A very musical vacation

My last week in France was the most musical and relaxing of all.

The first week was spent at a music "camp" at Sallanches, a town 45 minutes from Bonneville.  It was one week of pure music, at least five hours of music each day.  Students from all over the Faucigny province were invited to the "camp".  There were 87 students this year, ranging from 12 years old to 18 years old.

Even in one week, I have made a whole group of amazing friends that I will be able to see again at the Music Festival at the end of June.  When I arrived, I knew only the kids from my Harmonie, but that first day I made new friends who I shared the dorm room with.  There were other activities, like a karaoke night during the week, but most of the time we were either singing or playing music.

The group of girls in my dorm room and I

We had only one week to put together a concert with songs that we weren't familiar with and that were not easy.  There were six songs and one week to master them, this experience will stay with me for the rest of my life and it has improved my saxophone skills.  I will never be able to forget the friendships that I have made and the amazing experiences that I have had so far this year.

The group of people from the music "camp"

The week after my musical "camp", Adélie and I spent a week in Montpellier with her grandmother.  We spent the week relaxing, shopping and walking the three dogs that were staying with her grandmother.  Her other grandmother lives at Montpellier also, and she gave us a long historic tour on the old Montpellier.

Sadly, the end of the school year is near, it is hard to believe that I have been in France for eight months and that in two months I will be back in the United States.

Me in front of the Aqueduc des Arceaux at Montpellier

Today I received my dates and my numbers for the Bac.  I am going to be passing the written portion of the French bac on June 20th and the oral portion on July 4th.  I am going to pass the science bac on June 22nd.  I am nervous about the exams, but I know that it will go well.

It has been such a long time since I have spoken English, and I feel like I am sort of forgetting it.  It'll come back to me after a day or so in the US, but for the moment I much prefer speaking French and there are some expressions that I want to put in my posts, but they don't exist in English!

I'll update again soon, maybe next time I will write more in French :)

A Nice Escalade For A Sunday Afternoon

Today I went rock climbing/hiking with Benoît and Adélie at Sixt Fer a Cheval, a small town about an hour away from Bonneville, it is not very far from Mt. Blanc.  It took us about two hours to get to the top of the climbing site, but only forty five minutes to come down.

The beginning of the climb was nice, tranquille, but then the vertical climbing started and I went very slowly and tried not to look down. We were all attatched, the ropes and everything was secure and the station had wires that we could attatch to.  Everything was going alright, until we got to a bridge, a hanging bridge.  Adélie was half-way across the bridge when I came on and we started laughing about how it reminded us of the scene in Shrek where Donkey and Shrek are on the bridge going to the castle, and Shrek shakes the bridge while Donkey is scared to death.  We reproduced the scene in French on the bridge except that none of us were scared.

I looked down only to see the beatiful view that we had of the mountains and the small town, but other than that I did not look down at the large rock that I was in the middle of climbing.  There were some scary moments but I came out of it just fine.

It was a really nice experience that I have never had before and don't know when I will have the chance to do it again.  This was the first time that I have done rock climbing outside of the high school gym's rock wall, and the rock walls at REI.

After the climb we went to see the Cascade de Rouget,the largest waterfall in all of Europe, it was a short ten minutes away from where we climbed.  It was very beautiful and it cooled us off very nicely, after three hours in the sun, it was 28C (83F) again today!  It was a really beautiful day and Anne said one of the last nice weekends to go climbing, because we have concerts almost every weekend with the Harmonie and after May, it is going to get really hot.

I had a really nice time and this will be added to my collection of amazing experiences in France!

I have a long day ahead of me at school tomorrow, I am going to head off!

Bonne Journée tout le monde!

Another Day Brings Another Friend

I have been happily surprised by everything that happens to me here in France.

What I mean by the title is that there are always new people that you meet, that you talk to and that you connect with.

Even if it is a simple smile from someone, it means a lot to me.
Since the beginning of my experience I have made new friends practically every day, sure there are days where I don't stop to say hi to every single person that I have ever seen.  There are some particular days like today where I want to dance around the school and say hi to everyone, even if I don't really know them, just to introduce myself so that the next time our paths cross I will have an excuse to go say hi!

Everyone is so nice, so I have no problem saying hi to almost everyone :)

Today was skirt day and a day of respect (Journée de la jupe et du respect).

Almost all of the girls came in skirts or dresses and even some of the guys, I admit it was kind of weird.

