Gilles showing his American Pride 

I'm a little confused about what country I'm in... 

Welcome to France 

Gilles taking pictures of the second band (there was a second band, by the way, who only played for a few minutes) last night. Most of my pictures turned out bad and really dark, but I'm sure he got some excellent ones.  

My final few days of break have been busy and pretty fun, its turned into Spring (but watch it snow next weekend)and its finally hot and sunny and looks like its probably going to stay that way for a while. Wednesday I went into town with my friend Matthieu and walked around and talked a bit, I haven't seen him in a long time and the last time we were together my French was terrible, so it was fun to get to know him more. We went to a cafe and saw my host sister and some of her friends there so we all sat down together, drank coffee, and had a good afternoon.

On Thursday I woke up with absolutely no plans for the day but to sit around. By 10am my friend Regina, the German girl at my school, had invited me to go spend the night at her house. Then, at lunch, my phone started ringing constantly with calls from Molly and Maite, who had been abandonned in Annecy for the day, and didn't have enough money to buy food. So in the afternoon I went and brought them some leftovers and KinderBueno bars and we sat around in the sun on the Paquier for a while. I headed back to St. Jorioz, sat around, went for a run, and an hour before I was supposed to go to Regina's I got a call. Regina was calling to say that we'ed been invited to our friend Sophie's party. And we were supposed to dress up. So I had 30 minutes to iron a skirt and shirt, do my hair, make up etc. The little party at Sophie's was lots of fun, there were only 7 of us, we cooked a nice dinner and listened to music and had a good time.

Friday afternoon I took several buses up to my friend Gilles house. Gilles was an exchange student in Belfair,WA last year. He went to North Mason High School, one of the schools in my High School's sports league AND he's been to Vashon High to play soccer against us. The world is so small. We met over the last vacation through my friend Amandine, and we've wanted to get together and talk about Seattle forever, but he's been incredibly busy. So yesterday we finally got together, he showed me all his pictures of Seattle and we talked and talked and talked for hours in English It was so much fun to get to talk to someone about home, which he misses a lot more than I do. That night we went to a concert at a Tex-Mex restaurant, because I had never been to a concert in France. Actually, I haven't really been to that many concerts in my entire life. It was a French punk rock band ( Fish Liver Oil), singing in english of course. Thats never been my type of music, but I was surprised, it wasn't bad at all, they were actually fairly good. What was bad was the venue. This bar/restaurant isn't really a great place for concerts, it was set up all wrong and in general they were completely unprepared. The power went out at one point. But I still had a good time, now I want to go to another concert here so I can see what they are really like. The restaurant itself was a crazy place, made to look like its in the south in the US with all sorts of liscense plates and buffalo skins. There's a helicopter too... they've succeded in making it look very white trash USA. Merci Gilles, I had a really great day!

On Monday night I went over to my friend Hugo's house with a couple of other friends, to hang around, eat dinner, play video games, etc. But for me there was a whole other reason that I was there. After dinner Hugo and I sat down with his parents and we talked a while so I could get to know the family a bit and they could get to know me, and now unless something goes terribly wrong, I'm going to move in with them. Hugo asked his family a long time ago and they were ok with the idea, I just needed to meet them in order to get the process going. Now we're waiting to hear from Rotary. I talked to a Rotarian about it a few weeks ago and she said it'll be perfectly fine for me to live with them, Rotary just needs to tell them all the rules. I'm very excited to go live with them. I've had no real problems with my host family now, I know they love me and they've done so much for me, bringing me snowboarding, on trips to Lyon, etc. They've been so great to me. But, throughout the whole year I assumed I'd get three families, and was disappointed when I found out I wasn't going to be allowed to move. I'm only going to be at Hugo's for two months, but its the best two months for me to be there. Hugo's house is still about as far away as St. Jorioz, but its a little more accessable to Annecy because it uses a different bus line. Its a good time for me to go there because I know the entire month of June will be spent by my friends studying away for the Bac, which I'm not taking, so if I stayed here I'd be sitting home alone, feeling lonely, missing my French friends and American friends. This way, I'll always at least be around Hugo and his friends. I feel that this is a really great move for me, and I'm happy because I feel that it kinda validates my year. If I have made such good connections that I have friends that like me enough to allow me to live with them, this has all been amazingly successful. So thats my big news. I'll fill everyone in when I hear back from Rotary, and hopefully I'll have moved within the next two weeks.

