My host mom is from Belgium, and my host family used to live in the north of France. Yesterday we ate a very Belgian meal- moules et frites, mussels and french fries. I was really surprised that I liked it. They were cooked, so they weren't slimy and weird, and frites are always great. 

Le Plagne last week, you can see the little festival. 

Vacances

Not much new, I've had a pretty mundane week of vacation. Last week I went snowboarding once with Eric the Canadian at La Clusaz, one of the closest ski resorts. We had a great time, there was tons of fresh powder. I spent some time at his house as well. Other than that I've been sitting around watching tv, doing nothing exciting. On Sunday I went with my skiclub to Le Plagne, one of the biggest ski resorts in France. There was some sort of huge Playstation/SFR festival there too, so there were big ski jumps with people flipping on skis and snowboards and trampolines with people flipping (also on skis and snowboards) and all sorts off stalls and free prizes. I was kinda standing around, mesmorized by the ski jumpers and a woman came up to me with a bag and started talking. I couldn't hear her cause I had my hat over my ears. Subsequently I was all "huh? what?" (in French)and she figured out that I was foreign. Eventually I realized she was asking if I wanted to win a prize from funradio. The question was to name a dj for the radio station, and I couldn't, but because I was foreign she gave me the prize anyway- a new ski hat, with "funradio" on the front. Yes!
Today I walked around Annecy for a while with Molly and her brother, who is at school in Ireland this year. The two of them met in Paris and then he came down here for a few days. It was really nice to meet him, she's so lucky he's here.

On Tuesday night my host family and I went up to Le Grand Bornand, one of the two ski stations located just 30 minutes from Annecy, with our skiclub for the descente au flambeau. The descente au flambeau is when everyone gets a torch and skis down the mountain with it at night. Sorry these pics are a little dark, it was dark out! This picture is of me and my host parents drinking vin chaud (hot wine and rum with cinnamon) and holding our unlit torches. 

Lighting up the torches 

The row of skiiers going down the mountain. Its quite difficult to snowboard slowly in a line (with a torch, at night), and actually, only me and the snowboarding teacher attempted it- all the other snowboarders were skiiers originally and got out their skis for this event. Me and the other snowboarder hung back a bit, but even with all our precautions I managed to mess up. It was dark (clearly) and I fell on some bump and the flaming wax ball flew out of my torch and into the snow. The snowboarding instructer gave me his so I'd be able to see. 

Eating Tartiflette afterwards! Yum, I LOVE the specialties to this region, next year I'll be back in Seattle, whipping up batches of crepes and fondue and buying as much Roblechon as I can. The dinner was nice, but we started eating at 10pmish and were still there at 1am. For the whole dinner there was some guy with a trumpet playing traditional songs and people were singing along and everyone was happy. Then it got annoying. There was dancing and all afterwards to irritating old French music and finally we went home. 

Pas de Troisième Famille...

I just got an email telling me that I'm not going to be changing to a third family, and I'm dissapointed. A kid came back from Canada, and so I can't go live at his house, and the woman in charge couldn't find another place for me, so subsequently, I'm staying where I am for the next five months. I'm lucky that I do LIKE my host family, and I have no problems at all with them. But I had thought from the beginning that I would have a third family, and now I feel a little cheated out of that experience. Life goes on.

Tonight I'm going to do the "descent en flambeau" with my skiclub. At 8pm we'll all ski/snowboard down the mountain at Le Grand Bornand (45 min from here) in a line, holding lit torches. Afterwards we all go out to eat tartiflette and have a little party. Its going to be a great experience, and such a cool thing to say I've done.

Also, I clearly had a little extra time on my hands and changed my blog around a bit. I'm not finished, I know the picture is too big and I'm going to try to shrink it or something, and there are other little things I need to change, but I'm not doing that today. It took me quite a while to edit the template I used to fit what I wanted. Anyway, please give me your feedback about what you think I should keep/change. Thanks!

The bus to Flaine! Yesterday the entire lycée went skiing and snowboarding. Some kids decided to stay at home, but the vast majority went. I think there were probably over 500 of us, we filled 12 charter buses. The weather was amazing, the snow was good, and everyone (except the boy who broke his leg) had a fantastic day.  

Chillin on the pistes 

Sophie at Flaine, waiting around. The mountains are so beautiful there- Mt Blanc in the back.  

One of my friends waiting for everyone to get ready 

Sophie and Regina on the chairlift 

Max in the bottom of a Crevasse.  

Stopping for lunch  

Chilling in the snow after eating lunch 

Sophie with a skipole.  

This is the view from my friend Molly's deck. She lives up in Manigod, a little town like 45 min from Annecy (and goes to school in Annecy everyday). If you remember, a while back I spent the night at Erics- this is where Eric USED to live before they moved. Sunday was Molly's 19th Birthday, so on Saturday most of us Annecy exchanges headed up to Manigod. We watched a Hitchcock movie, sat around, chatted, ate Raclette (yum!!!!), ate lots more, and sledded at midnight.  

Beautiful Manigod 

My gift for Molly, a chocolate pecan pie made with corn syrup she bought me in Germany. 

Molly's 19th birthday cake 

Eric sledding at midnight in Manigod (the rest of my nighttime pictures didn't really turn out, but I expected that). 

Us at Molly's for her birthday dinner (Eric, Maite, Molly, Me, Tannia) 

My Head Hurts...

because I've been studying. Something I'm not accustomed to doing this year! The épreuves communes have hit us, these nasty test things I described in my last post. Two weeks ago I took math and science tests on a whim and got a 12 and 13 (out of 20) on them. Those don't sound like good scores from an American perspective, but from a French one, they are really good. To give you an idea: I got the third highest score on the math test in the class, and the first highest was the other American. The other kids got like 6s and 4s. 13 was on the high end of the class too- I know that the science teacher was being generous, but I really deserved it, I wrote a lot in French. Since I did so well on these tests, my friends managed to convince me to take not only the english test this week (three hours long, tomorrow afternoon) but the science and math tests as well. And so I had to study. Yesterday in science class one of my French friends wrote me a note and asked me to come over to her house that night and teach her the math. I wrote back that that might not be smart, cause really, I don't understand it all too well and the French methods are different than mine. She said "Anna Rae, I got a 4, you got a 12, you clearly understand a little more than me". So last night I went over to her house for a couple of hours, the first hour we spent on math, initially she told me that if I needed to I could talk in English, but I managed to do the whole thing completely in French, and by the end she actually understood the concepts on the last test. It felt so good. I was in France, teaching a French girl math, in French. Afterwards she went over the science with me. We're doing the eye, which is something I know in English but I don't know all the vocab in French or how the definitions of certain things in French. By the end I was mentally exhausted, but I felt kinda good doing something with my brain. The tests were this morning and the math went really well for me- by teaching my friend I managed to memorize the concepts. Though my friend thinks that she still did really bad on the math test, I'm hoping she got above a four so I can feel I helped a little. The science was very difficult because it was long and required a lot of writing in French. Once I thought I nearly finished it and the period for the test was over I realized there was another two pages I had hidden under all my scratch paper that I didn't even get to. Uh. C'est la vie. At least I tried.