3rd two week vacance???

Four weeks ago I started winter break! The 3rd(of 4) two week break in the France school year.

Because Chantal(my host mom) and Fabrice(my host dad) were both out of town, I went back to Yzabel and Claude's  house. The first morning we left for our voyage  .I kept myself entertained by listing to tedtalks on the  four hour drive there. way.  I was pretty psyched because I'd been missing snow and the closer we got the more snow there was. Part of the drive was through  mountains and all the snow on the trees and stuff was really rockin. We stayed with Claude's brother George, and his family who are all wonderful people.

The next morning we got our skiing clothes on, got in the cars and drove the 30ish minutes to a ski station . On the way there, there was hardly any snow,so we were worried we wouldn't be able to ski after all. But, just outside of the town(where the station was) we started seeing more and more snow!

It was my first time skiing and I definitely had a lot to learn.  I couldn't get the right turn or the stop down and  apparently both are pretty important... unless you want to either only go straight, which makes you go rather fast, or you run into  the guard net a lot. So I would start going downhill, pick up speed, and purposely fall over to stop.

The next day ,Claude, Yzabel, Canelle, and I went to a nearby town ,Le Puy-en-Velay. It was pretty cool , lot of old architecture, and a really nifty statue/monument, 'Notre-Dame de France'.

Here's the wiki page: awesomeness It was the biggest baby Jesus I'd ever seen. 

Tuesday afternoon we went back to Les Arcs.

Wednesday I took the train to Cannes to see Vanessa and two of her friends: Hannah from Austria and Veronica from Columbia(the country). The night before Yzabel told me it was supposed to snow in Cannes Wednesday.Generally when  snow is announced in southern France, it's a flurry or maybe even a dusting , so I wasn't worried. While on the train I looked outside and saw white on the ground. The closer I got , the more and more snow I saw. Due to the several inches of snow, no buses(Vanessa's mode of transit) were running in the Cannes area , so she could only stay a couple of hours. Luckily,we did have time to walk to the beach and build a snowman! something that i don't think many people can say they've done! There were a couple other people building snowmen, but ours was by far the best! It was so weird to see so much snow here, it's really rare.  After making the snowman, we headed back to the gare(train station). They grabbed a train and I waited for a while(my train was about 2 years late due to the snow).At one point a train arrived for people who had been waiting literally 5 hours and everyone cheered. While people were  boarding said train, there was a huge bang and flash(it sounded like a gun shot... sort of scared me). It came from the thing that connects to train to the power lines that run above it. The train station employees yelled for everyone to get off the train.I'm not sure if the group of people who had been waiting there all day got to leave soon after that,because my train arrived soon after , but I still felt bad that they had  more delay.

After vaccance I went back Fabrice and Chantal's.

One day, I saw Shutter Island with my friend, Oneza. It was a really complicated plot and the fact that it was in French made it more complicated for me. I'll have to see it in english when I get home...

 Last weekend Chantal, Fabrice, and I went to a ski station "Faux d'Allos" in the alps.When we got there we rented skis and Fabrice started teaching me. This time I got shorter(easier?) skis than the first time I went so I was actually able to ski without falling for minutes at a time! About half way down one ski slope stopped at a dinner and met up with Fabrice and Chantal's friends.

let's just say that at this point I wasn't yet ready for the Olympics downhill, so their friends helped me out on the easy slopes.  After going down the easy slopes on my own several times, I met up with Fabrice and  his friends, and we headed to the blue(intermediate) slopes.  After skiing we all went to this cabin that's co-owned by Chantal and Fabrice's friends. It was kinda  of secluded from the rest of  the station which was nice. On the front of the house there was a place that was in honor of the three people that got trapped in the cabin and died during an avalanche in 1981 ....that kinda made me nervous. The cabin was on the slope, so you couldn't see the back of the house due to the snow piled around it.

Anyways it was a pretty awesome weekend. It's cool that in 3 hours, you can drive from the coast to a ski resort.

Tuesday I got up early, took the bus to the train station and the train to Nice. My aunts, Mary Beth and Kesh, met up with me and we walked around and spent the day in Nice.The weather was the best it's been all winter. Evey body keeps telling me how unlucky I've been as far as coming this winter, because it's been unusually cold and rainy for this region. But it wasn't Tuesday! It was awesome to see family for the first time in six months.Whoa. I'VE BEEN IN FRANCE FOR SIX MONTHS! It's hard to believe.

Tuesday night we all had dinner at Fabrice and Chantal's, which was really nice, and Wednesday morning, we left for Italy. The train ride was two hours ,but the ride is all along the coast and really incredible, so it was cool. Italy was pretty nifty. The weather had turned back to it's old rainy self but it was still awesome!We went to this market place that had tons of different types of vendors: truffle, olive, fruit, silk flowers(?), and fish. The seafood section had live shrimp, but also live octopus, which looked quite tasty! Haha ,truthfully, if I bought a live octopus i would probably put it in a aquarium , name it bob, and keep it as a pet. I mean , how cool would it be to have a pet octopus? Went to a pasta shop, a couple chocolate stores, and ate real Italian pizza. It's crazy to think that I can leave for Italy in the morning and be back in time for dinner.