One of my new friends is Valentin, he is in my Phys Ed class and he is very nice.  I promised him that I would add him into one of my posts :)

Life is still extremely normal, I feel like I should be giving you guys more details, but seriously, it is all routine now.
6:45am First alarm, hit snooze
6:55am Second alarm, hit snooze
7:05am Third and Final alarm, contemplate getting up and decide that turning on the light will do.
7:12am I sit up and decide to climb down the ladder.
7:20am get dressed and go downstairs.
7:25am eat a bowl of Special K dark chocolat cereal
7:45am leave for school
7:55am bell rings for first period
(I am not going to go through my school day, it is pretty boring, except for all of the people that I see)
5:50pm last period bell rings
5:55pm start walking kind of slowly to the house after saying goodbye to my friends
6:17pm arrive at the house and put my back pack down and say hi to everyone
7:45pm eat dinner (it depends what day and what time Anne comes home for dinner, ex Mondays I eat at 9pm when I get home from karate or 7:30pm on Fridays because we have to leave at 8pm for band practice)
8:00pm sit down in front of the TV to watch the nightly news and sometimes watch a film
10:00pm go upstaris to brush my teeth and go to sleep (and write in my daily journal that I will make into a book when I get home all about my experience!!)

The process repeats the next morning and the next, I think that you understand.
I have been accepted to a one week music "stage" (I am not quite sure how to say it in English, it is essentially one week of doing nothing but playing music, seriously it is at least 6 hours of music playing every day.)
It will be the first week of April vacation, which starts the 23rd and I am so excited, I am going with Adélie but I am going to make the friends of a lifetime!! A week full of music with band geek buddies! I have missed my band geek buddies since there is no band at high school in France.

The second week of April vacation will be spent in Montpellier with the grandparents (Adélie's not mine) but I am excited to return down there, I am afraid that it will be very hot though.

It hit near 27 C today, which was nice in a dress but not so much in jeans.
This spring is very nice and the warm weather came very quickly!

Adélie told me that the summers in Bonneville can be very hot and sticky, not exactly the perfect kind of summer weather, but we'll see if this summer will be as record hot as last year in New England, 100F in NY wow!

I hope that the snow has started to melt and that the spring flowers are starting to come, or maybe the rain has come.  They always say "April showers bring May flowers"!
Let's hope so!

Have a happy spring everyone and I will post again after April vacation!

A Bientôt!

England, a very backwards country

This past week, I went to England with the high school.

I know, the American exchange student in France goes to England, but it was my only opportunity to go!
I could not miss out on a chance to see London, or to be surrounded with people with awesome accents :)

Oxford Castle

We left in the early afternoon Sunday March 13th, we took a coach bus so it took about twelve hours to get to the Eurotunnel.  We arrived in Oxford around 8am, and we were all half asleep.  That day was a very long day, walking around and trying to pay attention to tour guides in English when you only got two hours of sleep the night before is very hard.  Either way I enjoyed it very much and the Christ Church College was very beautiful.

Christ Church College

We also got a short tour of Oxford castle which was very interesting and filled with legends and history about the past prisoners that were housed there.

Ring any bells?

That night we met our host families and went to sleep very early.  The next day was an early wake up for another long day, this time at Winchester and Windsor.  In the morning we visited the Winchester College, a very prestigious all boys private school.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside of the school grounds, neither of the buildings nor of the boys.
All of the girls on the tour were sad about this last fact, and we were not able to visit the classrooms and the only boys we saw were those who were outside.

Windsor Castle

That afternoon we went to Windsor to visit the castle.  The Windsor Castle is enormous, and it houses a lot of history of England.  We got an audio tour of the castle, I took English and didn't feel weird, because we were in England and half of our group took it in English.

Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College

Wednesday we went to Cambridge to visit the town and the many colleges that are housed there.  We got a tour of St. John's College but also got to see Trinity College and King's College.  We got a short tour in a punting boat, a man pushed us with a long rod.  The boat ride was very relaxing and the guide was very interested by my American accent, he also had a fun time making fun of it.

Picadilly Circus

Finally we got to London on Thursday, I am so happy that I was able to visit the capital because I have never been in England and do not know when I will return.  We walked around the city and saw all of the big sites, the London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Houses of Pariliament,  Picadilly Circus and Covent Garden.  Covent Garden kind of reminded me of Fanueil Hall in Boston.

London Eye

I had realized that the English do a lot of things backwards, or inversely of the European Union.  They drive on the left side of the road, which was hard to get used to, they use a different currency (£ pounds), they also use miles and pounds instead of kilometers and kilograms. I know that half of those things that I listed correspond to the United States also, but it is normal for us, we are not part of Europe.  It is just kind of confusing why the UK does not adopt the Metric system. Any suggestions?

Big Ben and Houses of Parliament

Despite all of that and the not so beautiful weather, I had a great time and do not regret going.

Buckingham Palace

I hope that I can come back some day to really visit all of the sites, instead of just seeing them from a distance.

Vacances de Février with lots of ski!

This long vacation has now come to an end.

This was a really great vacation with a lot of nice memories and a whole new world of ski!