Spring break looks a lot like this.  

Yesterday, me, my host sister, and my host mom headed to Lyon to visit Florian and go shopping!  

In Lyon we went to this huge shopping center in Le Part-Dieu... and as I walked around I saw THIS in the window. Abercrombie, in FRANCE. This one sports store had a selection of guys t-shirts, nothing for girls. I was shocked, I had to take a picture 

My host sister, Caroline, snowboarding on Friday at Les Arcs. We had planned on going to Lyon Friday, but the weather looked like it was going to be good so we switched the Lyon trip to Saturday. We were right on. There was not a cloud in the sky the entire day, and the snow was fantastic. It was a perfect day to end the ski season! 

The view from l'Aiguille Rouge at Les Arcs 

The most beautiful day possible, Mt Blanc on the far right. 

Two weeks ago, my class went on a trip to Ferney-Voltaire, a town right next to Geneva where Voltaire used to live. My picture posting thing was down, so I'm putting them up now, even though some time has passed! 

Guillaume in our minibus! 

We ate lunch in an empty daycare center... and then had nap time. 

We learned that you can grow up, become a lyceen, but then as soon as you go back to the kindergarten, you completely revert. William picking up Caroline.  

Standing around in Ferney-Voltaire 

When my class went to Ferney-Voltaire we took a walking tour of the town and saw all the Voltaire-related places. It was freezing cold. And VERY windy. 

Learning about printing back in the olden days 

My class in front of Voltaire's Chateau 

My Spring Break has been just as boring as I expected, I spent Sunday through Tuesday sitting around inside, reading, watching tv, being bored, as it rained/snowed outside. The weather has been truely terrible. After the first day where we got pounded with snow, it warmed up, all the snow melted quickly, and it rained and rained. Yesterday I finally managed to get outside the house. I met up with Noelle, an exchange student not with Rotary, who is from Montana. We walked around, shopped (but bought nothing, because we are so poor), and sat in a cafe and gossipped in English for a couple hours. Thats something I don't do often, in general, I talk to the other exchange students in French. Its easier to talk to them in French than a French person because they don't focus so much on every word, just the general idea. And I can learn lots of new phrases from them because its much easier to ask what something means. Today I'm going to be sitting around again, but I'm going to put myself to work. I have my presentation of Seattle to my rotary club in three weeks, and in two weeks I'm going to give a little "American Night" at my school with the help of Rachel. We'll both give our Rotary Presentations to our classmates and feed them American food her parents brought over, the Mexican girls did a similar thing earlier in the year. So today's challenge is going to be putting together a powerpoint presentation with pics of Seattle and stuff. Then I'll work on writing out the script of what I'll say in French (and have my friends edit it). I've been quite lazy with French this break, I've been constantly listening to music in English and I've become addicted to the book The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. My mom sent it to me months ago, there is a essay contest I can enter when I finish reading it. (I actually found out that the contests deadline was last week, but there's always next year). I've been only reading in French, so I didn't have the time, but I just finished Harry Potter and I figured I could take a break and read a little in English. But now I can't stop, and the book is nearly 700 pages long... I must do something in French today!

Tomorrow we're going to take advantage of the fresh snow and go skiing at Les Arcs, and then Saturday we're going shopping in Lyon.

Spring Break!

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Originally uploaded by AnnaRae.

My first day of Spring Break in France.

