Une Soirée Chez Moi

   I talk a lot about things that I do with AFS on this blog, but not enough about the friends I've made here in France! Because, although I love everyone that I've met here on the program and appreciate having them to talk to as they endure the same challenges; my French friends are the ones that really make me feel at ease here. It is really an amazing feeling to laugh and have fun with friends, in French! It's like laughing + being proud of myself all in one! 

   School is a lot of fun because I have them to talk to, eat lunch with and study with. And seeing them outside of school is even better. It makes me feel like I've really managed to integrate myself and be included, which is a great feeling especially since people sometimes lose some of their personality when speaking a foreign language since you can't always express and say everything you would like to. 

   This weekend I had three friends from my class sleepover. They arrived, cookies in hand, in the late afternoon. I introduced them to my host family and host pets and then we talked in my room until dinner time. They had brought french candy, coconut cookies and chocolate chip cookies! It was hard to save room for the lasagna my host dad made for us! After my host family had eaten, we went downstairs and ate dinner and the chocolate cake I had made earlier in the day for the occasion. We stayed up late talking and I showed them pictures of my American friends at homecoming and school that they had posted on facebook. My friend's reaction was always "just like in the movies". We took some pictures ourselves that I'll put at the bottom of this post! 

   The next morning, one of the three had to leave early because she works at the boulangerie in town so I took a walk with the other two and waited with them at the bus station until their bus came to take them back up the mountain.

*Some of these were taken in the morning so excuse tired faces and messy hair! (:

Graphs and Cycles

   In several past posts I've referred to my treasured survival guide; a Christmas present I got from my mom last year, when this was all just a dream. At the time I wasn't too excited, well come one - I was as excited as any kid would be to unwrap a book on Christmas morning! But now that my dream is my everyday life, the book has become sacred to me. 
   I'm the kind of person who likes to know the plan. I like lists and graphs, anything organized. In the guide there are two graphs that represent what I'll go through throughout the year. Seeing my sentiments on a page, with a past and future, just makes me feel stable. I like to know what will come in the months ahead and I find being told what I'm experiencing now, comforting. 
  Well I figured with all the references I make, I'd do you all a favor and show the actual graphs! A scanner or excel would have probably worked better, but I'm just a "paint"-er at heart. ha ha get it? No but really, I just can't figure out either of the former options... Anyway, this has been needed on my blog for awhile now but better late than never, right? 

   Both graphs were copied out of The Exchange Student Survival Kit Second Edition by Bettina Hansel. 
Don't sue me! 

Gobble Gobble GlouGlou

   The fourth Thursday of November, to me, means having no school, cooking, and eating so much that I can’t get up. But like all holidays that will take place during my time abroad, the meaning is going be altered; however hard I try to resist the change (ie, Halloween)
   The fourth Thursday of November, to the French means the same as the first, second and third thursday of the month, an ordinary day. So for the first time in my life I spent eight hours in school on Thanksgiving and as I sat down for dinner, the first words spoken were “what are we celebrating anyway? What’s the occasion for all of this?”
But don’t worry; I’ll go back to the beginning to recount the tale of my Thanksgiving in France. Way before “all of this” was ready and we all sat down for dinner.


   “We” refers to Eliza and her wonderful host family, with whom I celebrated Thanksgiving. Eliza is the other American girl at my school here on AFS and instead of passing the Holiday alone, risking too many thoughts of our families celebrating back home, we decided to spend the holiday together and cook a meal for her host family.
   I asked my host mom early in the week and it was arranged that I would go home with Eliza after school, spend the night at her house and go to school with her the next morning. I think sleepovers on school nights are more common here because both our host parents were very open to the idea, whereas that would not be the case back home, at least in my family!
   Since we wouldn’t be getting to Eliza’s until 5:30 on Thursday I did half of the cooking the day before. After lunch on Wednesday (the French half day) I walked to the grocery store with a list of all the things I wasn’t able to find in my host families kitchen. A pretty lengthy one too since, carrot cake, apple cake, macaroni, and corn bread are not things that my host family make often (or ever) and therefore do not keep the ingredients on hand. With my translator on hand to figure out what things like powdered mustard, poultry sauce and nutmeg are called in French I searched the aisles of the grocery store and thirty minutes and a heavy basket later, I had found all my fixings…except that powdered mustard.
   My host parents had taken my host sister to the dentist so I had the kitchen to myself to bake. I put on the apron and five hours later everything was out of the oven and wrapped up for the trip it would make with me to Eliza’s village the next evening.


