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