Spring Break

Spring Break... and we have around five inches of snow. I was not expecting that. Spring Break is supposed to mean beaches and flipflops, not snowstorms! Its unusual even for the Alps to get snow this late, and everyone is a little irritated. I guess I'd be happier if I thought I'd be going snowboarding, but my host parents have to work for the entire break, and a majority of my friends are out of town (Paris, Scotland, Bretagne, Ireland, Nice, Rotary Bus Trip, Skitowns... really, EVERYONE is GONE!) so it looks like I'll be sitting around my house, spending far too much time online and sitting around in front of the TV. I'm sitting around in France though, so I don't really think I'm allowed to complain.

Yesterday morning, I woke up, look outside, and saw snow falling like crazy. My host family rents out apartments (I think they own six) at Les Arcs, a ski resort about an hour and a half from here. They had some friends from their old town in the north of France who were heading down to spend a week in one of the apartments and were going to stop by Annecy and eat lunch on their way down. They ended up being about three and a half hours late because of the terrible road conditions. They said they were completely stopped at many times and there were cars in the ditches all along the way. Anyway, they ended up deciding to spend the night, and we had a really nice evening. We weren't really sure what we had on hand to make a dinner for eight people, and ended up eating crepes! I love crepes, I'm going to make them all the time back home. They left this morning, the roads are better now, the snow stopped yesterday around five pm. And hopefully it won't start up again for a while so we can get back to lazing around by the lake in t-shirts.

andy comes

On Thursday morning I was sleeping in a little bit because class started a half an hour late, and I was rudely awoken at around 7:18 by my cell phone. I picked it up and managed to mumble an "'allo?" and my friend Andy's voice said "Hey, so is it still ok if I come to Annecy today?" my response was "Huh? YEAH. Seriously?" Andy is an exchange student in Lecco, Italy on Lake Como. He was on a weeklong exchange with his school to Geneva, Switzeland, only about an hour from Annecy. In fact, on Monday I went on a trip with my class to Ferney-Voltaire and Geneva, and while I was there Andy and I had desperately tried to connect and wasted about 25 euros combined on text messages. (The trip was fantastic by the way, I tried to post pictures earlier this week but the picture hosting thing wasn't working, I'll get some up when I can!)After we failed to meet in Geneva we had kinda given up. But, somehow, he managed to get on the 8:30am bus to Annecy.

I managed to talk my teachers and the attendance office into letting me get out of English class to pick him up from the train station and into letting us skip classes in the afternoon so I could show him around. He arrived in Annecy a little before 10 and we went to my school and sat through two hours of history, which I'm certain was extremely boring for him. After that, the two of us took off and bought lunch at my favorite lunch place in Annecy and went and ate on the paquier in the sun next to the lake. In the afternoon I gave him the grand tour of Annecy, we walked all over the veille ville, up to the Chateau for the veiw, down into the shopping area, over to the mall, to Bonlieu, every place we could reasonably go. We window shopped, ate icecream, and sat around and talked. It was so fun. And a little disorienting. In my mind, Andy belongs back on Vashon, not in Annecy. It was great to see him and gossip about our friends and our host families and our lives back home and here in Europe. I guess he's changed, but so have I, and in general, we're still pretty much the same as we were before, just a little more relaxed and a little more mature. Seeing him also gave me a chance to really see how good my French has gotten. Andy's French level is exactly the same as mine was when I left Seattle, having him around made me realize how big of an improvement I have made. (His Italian is pretty awesome too). I'm so glad he was able to get down to Annecy, now when I talk about my life here he has a picture of my school and my city and my friends in his head. I forgot my camera, but he had his, and he'll put pictures up on his blog and email some to me. I'll be sure to put another link or post them once he gets around to doing that.

It seems like all the exchanges are having people see them right now. My friend Molly is in Ireland with her parents and Rachel, the other American at my school, has her parents here now too. I ate lunch with them today, they brought me two cans of rootbeer (doesn't exist here) and some Kraft Mac and Cheese. I was extremely happy. Its good to see people, but it also makes me realize how close we are to the end of this year, how we're about to go home, and that terrifies me.