   It was hard to concentrate in classes on Thursday, as I was so excited! I tried explaining to my French friends and all my classmates why I was so cheery and that it was in fact a holiday, but I was unsuccessful in spreading the holiday cheer. (The French fries in the cafeteria at noon got them in a pretty good mood though, so all’s well that ends well!)


   Eliza’s host mom started the turkey earlier in the day, which was so nice, since left up to us it wouldn’t have been done until late…if ever.

Her host mom with the Turkey!

   When the bell rang at 4:30 I stupidly hung around talking to my friends for a few minutes, which resulted in me and Eliza bolting to my house (a 10-minute walk in just three minutes!) The lock on the door, that never works, opened on the first try and I ran upstairs to pack my bag (in the fastest way possible, simply dumping out my closet and makeup drawer) while Eliza stacked up all my goodies and we reunited outside where we ended up using those five minutes we had saved by running, trying to lock the dang door!
   Scared we would miss the bus Eliza insisted on finding a shortcut…down a street we had never been before with five minutes until the bus’s departure time, “but in the right direction” according to Eliza’s great natural sense of direction. The same one that led us to a busy street with no bus station in sight.


   With two backpacks, a purse and four cakes we walked/ran and somehow we ended up at her bus stop and waited for ten minutes! Which was much needed as my legs were burning, my back was aching and we were both completely out of breath. Let’s not even talk about what all the French kids, standing around nonchalantly smoking, were thinking of the red-faced Americans carrying a dinner in their hands.


   A warm, 15-minute bus ride later Eliza and I said “merci” to the driver and stepped out into her village, lit up by streetlights in the 5:30pm darkness. I had only ever seen her village from the highway so I was excited to venture into it by foot. As we walked to her house Eliza pointed out a statue on the mountain that overlooks her village and told me about its 150th birthday celebration that she went to last month.
   And then, after researching recipes (and asking for lots of my moms), cooking for hours, not concentrating in class, and taking a very long out of the way route, I was back in a kitchen, cooking some more!

   After what I had already prepared and Eliza’s host mom’s help with the turkey we still had mashed potatoes (with marshmallows!), stuffing and cranberry sauce left to make. I got to work by peeling lots and lots and lots of potatoes and cutting up lots and lots and lots of stale baguettes for the stuffing, as Eliza realized that she had gotten dried cranberries for the cranberry sauce! 

Eliza trying desperately to make cranberry sauce out of dried cranberries!

   My hypothesis that dried cranberry’s would never pop was proven to be true after 15 minutes of boiling them…nice try us.     While we put everything in the oven to warm up before we attacked the whole eating part of Thanksgiving, Eliza got on skype and I met her whole family! We only talked for a few minutes because it was 8:30 and time to eat! 
   Eliza’s host family turned on “the American channel” and we saw Obama with his turkey and then we dug into our own. It was delicious.
Our meal consisted of:

• Turkey: success
• Stuffing: success
• Mashed potatoes: not sweet potatoes like we intended to use and with marshmallows, so more like a dessert!
• Corn bread: tasted like sand
• Cranberries: dried… probably not the way the Indians ate them but hey, they’re good that way too!
• Macaroni: success

Dessert:

• Apple cake: success
• Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting: success

   Eliza’s host family was really nice about everything, even the dishes that turned out a little disappointing. They were super supportive and proud of us for attempting so many different things. Her host mom thanked us for making the meal and said that it really was a “totally foreign taste”. And of course, back to the question asked earlier by Eliza's host dad, we were celebrating Thanksgiving!
 Everyone went to bed that night very very full.


   This was my first time cooking more than just cranberry sauce (HA ironic how that’s the thing that didn’t work out this year) at Thanksgiving, as well as my first time being away from my family on the holiday. But spending it with someone going through the same thing helped a lot and took my mind off of what we both would have been thinking, had we been alone.
   Thanksgiving marks the beginning of “The Holidays” as “The Exchange Student Survivor Kit” puts it. It comes right after “culture shock” and extends from the third to fifth month. During this time I am advised to not concern myself “with what the holidays are supposed to be or how much I am supposed to enjoy them” (Bettina Hansel) which I think I managed on Thanksgiving. I didn't dwell on missing Thanksgivings at home and instead, focused on the one I was having in France and how to make it a great memory.