Being a translator is pretty fun. I was able to translate French to English fine, but going from Anglais to Francais was more difficult. I'm guessing I sounded like this when translating what my aunts were saying :" Likes Aunt Beth southern France and saids thanks to you for me family being". I think I generally got the point across though so thats good

It was awesome to have family around, I missed them.


Saturday I moved back to my first host family because my third family is having work done on their house. So I'll be staying at Claude and Yzabel's until the works is done on my next room, which is cool with me,Claude and Yzabel are great

Saturday after noon I hung out with Vanessa, Hannah, and Amanda(all other exchange students) in Nice.it was nice outside, so rather than seeing a movie, we walked around,ate pizza and nutella( not together) and hung out on the beach.  On the train ride home I met to college graduates from the US who are helping out in English classes at a lycee here.It was kinda crazy enough to randomly meet two other Americans but on top of that they knew three RYE friends of mine.


Also: I'm really excited about Easter vacation (April 2nd -19th) because my parents and sisters are coming!!! I'm pretty much counting down by  the minute (33,405... )

RandomFacts:

•  They sell 5 kilo containers of nutella.
•   My birthdays coming up in 8 months.
•   There is a jar of salmon eggs in my host family's fridge. 
•  Sigourney Weaver says the word water ,'wortor'. This word is used a lot in the Planet Earth series. 
•  I'm slowly reading through Charlie in the Chocolate Factory in French.
•   The train people rarely  check to see if you actually have tickets, so lots of times I wish I just wouldn't have bought the ticket, I guess I'd probably feel bad if I didn't though...
•   If you ever go to the cinema in France, you should know exactly how to get out of the weirdly laid out theater, so you can avoid being accused of going in to another movie, and then followed out of the building by employees.
  

Well that's my last month! I'll have new pictures up here :http://picasaweb.google.com/elitinkfort  
Hope all is going well, thanks for reading!
PS: Send some questions that I can put in my next entry, I have a couple but not many, so send away. My email is elitinkfort@gmail.com.

Shortest post ever

This probably dosn't count as a real post, but I just wanted to give you the lowdown.

After a month back in school after Christmas vacance , I start another 2 week break tommorrow. Because Fabrice will be on a mission trip, and Chantal will be visiting her mom in the north of France, I'll go back to chez Yzabel and Claude. It's nice, because I've been missing them...I can't belive it's been nearly two months since moving. Anyway tomorrow after school I'm taking my old bus to Les Arcs and then Saturday morning we're going on a trip...WE'RE GOING SKIING!I'm pretty excited.  I've never been skiing plus I miss snow in general. After the trip I'll stay at their house for a couple days.

Well, seeing as this will be my only time to write until after the trip(I think), I though I'd give you a quick update!
Thanks to the people who sent questions, I'll try to anwser in the next post. If you havent yet, go for it, my email address is elitinkfort@gmail.com !

New Family, New Town, New Experences

 Several weeks ago I moved from Les Arcs to Roquebrune-sur-Argens. Although I haven't explored my new town much, my host dad claims that it's the best town in the world, it is indeed beautiful, but i don't know, best town in the world??I'm pretty sure that he meant to say, second best to Fayette.

So I now live with the Fernaund Family, Fabrice, Chantal,(my 'parents') and Maife(my 'sister'). My Brother is going to school in Marseille(marr*French 'r' here*-say-ugh), so i don't know him really well, but he seams nice.. My host dad Fabrice is a pretty funny guy. Everybody in town knows him through the many things he does. Most people have either been in his sport ...classes/teams(?) when they were kids, or have kids/grand kids in his current classes. Some of the kids in his sports now, are the children of people that he once taught. He also works f or the mayor, and is a volunteer fire fighter.He's really nice, and has been really helpful. Chantal works at a preschool of sorts, during the day, and is usually home by the time I'm done with school. She generally makes dinner, and is pretty darn good at it. Maife, my awesome host sister, is in her last year of lycee. It's been cool to have a sibling my age in the house. I've hung out with her and her friends a couple times, one time we went to the boit/discotheque which was pretty cool.
My new host fam and I have done lots of things.One day,after getting out of school at noon,(it was a Wednesday) , Fabrice took me on a motorcycle ride. It was pretty intense. We drove along the coast and stopped by some WWII relics /other awesome stuff, like seeing  Île d'Or, which was cool.  Then, on the way back we drove through Frejus. Randomly Fabrice saw some friends driving on a moto too. We basically chased them down .He finally got their attention and they pulled over. Turns out that one of them was a past Rotary Youth Exchange Student 30 ish(maybe, I think...I forgot when exactly) years ago!! From France to Canada!Pretty much the coolest thing that happened that week!

