We all had lunch together and then we headed to the IMAX theatre that is right outside of Le Cité Des Sciences and we watched a movie about Polar Bears and it was good. Although I did feel as if I needed wrap around eyes to be able to properly see everything the screen was so big!

We then all piled into two buses and were off to Le Chateau de Versailles; Walking up to the gates was awesome. There were exchangers taking pictures and posing with each other all over. It was a big open cobblestoned space that lead up to these big gold gates with the castle behind them. First we all headed to the back and took a ridiculous amount of picture before we went inside to start our tour. In the back was this big open space that lead down to some gardens and a great big pool with a fountain in the middle. After that you could pretty much see out a long ways. There was no buildings or mountains or anything; Just these endless gardens.
                                                      We are one good looking district!

Once we made our way inside we were outfitted with a headset and then we were off on our tour. The castle was made up of a whole bunch of richly decorated rooms with painted ceilings and gold encrusted crown molding. All the while the view was out onto the gardens. We got to go through some crowning rooms, receiving rooms and some bedrooms too. The bedrooms were ridiculously lavished and the beds were at least as tall as me if not taller. There was a little set of stairs to get onto them. After the tour we all piled back onto the buses and set of to Montmartre which is on top of this hill that looks over Paris. We took quite a few stairs to get to the top of it. But the view was worth it. You could see the Champs d'elysee and the Effile tour too. We headed through this little village past their Christmas market to the restaurant we were eating at. I think one of my favourite parts of the evening was the singing of 'Happy Birthday' during the weekend there were a few birthdays so we sang happy birthday. BUT the best part was we didn't just sing happy birthday in French, no. We sang in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean  Italian  Indian and Mandarin. After dinner we had free time and lucky for us it POURED. We were all wet rats by the time we made it back to the bus.On our way back to the hostel we drove down the Champs d'elyse~~~~ to see all the Christmas decorations. 

That night all 60 of us went back to the youth hostel and we did like a little gift exchange thing. And best of all the oldies (exchangers that start and finish their exchanges in January) were giving away some of the stuff that they weren't taking home with them and I scored some clothes, jewellery, and the first Lord of the Rings book! :D 
The next day was the Eiffle tower and a boat tour on la rivière Sienne. It was a beautiful day out with blue sky with little white fluffy clouds. We took lots of pictures and chatted with everyone and had a great day. It was sad to have to say goodbye at the end of the weekend. it was a rushed goodbye because my district was running late for the train. We RAN through the station to catch it. Turns out we can down the wrong train docking station so we had to then run back the other way. All 15 of us. People were looking at us in the station. Haha but we did make our train on time so no worries. I think traveling is deffinietly one of the big ways we exhcnage students bond. Our train ride was to be about 3 hours long but they was some problems so we actually took closer to 6 hours to come home. Which I actually was nice for us because we got to spend that luch longer together. :) We sat around and talked, played cards, ate and all in all enjoyed each others company. 

It was great after my weekend in Paris I only had one more week of school and then it was les vacances! I got off school on the 21st of December (the end of the world). That day I planned to go to see The Hobbit in Aix with Danika (exchanger from Australia). We decided if the world was going to end we needed to see The Hobbit first. I spent the night at her place and had a really fun time. We made Pancakes in the morning. 


Christmas! Joyeux Noel!

I had a very nice Christmas here in France. I'm going to be honest and say yeah it was a little hard being away from my family during the holidays but, my family here is really wonderful and I still had a good Christmas. Since we were going to family's for Christmas I thought it might be a nice to bring some of my Christmas tradition too. So, I made a whole bunch of sugar cookies with coloured icing, sprinkles and the rest of the whole 9 yards. The cookies went over really well and everyone loved them. Except I'm not too sure how little cousin Maria felt about them. I think she just liked the icing since she would just lick all of it off and then put the cookie back in with the rest of them.... -__- On the 24th we drove to Marielle's mom's home in a town about an hour away from Fuveau. When we got there Marielle and I set the table and it looked awesome! After about an hour the rest of the family started arriving. Marielle's brother and sister and their families. We then had a dinner which of course was compiled of wine, champagne, lots of bread, and a Christmas tradition of fois gras. Which is essentially the liver from a diseased duck. It was pretty good. Definitely something that I haven't ever eaten before! After, there was smoked salmon, potato's, and more bread. Then we had their family's Christmas tradition of the Santa appearance. In their family they have one small cousin, Maria, so we did it for her. And this year is was my host brothers honour, Noé, to be Santa. We distracted Maria and Noé went upstairs to get changed. We turned off the lights and the everyone started singing "petit papa Noel" and then Noé came down the stairs with an armful of presents. This is about the time when little Maria started balling her eyes out. It was pretty comical to watch. Then Noé left out the front door and Maria's dad pointed to the biggest present and said "that one's yours!" Maria instantly stopped crying and pretty much dived on the pile of gifts to get hers. Which by the way was bigger than her! She had received a fairly large doll and I think for her, the fright of "Santa" aka Noé was worth it. Afterwards we had bouche, which is also a Christmas tradition, a kind of rolled up pastry with a cream chocolate filling. It was really yummy. After we opened some more gifts. I gave Marielle a clay pressed maple leaf and a painting, Noé a calender of British Columbia, and I gave Remy a pate knife with an Inukshuk on it. There is also a French tradition that when someone gives you a knife as a gift you have to give the person that gave it to you a euro so as to not "cut" the friendship between you. So I found myself one euro richer! And from my host family I got a make-up bag, a sweater and some chocolate cover marshmallows! After that everyone went to bed since it had gotten quite late and the next day it was off to Marielle's dad's house for Christmas dinner round two! Everyone got up pretty late and then around 12:30 we left for Grandpa's. This meal was fairly similar to the meal we had the night before with fois gras and smoked salmon but this time we also had some chicken. And for desert we had a type of ice cream cake. After that we hung around and chatted a bit. I played Marielle's brother's guitar that he brought with him. Which was really nice seeing as in my host house the only guitar they have is miniature and meant for little kids who are learning to play guitar. But it's better than nothing! Before leaving Christoph surprised me by lending me his guitar until I change host families on the 3rd. I was so happy and have been playing lots! We're now back at home and its been pretty quite. 

Tonight I'm making perogies as a thank-you meal for my host family and then this weekend we're off to do a couple of outings as a family, then New Years, and then I'm off to my next host family. I have really enjoyed my time with this family and I will be sad to go but I also do think its good that I will be able to experience another lifestyle.

Well folks, that's all for now. Sorry this has been so late in coming.
à bientot, 
Rebecca

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