Mon weekend dans les montagnes!

   I awoke to the steady sound of raindrops Saturday morning and was immediately in a good mood. That evening I would be with everyone in the Rhone-Alps region for our second AFS weekend!


   Although, as you loyal readers probably can tell, I love the food here in France, I still do get cravings for the things I loved back home. This particular morning it was pancakes. And so I went down stairs in my jammies and slippers, laptop in hand, and got to work on fulfilling this craving.


   At home I enjoy baking but it’s usually with the help of Betty Crocker or, in the case of Pancakes, Aunt Jemina. So basically, my type of baking requires little effort on my part and is super fast.
Here, on the other hand, I’ve found that every cooking project becomes a huge ordeal. From converting measurements, to substituting ingredients, nothing is easy to make. I found a recipe on my trustworthy allrecipes.com that was nice enough to convert from US to metric for me, and got to work. I crushed up sugar cubes for sugar, and then found the sugar in a cabinet, chose between three types of flour, and then learned how to use the gas stove top, but it all paid off because in the end my host sister came running down the stairs to enjoy a yummy breakfast of nutella pancakes as the rain poured down.


   I spent the rest of the morning packing for the weekend and doing homework. I ate lunch with my host family, and then umbrella in hand, walked ten minutes to the bus stop to get on an AFS bus that would take us to Vercors.
   The bus made three stops at train stations to pick up everyone from around the region. As people got on it became louder and the excitement grew as everyone was reunited and we all began catching up.
   After an hour and a half drive and snacking on Icelandic candies from my friend, the bus arrived in Pont en Royans, the first visit of our weekend. It’s a small town in the mountains. We walked around and I marveled at the beautiful mountain lined sky, flooded river, and adorable streets. The town is famous for its suspended houses that come out over the river:

   After our walk we went to our next stop, a water museum. I have to admit, when I saw this on the schedule I didn’t get very excited but well, no actually, I still can’t say the water museum turned out to be a very exciting visit but I did learn something! There were exhibits and 3-D movies but what I enjoyed the most was looking at all the different water bottles they had from all over the world. Marketing is incredible; they had bottles designed by Calvin Klein and a $40 "Bling" water bottle that was decorated with jewels. We also got to taste different kinds of bubbly and flat water that were described to us as either fatty or light but they all sort of tasted the same to me.

   We left the museum and during the bus ride to the top of Romeyere, where we would spend the night, darkness fell. It was a long ride to the top and at times the bus would be centimeters from the wall and I thought we were surely going to fall off the cliff. The next day coming down, my worrying was justified when we saw how tiny the road really is.

   But back to the night: we ate a pasta dinner and I talked with girls from Thailand, Japan, China, and my American friends. We had éclairs for dessert and then we all went to a big room to play bingo -a favorite here in France. I got pretty into it and won four times, thank you thank you very much.

   Lights out was at midnight and we woke up at eight
 for breakfast. The view from the dinning room windows was, white. Yep, white, there was so much fog that morning that it looked like we were way up in a cloud, which actually doesn’t seem so far from reality. Someone decided that it was good weather for a walk so we all bundled up and stepped out into the sky.

   Col de Romeyere means the top of that mountain; in the time that it took for us to take this picture the rest of the group walked far enough ahead into the fog to be completely out of view. Which was fine, really, until we came to a fork in the road and had to decide weather to continue on the road or to go off into the woods. After a few minutes of panic, Kevin came to the rescue with his blackberry and called one of the volunteers who was in the group, somewhere ahead of us. We ran down the path into the woods and caught up with them in time to see mountain cows and an old farm where the movie “une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps” was filmed. I’ve never heard of it either but if it takes place in these mountains it must had stunning scenery.

   We made it back in one piece and one group and ate lunch before packing up the bus and heading back down the mountain. The last stop of our weekend was a visit to des grottes de choranche (caves). I was definitely not prepared for what I was about to walk into when I entered the cave. It was simply amazing. We were taken around a huge cave with the most clear water I’ve ever seen and shown a species of lizard that only exist in three caves in Slovenia. When I came out I actually felt like my eyes had just seen something miraculous and I thought about how lucky I am to be here.

