We walked way up above this little town to a panorama site to take pictures of the Loire. 

Benjamin fixes his new car. 

After our walk I went with Benoit and Catherine to take a closer look at Saumur's castle, it was really impressive. 

On the third day (the day after Christmas) we took another long long walk, we drove out into the country, parked the car by a vineyard, and walked down to the Loire, where this picture of my hose sisters and I was taken. After that we drove to an abbey. 

Vineyards! Lots and lots of grapes! 

I thought it was pretty cool that we could see the spire of the church through this wall, all perfectly lined up. 

My host family walking inside the Abbey of Fauntevraud. We didn't go inside the building except to go the giftshop. The Abbey has been around since 1101, and was led by abbesses, not abbots, for hundreds of years. Four of the daughers of Louis XV were educated here. Last year I did a report about Eleanor of Aquitaine, and used pictures of her tomb in my powerpoint presentation. I looked around and saw all these pictures of her tomb and realized that the tomb was here at the Abbey. Last year when I was making the powerpoit presentation I had no idea I would ever BE in these places. 

Another picture of the abbey. 

A picture of part of the Abbey of Fontevraud. I took it through a fence, so it isn't fantastic. 

Joyeux Noel!

Too much took place in my four days at Saumur to write a blog entry about it- you'd get very bored. I'll put little discriptions of each day here, then post pitures and discribe whats in them.

Day 1: Christmas Eve, left at 7:30am, arrived in Saumur at 3:30pm. Sat around, ate food, went to a bookstore, sat around more, got introduced to lots of people, went to an incredibly long and strange mass at 8pm, got home at 9:30, spent a half hour to 45 minutes deciding how we were going to handle opening all the gifts (xmas gifts for 25 people=nightmare), opened gifts, got a mini iPod!!!!!!!!!! cried a bit with joy, ate dinner (11pm), decided I hate foie gras, but pheasant is ok, 10 people leave at 2am, bed at 3amish

Day 2: Christmas Day, woke up at 11am, ate breakfast and realized that two showers for fifteen people is not a good thing, sat around, watched part of Les Choristes, ate a huge lunch (oysters, salmon, etc), walked in a nearby town for a couple hours, played with toy cars and pellet guns, went back, sat around, ate dinner, talked to my parents, played monopoly trader (extremely confusing game), talked to my parents and our friends again (but accidentally hung up on them, sorry), went to bed

Day 3: Woke up late again, got even more frustrated with the showers, sat around, played cards, ate another big lunch, walked in another nearby town for several hours, came back, sat around, ate dinner, watched Harry Potter on tv, went to sleep

Day 4: Woke up, ate, left at 8am, arrived in Annecy at 4pm.

and thats it!

Luge!

I'm very tired right now, so this will be short! Yesterday I went up to Manigod, this tiny town about 30 min from Annecy to spend the night at my friend Eric's house with a few other exchange students. He goes to school in Annecy, and lives all the way up in the mountains, its quite a major commute, but its gorgeous enough up there that its definetly worth it. I just found out that I was supposed to be living up there, which weirds me out- I feel so lucky I ended up down by the lake, where it's easy to get to the city. As we ate lunch Eric and his host mom started talking about us going and riding luges. I got so excited, and then I realized that luge is the word for sled in French. Early in the afternoon we set off with sleds towards a nearby mountain. We scrambled up the snow covered hillsides for a few minutes and then stopped, ready to sled down. Then his host mom was like, "Why are you stopping? I'm going further." We ended up climbing up the mountain for a good 25-30 minutes, then sledding down the whole thing- it was a lot of work to get up there, but so worth it! The rest of the night we hung around and played many, many games of cards. In the morning we babysat his host nephews, who were adorable. I had a great time, it amazes me that that snowy wonderland is so close to where I lived. As we were walking back from the sledding mountain I realized that I was in the Alps, in France, and I LIVED there. The Alps were magical mountains I read about in Tin-Tin, not actually a place I'd ever see. I'm so lucky.

Four months ago today I left Seattle, time moves so fast. Tomorrow I'm heading off to Saumur with my host family for Christmas! Its a looooong drive. Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noel!!

I went for a walk yesterday- it was too cold to run (it snowed some in the morning)- and took a bunch of pictures of my neighborhood. I'm not going to be living here much longer! I move Dec 29th.  

The waterfront at Menthon, yesterday was really foggy and cloudy 

The sunset last night 

The Menthon dock- there are ferry boats that circulate around the lake, you catch it here. At the end of the summer when the public beach is closed everyone swims here. 