I woke up today with a sore back, it wasn't a bad sore back that means I slept wrong, it was a good sore that meant my muscles had gotten a work out the day before. It snowed the night before last, so we couldn't go running around on the mountain in gym class, instead we did cirque. I'm terrible at cirque. I spent the first 30 minutes wishing I skipped class, I mean, school on Saturday is cruel and unusual punishment to begin with. I think cirque is just an excuse for something to do if the gym teacher is feeling lazy, cause all she has to do is sit there. In cirque we juggle, balance on boards, and use little unicycle things. These are all things I happen to be terrible at. The tried to teach me to juggle, not realizing that people have been trying to teach me to juggle for the past 13 years. After a while I actually managed to do this group juggling thing, but I messed up a lot. Towards the end everyone just got bored and kinda sat around or ran and did flips off a trampoline onto the mat. I went over and started playing on the balance beam (I did the splits on it, people freaked out). And then tried out the parallel bars. My gym teacher saw I was interested, so she showed me some stuff on the uneven bars as everyone else sat around. I learned a mount and she showed me how to get enough momentum to swing my body around the bar. It was REALLY difficult, and I know I was only doing basic things but it took a lot of effort, I definetly have more respect for gymnasts now, they make it look so easy.

Tomorrow my class is going on a daytrip to Geneva. We're going to go to the Voltaire foundation and then hang around in the afternoon in town. It just so happens that my friend Andy, and exchange student in Italy, is on a miniexchange through his school and will be in Geneva. We're hoping that we'll be able to connect in the afternoon for a little bit.

According to what people say in emails, and through statistic trackers, I know that people are reading this blog. So my question is, why don't you leave comments? I hate taking all the effort to write entries and then not have people tell me they read it, I feel like I'm wasting my time. Thats why I haven't been making so many entries recently. Its not difficult, just click the comments link under this post. I'd really appreciate it! And to those of you who already do it, thanks a ton.

Springtime has tricked us once again, at the beginning of the week we were sitting around in the sun, and now its raining like crazy, and I think its been snowing in the mountains. I'm sure its all going to stop soon... I hope, the spring was looking pretty good to me.

Wednesday I went with my friend Max and his mom to a performance at the big theater in Annecy. It was called Plan B, and it was AMAZING. I'm not even really sure how I can describe it. It was a circus with four men. But not a real circus...really. There was no talking, which was great for me cause I understood the whole thing. The main set peice was this big wall thing, which at one point was horizontal, at another point was vertical, and at another it was flat. When it was horizontal the men were doing flips on it, sideways, lying down, and there were little boxes and holes that were sometimes there and sometimes not, that made it more exciting. When it was vertical they climbed, did flips, etc, to get to the top. And when it was flat on the stage there was a big screen up in the back and there were video cameras up above taping what was happening on the wall on the ground, the men would be flat on the wall, doing fight scenes and flips and stuff so it looked like they were flying through the air on the big screen. I'm terrible at trying to explain it. Take my word for it that it was very cool.

Joyeux Anni Hugo!

Astrid (Australia), Me, and Izzy (Canada) in front of Lac Léman. Some different countries have different colored blazers. Australians have green, Canadians blue or red, New Zealanders have black, etc, etc, in general most countries have blue, like the US. 

Me! Evian umbrella! In Evian! 

Stas and Izzy in the casino we ate lunch ate. Its illegal to take pictures inside... hehehe. 

Luke talking on his cellphone as Julian knights him with his new sword. 

Brittany, Tanielle, and Bronwyn eating lunch in Evian 

Practicing songs for our performance in front of the rotarians, we sang a song in english and then one in French- "Etoile de Neige" the classic Savoyard song.  

Tannia's back, covered with Rotary cards, and Maite, standing next to a bunch of Rotary flags. Rotary love exchanging things. We exchange pins to put on the blazers, and business cards as well, and then Rotary clubs trade little banners.