   The only thing I do want to note about the weekend is that it did cost 10 euros (almost $14). I know this shouldn’t be something to note after I just marveled about how great the weekend was, but I do find it strange that the thousands of dollars my family paid in tuition couldn’t cover this.


   After the tour of the caves, those who wouldn’t be taking the bus home had to say good-bye and we all headed in our different directions, back to our own little towns and villages around the Rhone-Alps region.

Updates and observations

   Although I have yet to come up with a clever name for this kind of post, I really enjoy writing them and am going to keep them going throughout the year.

   Basically it's when I write in bullet points about the things I've been up to. They don't necessarily constitute an event or anything that would make for it's own blog post but together, hopefully, gives you a glimpse into my life here.

   I’m also going to include little things that I notice, it can be about anything and everything. Obviously a lot of things are different here and some things make me smile, and sometimes even laugh; it's that type of "observation: that I never remember  when I sit down to write a post but I’ve started noting them down in a journal to over time make for a blog post of this kind! 

So, let's get started!

Observations:

• A huge difference between school here and at home is the competitive energy in the classroom. There is a class ranking and it’s very well known; as a result everyone works really hard. When grades are passed back everyone wants to know what everyone got, it’s all anyone's talking about in the hallways and it can make or break someone’s day. It might have more to do with the fact that I am in Terminale and everyone is starting to stress about the BAC but it’s apparent that there is a much stronger drive to work hard and to be proud of your grades here. To be honest, I would prefer to not have the whole class know my grades. My academics seem like a personal matter and when people ask to see my test my first thought is along the lines of "well, it's actually not your business" but theres culture shock for you!

• I’ve never been a big TV watcher but here I have one in my room. It’s become a routine to watch the news before going to sleep or a show between homework. Instead of frequent commercial breaks, here there is one time during a show for all the “Pubs”. I've noticed that any commercial for unhealthy food or fast food restaurant has a banner across the bottom with healthy eating tips. Like, eat five fruit and vegetables a day or, don't eat between meals.

• Rollerblades and scooters are much more common here, for all ages. 

• My host family told me that there’s a radio station somewhere in America where they ask questions to a random caller and you win money if you answer correctly. One day the question was “what gift did France give to the United States?” and instead of saying the Statue of Liberty, the lady answered French fries! Then, last night on the news they showed a segment of CNN where Cannes, FR (where Obama had his last out of country interview before elections) was shown on the map... in Spain! The French really enjoy embarrassing American moments.

Updates:

• In the same notebook I mentioned previously, I’ve also started a finance page where I calculate how much money I spend. I did the math for the first two months; which revealed that I spent way too much money. I’m starting to realize just how much everything costs (expensive) and am going to pay a lot more attention from now on. It’s my little game, to write everything down and try to make the months total less and less each time.

• Sometimes, as AFS had warned me, spending too much time on the computer can get me down. And I’ve found, as a lot of other AFS kids have found, that some days I have too much time to be on the computer. Twice a week I finish school at lunchtime and since my host parents’ work and my host sister still has class, going home means hours at home, alone. I’ve found that these are the days when I get the most homesick, so to avoid that feeling, I've started going to  the library at school when I have free afternoons. If my friends don’t have class they come with me and we’ll do homework together, but if they do have class, I’ll bring my computer and write blog posts, but I don’t have wifi to distract myself!

• Unlike my high school back home, here classes often organize trips abroad. This year, my class is going to Spain, and the Italian class that I dropped is going to Italy!