The harbor (empty of boats for the winter) at Menthon. 

A picture of Menthon, The Chateau is the building on top of the hill. 

The main square in my current town, Menthon-St-Bernard 

Ocean's 12

This afternoon I planned to get together with a couple other exchange students to see a movie. I told a bunch of my French friends to call me so we could get together, but I still don't feel confident enough with them to call them up myself and plan things. Anyway, at 2ish I got a ride into town with my host dad and headed towards Bonlieu to meet up with Eric and Maite. When I was walking up the steps I saw two of my friends from school, which was a nice way to start my day. I didn't really talk to them for long though, because I had people waiting for me. When I got together with Maite and Eric we headed for Rue Carnot, Maite went into a shop to buy a new backpack after the three of us attempted to get money from an ATM (and each failed to extract anything more than 20€). I went on ahead to the mall, Courier, to go to H&M and buy tights for Christmas. I got up to H&M and noticed amid the huge crowds of people, three girls talking, two of which are very close friends of mine. I went up and kissed them and talked to them for a bit and then one of them left to catch a train to Lyon. As I was talking to the others two more friends of mine bounded out of Courier and engulfed us in hugs. The initial two left and I talked to the others for a bit and found out they were also going to to same movie as me. So at 4:45 I sat in the movie theater with Colombe and Claire on one side and Maite and Eric on the other, which was very exciting for me. I really love all the friends I've made here, and I can't wait to get closer to them when we can properly communicate. The movie was Ocean's 12, and I THINK it was good, but I honestly don't know. This wasn't like The Polar Express, its a lot more intricate and pretty much everything was really over my head. I need to see in in English. So who is the 12th person? Julia Roberts? Catherine Zeta-Jones? And was the rich guy who went out with a billion different women and lived on Lake Como and did all the dance moves to get over the lazars on Ocean's side or not? I think he wasn't, but I could be wrong.

Yesterday morning I was in a rush to catch the bus, said goodbye to my host mom, and whipped open the door and said "neige!", my host mom was kinda like, "well, yeah." I had been so wrapped up in getting ready to go that I had failed to look out a window and notice that snow had fallen last night, not a lot, but enough to cover the grass and the trees. It was really exciting, because its the first I've seen thats stuck down here by the lake. Also, snow here means lots of snow up in the mountains. Everyone has been worried because the snow is really late this year, and the mountains aren't ready for us to go skiing.

After a very short school day (English and then PE, which I got let out of an hour early) I kissed my friends goodbye and and bid them "bon vacances" and got in the car with my host family to Lyon. After a little more than an hour we got to Lyon, parked in the biggest parking garage I've ever seen and hit the streets. It was great to go to Lyon, I've missed big cities, and Lyon is the second biggest in France (I think). Also, going there gave me a little of the metropolitan France of my dreams- images of big, old, ornate buildings, cathedrals, bridges, billions of cafés, and the best shopping ever. And I forgot my camera, again. For the first three and a half hours we went shopping. We went into some extremely expensive stores that you need to get buzzed into, or have the door opened by a doorman. Once you are inside, there are about three employees to every customer. And my host family actually bought things at these shops. I myself ended up with two very nice postcards. I'll be coming back when my family comes to visit me so I can get my parents to buy me things.

After shopping we went to a hotel/restaurant management school that Marion is going to apply to to take a tour and learn about it. I found it kinda interesting. Even though what Marion would eventually do would be the business side, if she goes here she'll have to learn all the menial positions so she isn't hypocritical when she is bossing them around later on in life. She'll have to learn to serve people, work the front counter, and work in the kitchen- which is something she'll struggle with, she's not a great cook. The school part we went into was set up to look like a hotel, with a front desk, restaurant, etc.

After touring the school we came home, my oldest host sister and her boyfriend are in town for Christmas. We ate raclette, a specialty of Haute-Savoie, for dinner.

Squishy things, etc

I've been doing a lot recently and have had a lot of blogworthy things to mention, but I just haven't had the time to come online and post. I'll do my best now, but I'm exhausted.

In class on Wednesday we disected cow eyeballs. I worked in a group with my friends William and Colombe, William was a trooper at first, cutting away the excess "stuff" from the eye, but soon got really grossed out, so Colombe and I took over. She squeezed the eyeball as I slashed at it with the little knife (scalpel?) when liquid started oozing out we both audibly expressed how disgusting it was and I went "EWWWWWWWW!" Which caused her to ask William and I what "ew" meant. I thought that was a universal sound that people made when they were grossed out, I guess not. I explained it was like "C'est degueulasse".