I absolutely love skiing, I progressed very quickly and I am actually good at it.  It is a nice sport, you don't have to go fast to have fun.
I took ski lessons all of the first week and practiced my skills, then the second week I went skiing with the rest of the family.  I had a really great time and I am so happy that I got the chance to meet and get along nicely with the extended family.  It really meant a lot to me when they all told me what progress I have made and that they enjoyed spending the week with me.

Another amazing vacation is over... yet I am still not going back to school!
I am leaving for England in an hour and I can't wait to speak English again.  Haha, I will most likely prefer speaking French, I actually have to think when I speak English now. There are some sayings that I use all of the time in French, but have no idea how to say in English.  In fact I feel much more comfortable speaking French now.  I have also been dreaming and thinking in French for a while now, it is kind of weird, but nice.

I am very happy that I got the chance to learn how to ski, because now I can drag my parents to the slopes with me when I come home! 

A little tid bit : It is very important to prepare meals in advance when you have more than 10 people coming to live in your house for two weeks.

It is also important to have very big pans so that you can cook for everyone at once and not have to do two servings.  Either way, it is nice to have people over and to share memories with them.  Hopefully I will be able to come back next year and do some more skiing with the family.  I can't believe that I will not see the extended family again this year.

Well, I am off to finish some last minute packing!  Do not worry, I will be back Friday so you can look out for a post next weekend. 

I am about to enter the world of the English...as an American exchange student living in France.

Wish me luck!

OMG Snow!

So today was a very exciting day for me.

It is the first day since December 18th that we have gotten snow in the valley!

I woke up this morning, like any other morning and I took a look out my window and I screamed "Yessssssssss!!!!".  In fact I screamed that with more enthusiasm and a little louder, and multiple times.  When I came down to breakfast I was so excited and happy because we were finally getting snow!  Adélie didn't seem to enjoy the snow very much though, oh well.

Ok, so there wasn't exactly THAT much snow, but there was a good inch and a half on the ground this morning and when we left it was still snowing.  It stopped snowing around 10 am, when I was in English class.  I had no idea that it was possible to watch three American movies in English class that I have never heard of before. Sorry, kind of random I know but I don't understand.

We have watched...

Little Big Man (1970 with Dustin Hoffman)

Betrayed (1988 with Debra Winger and Tom Berenger)

Thank You for Smoking (2004 with Aaron Eckhart and Katie Holmes)

If any of you have ever heard of these films please let me know, because I haven't heard of any of them.

Anyway, once 17:00 rolled around this is what the ground looked like.

I was so disappointed, but I guess that is just how life is.

I also learned today that Math is a lie, how can I go the rest of my life knowing that Math is a lie?

I just can't live with that.

Is there still twenty billion inches of snow on the ground in New Enland?

Look! There were even flowers!

I want to see some pictures!!

That's all for now, I am going to end things on a good note ( haha litterally, I mean grades are called notes in France).

I got a 19.5/20 on a math test (lies).

I have a 12.5/20 average overall as a student for the 2nd trimester!!

The class average is around 11.5 or so!!

I am so proud of myself.

I have a long two weeks of vacation (called skiing) coming up, if I don't kill myself trying to ski then I will tell you how it went!

Have a great vacation and a great rest of the winter with snow!

I'm still alive but busy!!

Hello everyone,

I am extremely busy, as you all see because of the absence of posts, but I am still alive!

It is the end of the second trimester, so the teachers are throwing tests at us left and right.  I also took two BAC Blancs- a practice BAC- one for SES and one for French.  I got a 7.5/20 for the SES and the French one we still have not gotten back.

I am having a great time here in France, like normal, and have gone skiing once more!
It was very nice in fact, because I had a lesson then we took the ski lift to the top of the mountain, which was very pretty not a cloud in the sky, to descend some harder slopes.  I followed the rest of the group fine, a bit slow but it's normal for someone who has skied three times in her life!  It was the beginning of February vacation for the Parisiens, so we now have seven more people in the house!  It is not fair, they get to ski all day while I am at school.

In fact, I have realized something.

I am learning downhill skiing, but when I get home in Holliston will I be able to find ski slopes for downhill skiers?

If anyone knows good downhill ski slopes I would greatly appreciate it.  I want to ski when I get back.

At least in New England there is snow, we still haven't gotten snow.  The last time it snowed was the 18th December.  There has been some snowfall in the mountains, but not that much either way.  There were large areas of the mountain where there was absolutely no snow!

I hope all of you in New England are enjoying the most likely awesome ski season!

I am now reading a book called Candide in French class, by Voltaire.  It is a philosophical book which is very hard to understand, the logic is in fact not very logical if you know what I mean...

Anyway, I am alive, if I had not already specified, it is just that I am having such a good time that I have not found the time to write.

Thanks for reading and I hope that I will be able to write after my two weeks of not-stop ski!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot!

I am going to England!!!

It is a school trip for one week after February vacation and I am so excited!

I will be an American among the French going to England to learn English!!

I have to go set the table, I really am busy!

Ciao!