• The Premieres are going to Canada this year and to raise money they sold crepes at school yesterday. Everyone in the class made a batch at home and for 1 euro they microwaved a crepe and put either jam, nutella, or sugar on it. All day long people showed up to class late with crepes in their hand. I think it’s safe to say they were more successful than the sports teams at my school back home that sell wrapping paper and coupons

• Speaking of embarrassing moments, I’ve lost all ability to feel embarrassed. Within the first two months of being here I went out on a limp everyday and it was inevitable that sometimes, by which I mean everyday, something total blush-worthy would happen. The first thing I would think every morning was “I wonder what I’ll do to embarrass myself today.” Some might think this would be a horrible situation to be in but I’ve come to realize its just part of being an exchange student. My humiliating situations have slowed down now that I’ve gotten used to life here. But in the first month when you’re learning the ropes, you can’t help but get it wrong sometime but the important thing is to not get embarrassed, just laugh it off! If you would like some examples we could talk about walking in the wrong classroom, mispronouncing the teachers name, tutoying them, tripping on cobblestone streets... okay we’ll stop there.
• It's a rainy morning weekend here, I woke up in a good mood and turned on Jack Johnson's "banana pancakes" and made heavenly pancakes for me and my host sister. Bon appetite!

Happy Halloween!

   Throughout all of October I was told over and over again that Halloween is not celebrated in France. This, and the lack of decorations around town and candy in the grocery store got the message, that I would just have to live with not having Halloween this year, to me pretty quick.

    Well, I pushed that message aside, and celebrated Halloween with my own little party! And I mean little quite literally, two other American girls here on AFS came over to my house to spend the night.

   With my Australian host cousin (who said that she has always wanted to celebrate Halloween) we walked to the grocery store and got the ingredients to prepare chocolate chip cookies and cupcakes. 

We also had a Trader Joe brownie mix and usual Halloween candy, which my friends had brought with them.

   We spent the afternoon of Halloween in the kitchen baking and snacking on candy corn to keep our energy going. When the last tray of cookies was finally out of the oven we went upstairs and decided to dress up.

   Albeit my knack for putting together last minute costumes, (I’ll take this time to throw in an anecdote about when I was little and I put together an elaborate Junie B. Jones costume the night before Halloween) we had trouble putting something…anything together. I suppose Halloween was just not on my mind as I packed my suitcases back in August.

   However, we were not lacking in the make up and hair department, and so we relied on that to make us feel dressed up, me as a flight attendant, my host cousin as a bride, and my friends as…girls wearing lots of make up.

   As we were finishing up our looks the doorbell rang.

Now, who in France would be ringing my doorbell, after dark, on Halloween? Little French witches of course! I’m not sure how well they were accepted at the other houses in town but what I can tell you, is that I was very happy to see them. The two groups of trick or treaters that rang my doorbell that night were very well received and given lots of candy!

   We ate dinner and then all of our yummy desserts and at the end, I had that same so-full-of-candy-my-stomach-is-going-to-explode feeling I get every year on the 31^st of October, which I would say makes our American Halloween night in France, a success!

Vive Les Vacances

   This past week was vacation for zone A of France and as I told you in my last post, my host family took me to Spain! Sadly, this meant a week away from posting on my blog, so I apologize for that but will take this time you catch you up on how I spent my first French vacation.


   Vacation is very important to people here in France and they’re used to having much more of it than, well take me for example, me! In the car ride to Spain my host sister was telling us about her friend in medical school who doesn’t have a break until Christmas; since that is how it’s been since kindergarten for me, I had trouble expressing a lot of sympathy for the poor girl, but everyone else in the car was in pure disbelief. 
But to be fair, the French do work very hard and the school day is by all means long enough and heavy enough to justify their frequent breaks.


To be specific, I will have four 1-2 week breaks throughout the school year. 

• Toussaint (10 days in October)
• Noel (16 days in December)
• Hiver (11 days in February)
• Printemps (15 days in April)

   My host family was very generous to take me to Spain for the week and although I know other AFSers who went on trips, it is important to note that host families have absolutely no obligation to amuse us during the breaks and not all host families will have things planned. 
That being said, AFS is a great program and I know people who had nothing planed with their family and organized ahead of time with the program to stay with another host family for the week, just to get out and see another part of France.


  Speaking of AFS and traveling, this seems like a relevant time to mention the traveling rules for AFS France. We were informed of these at the last weekend and they came as a big enough surprise to make me want to share them with anyone who plans to go abroad before they make big plans that aren’t actually allowed.

• The trips that are always permitted, from the first to the last day of your stay here, are those taken with either your host family, your school, or a club. Although these are always allowed, papers do have to go back and forth from your parents to your host parents to grant you permission, so make sure to take care of that ahead of time!
• Another trip that is always authorized by AFS is one taken to visit another AFS host-family. However, to complicate things, the family you want to visit has to live in your region until January, if they live in another part of France you’ve got to wait until the New Year.
• Now for the trips that can be either accepted or rejected by AFS: those that are taken outside of the program. This can refer to a trip taken alone to visit friends of family, or a trip taken outside of France. These can’t be before March and can always be rejected by AFS.