That afternoon I took off with a bunch of exchange students. A small group of us took the bus to Zara's school, Baudelaire, because though we all heard about it, no one ever had seen it, it was a really cool school. Then we all bought lunch and ate it at Bonlieu (this building which really serves as the center of EVERYTHING in Annecy, kinda like Westlake in Seattle). Our big plan for the day was to head to the Imperial Hotel and go iceskating, when we arrived at the Imperial we saw that the ice rink they had set up was the size of a postage stamp, and filled with kids ranging in age from 4 to 8. We hit the Marché de Noel that was inside the Imperial instead, a big Christmas craft market-esque thing, and also saw the reindeer they had there for the public to look at. After all this we headed back into Annecy on the "Petit Train de Noël", this little touristy train thing that goes around the city. It was a really fun afternoon, a little dissappointing because the ice skating thing didn't happen, but we'll go to the actual Patinoire some other time.

Thursday was a long day. In history class we watched "The Party" (Peter Sellers), because it is nearly vacation and we needed to relax a bit. The tape was in English with French subtitles which was really nice for me. I've mentioned before how sometimes the subtitles don't really line up in the two languages and I laugh when other people don't, the samething happened yesterday, but different. They added an extra line in with a joke in French. Peter Sellers character was asking what the name of the game of pool is and they answered pool and then in the French he made a little crack about a chicken- poulet in French.

School ended at 5:30, an ungodly hour- it shouldn't be dark out when I'm still in school. I met up with Molly and walked around a bit and then we met Zara and the two of us went to Gospel (where there was a Christmas party)and Molly went to a Rotary meeting. I went home with the gospel teacher (my neighbor) that night so I had to stay till the very end. I ate like five oysters, which I surprisingly didn't find bad (if I did, I wouldn't have eaten five). I ended up going into the room for voice lessons and singing songs with Sophie and Zara as we waited for all the old ladies to stop eating and go home. I finally got home at 11:30. A little after mindnight, my host parents and Molly (who is sponsored by their club) came home from the Rotary meeting. Molly spent the night because she lives in a town in the mountains and she'd have gotten home really, really late. The two of us talked for a long time before we went to sleep.

Today was a great day too, filled with many papillotes, poetry readings, and electric guitar concerts. I'm too exhausted to explain! Bonne nuit! I'm going to Lyon tomorrow afternoon.

4 more days of school...

Not much new happening, just going to school, coming home, watching TV and sleeping, not really much different than I'd do in the US except the langauge is hard to understand and I have different friends. Today I had some time to kill before I caught my bus so I went to FNAC and bought a French workbook for French kids in grade CE2, which is the class for kids ages 8-9. When French kids are younger they learn a lot about grammar, conjugation, etc, so the book is really helpful. I can actually do pretty well with it, and it has an answer key for me to check. I really have felt my French comprehension improving recently, its still not fantastic, but I've noticed that I've come such a long way. I hate talking about my progress in French because that sort of thing is just so difficult to put in words.

Only four days till break! Saturday afternoon we are going to Lyon for lunch and to check out a school that Marion may go to. I don't know how interesting it'll be, but it'll be nice to see a new city. For Christmas I am going with my host family to Saumur, a town seven hours away on the other side of the country. I hate roadtrips, so I'm not excited for that, but its only for a few days, I'm sure I'll survive!

Le Pole Express

The past few days have been fairly busy. After school Wednesday I went with Molly, Maite, and Zara out to lunch and afterwards we went and saw (at Molly's insistance) "Le Pole Express" (The Polar Express). I loved it (Molly turned out being disappointed with it). I thought it was great, filled me with the Christmas Spirit. And also it was great because I actually understood a lot of the dialogue. They talk simply enought that I got it. Maybe if I saw it in English it'd be corny, I'm not sure, but in French it was wonderful. After that I went to Zara's. We made a ton of vegemite sandwiches and she practiced her presentation to me. That night we went to the maison de Rotary and Zara gave her presentation of Australia to the Rotarians, her host families, and all her exchange student friends. She did so well! I hope mine is as good as hers, she even did a kookaburra call. Very impressive. Yesterday was a normal Thursday at school, Thursday is the longest day of the week, I'm done at either 4:30 or 5:30, so I'm always exhausted by the end and then I need to go to gospel. After school Zara and I met up (shes in the same gospel choir, so we always wait for gospel to start together) and went to a bar and played pool. I'm terrible. Zara had all of her balls but one in and I hadn't sunk any of mine (I did make an excellent shot and hit one of her balls in for her though), as she tried to get the last ball in she sunk the black ball (not an 8 ball, these ones don't have numbers) and so I won! After that she made a video with her digital camera of me attempting to sink the rest of my balls. I made one amazing shot, and then she realized she hadn't been recording, once she did record I couldn't hit anything. C'est la vie. No school today, me and the other exchange students get a day off while our class goes to a college fair-like thing in Grenoble. I needed this day off, I finally had time to write most of my Christmas cards and wrap things. Tonight is the Rotary Christmas party. It'll be nice, all the exchange students in the four Annecy clubs and the Chamonix club will be meeting at the Annecy maison de rotary.

Today was the Foire St André, pretty much the biggest market ever. The ENTIRE city had street after street just filled with stalls, and all the stores had sales too. Its hard to explain just how crazy it was. I figured it'd make traffic bad because it blocked off so much of the city, but I got home really early because everyone in the region was in the town shopping. 

This guy was selling perfume, there were lots of perfume stands and the men would have microphones and would be selling their product to a group of completely rapt women and girls who would all stick out their wrists from them to spray on perfume. 

Foie Gras stand 

Tannia (on the left, in the white coat) shopping at St. André. 

Grandfather clocks for sale. 

Lots and lots of people jam up Annecy. 

Bob the Builder socks for sale. 

Rue Royale during St André. 

The Mexican girls and I buy Churros! IN FRANCE!! 

Volleyball and Hypermarchés

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day for me. It started off with me realizing I'm not going to be horrible in EPS (PE) class this trimester. Last trimester I was ranked as the fourth worst badmitton player- I'm not even that bad at badmitton in the US, but apparently all French kids are great at it. Yesterday volleyball started, and in the US I am terrible at volleyball. I was on a volleyball team for three practices back in 7th grade, before our team disbanded because we couldn't get enough players. In those three practices I learned how to serve, and nothing else. Yesterday we picked volleyball teams and I was one of the last picked, everyone (including myself) thought I'd be terrible. And then I surprised everyone by being fairly decent at it. My team won two of our three games. At the end of the class when the teacher was talking on about things she pointed me out as the best server in the class and everyone beamed at me. It was so exciting! I may get a decent grade!

After school I went to my next host families house to eat lunch and then go buy snowboarding boots. They are completely different from my current family, and right now, I really don't want to leave! It took until I saw what I have to move to for me to realize just how much I love the family I am with now and the life I have here. My next family seems nice, but its still going to be difficult for me to change. One upside to moving is that I'll be speaking more French. I talk to my host parents now in French, but to my host sister in English, at my next house I'll be speaking to everyone in French. The mother, Christine, speaks English well, but I'll talk to her in French unless I have a problem.

We bought my snowboarding boots and then I met my host sister and a friend of hers in town and we shopped and then went to a cafe and sat and talked. After that, we picked up some more friends and drove to Carrefour. The craziest place ever. When we got there, my host sister turned to me and said, "don't get lost." Carrefour is a HUGE grocery store. The kind called a hypermarché instead of a supermarché because it is just so huge. The parking garage was like four stories, and the store was insane. Gigantic and teeming with people. Where I am from, we think Costco is big, and I now know that we are very wrong. And yes, we were seperated from people in our group several times and had to use our cellphones to recconnect.

C'est la Vie

After all the effort we went through, and all the obstacles we overcame, I found out that Andy can't come visit afterall. Today I told everyone at school, and got permission from my teachers to get out of school in the afternoons to take him around. The final issue that killed our plans is that Andy doesn't actually have his Italian visa yet, so apparently, he isn't allowed to leave the country. By mid-January he'll have the visa and we'll go through this all over again, I'm sure it'll be much easier the second time.

Gold Star for Marion

On my host sister Marion's third attempt, she passed her driver's test! Pretty much every French kid fails at least once, and its not uncommon to fail four or five times (and each time you take the test you need to pay an ton of money). Then she promptly went and got a ticket- on her first day. She went to her math tutor and parked in a spot that she thought was illegal, but her dad said it wasn't, so, as a trusting daugher, she followed his instructions. She was right. Now she has to pay either 11 or 33€.

Today is my 100th day in France! Time is flying.