   And there you have it! Sorry if that wasn’t very interesting, it probably isn’t unless you’re abroad or thinking about going abroad, but I thought it might be helpful. It kind of crushed my plans to visit a friend here, before March, so I hope this prevents any more crushing of plans!


  Okay, I know I know, I’ll get to vacation already!


  So we, as in my host family and I, left early in the morning and made the first of our stops on the way to Spain, the train station. Here, we picked up my host sisters Australian cousin who would be coming with us. Okay, so technically, since she is related to my house family, she’s French, but she grew up and has spent the majority (by which I mean all but one year) of her life in Australia. She recently moved back to France with her family and having her with us for vacation was great. 
We had a lot to talk about since we both just got here from a foreign country and are adjusting to the culture and trying to improve our French.


   When I’m alone with my host family sometimes it can be stressful because I’m the only person who isn’t part of the family, which sounds redundant and silly when I put it like that so I’ll try again, it can be tiring to be one who doesn’t quite fit in and to have to make a lot of effort to understand and communicate in a setting where that usually all comes naturally.
Better? Anyway, the point is, having someone else in my same shoes was a relief.
   
  From the train station we went to my family’s apartment on the Mediterranean where we would spend two days; in which I finished my homework and ate too much cake.


   Early Monday morning we took off to cross the border, stopping only for a breakfast of pain au chocolats and hot chocolate. The drive was through the Pyrenees Mountains and I could tell that it would have been absolutely jaw dropping if not for all the fog that prevented me to see more than a few inches from my window. 
We drove right across without being stopped which of course is strange to me coming from the United States, where some may say the border control is pretty strict. 


   Down from all the fog, we spent the afternoon visiting Barcelona and although I haven’t yet spent much time in the cities of France, I could feel a difference between the two countries…maybe fewer smokers? I’m afraid I can’t elaborate more than that. Oh, but we did eat lunch at a so-so buffet of pizza and pasta, which I don’t see much of in France.


   After witnessing an intense verbal fight between an Irish man who found it “despicable” that an English family cut in front of him in line (although the truth behind this claim is still up in the air) we visited la Sagrada Familia. The outside is under major construction, to finish the work of art, but I much prefer what Gaudi did to what the 21st century architects have added.


   To stay on the cultural part of my trip, we also visited a monastery where we took a guided tour in Spanish, I understood much less than half of it, but read about the rest in French from the pamphlet the guide gave me. He would tell me in French what number we were on, thinking, for a good reason, that I was part of the family from France (well put like that, I suppose I am) but I felt sneaky nevertheless for hiding my Americanism.


   We also visited Park Guell and Dali’s house where my host family stood in front of each work of art until they were confident in their interpretation of it’s true meaning. I was much less capable of doing this after the first few floors.


   'Tis the end of me being cultural because we spent the rest of vacation at Port Aventura; which is, as I was told, the biggest amusement park in Europe, but I should double check that before I go around claiming such a thing.

Cousin, host sisters, me!

   Either way, I can say from experience that it is plenty big with rides sufficiently scary. Both of which are massive understatements. 
We spent two days there and I left with lovely purple bruises on both my knees from hours of intense bumper cars. I went on the biggest roller coaster there, and then spent hours in sesame street. I still haven’t decided which one I preferred.
   For lunch we made picnics to avoid the over-priced and under-good food at the park. We got baguettes, ham and cheese, which made terrific sandwiches and for breakfast and dinner the hotel had a buffet, which had everything from donuts to escargots.


   In the car ride home we played 20 questions animal version, which I’ve never been good at but has always been fun. It brought back a great memory of playing it with my best friend and her mom on the way to the beach one summer. I also learned some great, everyday vocabulary like medusa (jellyfish).


   Getting home was technically getting home from a trip within a trip, which I think is cool to think about. School has started up again and work is already piling up, I already sound like a true French person when I tell you, I can’t wait for next vacation!
(Which is for Christmas and I’m going to Paris!)