My host dads a firefighter, so one night before Christmas we went to the equivalent to the fireman's' ball . It was pretty nifty. Good food, good friends,... so so music!

Durring vacance I was able to hang out with my exchange friends a bit too. I went to Toulon with Tracy from one of the Dakotas,and Nice with Oneza(from Bombay) and Vanessa (from Chicago). For New Years,Oneza and I went to Katelyn's house in St.Cyr. We ate with her 'family' and family friends. The dad's close friend was from Italy he told some good stories which was cool. One was about different gestures in France( he once thought a girl was asking him to go skiing...she wasn't). It was also nice because his girlfriend had spent time in the UK, so we were able to discuss accents and what not.

And now the portion where I show you the keys on a French key board that don't exist on a American keyboard!!!!!!!!!!: § µ ù ¤ £ € ² é è ç à °
Pretty intense, right? On top of that some of the keys are mixed up. So lots of time when switching between my laptop and school computer, my hands get confused. Major difference is that , to press the numbers at the top of the keyboard you have to first hold down the shift button. So, for example, if I tried to write the number 1,234,567,890 US style it would come out   "   as&é"'(-è_çà   "  ... weird, no? While we're on the subject of numbers, I get confused in math sometimes. One big difference is that instead of decimals, they use commas. So five million, two hundred and sixty three thousand, seven hundred and twenty point seven six two (5,263,720.762) would be written 5263720,762 It kinda annoyed me when i first got here, not so much anymore, but I still think the US system (Apparently Indian too, because my friend from Bombay also talked about it) is a bit better. Another thing in math is that when multiplying , they don't always use the dot. ie: 5 times 4 written in the US (usually after you've taken your first algebra class) as: 5 (insert dot here) 4, would be written as 5 X 6 in France which confuses me when we're using variables, because if you have 4X times 5 =100 ,solve for X,it gets kinda crazy...4X(dot)5 =100 in the US might be 4X X 5 =100 in France.

 In English we've been learning about the US civil rights movement. I made a powerpoint on it because the teacher asked. I gave it on MLK day and I'm not sure the class understood everything, but it's all good.

Haiti (hi-ey-tea): Every one in France is really touched by the earthquake in Haiti. Although less, they still talk about the current situation, which, in case you've been ....I can't really think of a place where you wouldn't have heard about it... like on the ocean floor,  with no communication ...or something....anyway it's the worst natural disaster in a long time. The other night there was a telethon with a lot a famous French people, and there has been lots and lots of money donated.Haiti came up during a dinner conversation last week.  I've been thinking a lot about the rescue and we had a lively discussion about how countries prioritize rescuing their own citizens before others.  I got kind of defensive for a minute, I  said 'Of course a country will rescue their own citizens first.' . I don't know... What does it seem like from your prospective? Anyway,point is, if you haven't already donated...or if you want to donate more money, you should definitely click on the link on the right.

Burkas: The issue of the Burkas is a very hot topic these days.   I've kind of been  challenged in observing the debate and participating in one-on-one conversations. Yesterday I had a long conversation about the law in the works. Sarkozy along with lots of other people want to ban full cover burkas in public places. When I heard, I was rather amazed. How can the government be allowed to control what people wear? I understand that it's a really complicated issue, but I can't bring myself to think it's a good thing to do. People for the ban say that the women who wear them don't choose to. I sort of feel that it's the result of some people's fear of immigration and fear of Muslims in general, someone even told me that some people think that if they don't do something now, in a couple years, everybody in France would be Muslim and wearing burkas. That's seems rather extreme  if you ask me... I mean ...it would make it so, if a person wearing one walked on to a bus the driver would ask her to take it off, or she couldn't ride...that's discrimination, right? It's just really weird to me... I guess everyone has an opinion! I just feel like the burka ban would be forcing some people's opinions on to other people.  So ...I don't know all the facets of this issue, and might have some things wrong, so tell me what you think!

Well. I guess that's about it for now. I'll try to write again soon!

I hope everything is great with you!! Thanks for reading, if you have any questions, you should definitely send them, and I'll put them in. Don't be afraid to comment either!

a plus!(later)

P.S. Yesterday, me and France celebrated our 5 month anniversary.

Noel

Seeing as it's been a ridiculously long time since I've updated my blog, I figured I'd do several smaller posts about the last several weeks, so as not to have a 27 million word post.

So this is the part of the blog where I tell you about Christmas in France!

On Christmas eve I went back to Claude and Yzabel's house (my first home stay). They had some nifty decorations, including a live tree decorated with ornaments and such,(just like home). When I got there, Yzabel and Canelle were making Christmas treats, more specifically, a bûche de Noël. You may be wondering, 'What is a bûche de Noël?'. Don't worry, calm down, I'm gonna tell you. It's delicious is what it is. It's a thin cake, rolled up to make the shape of a log, and then smothered in chocolate goodness. Around Noel, all the small bakeries, and super markets sell them, but as with anything,it's best when it's homemade by Yzabel . After the chocolate covering, the cake goes into the fridge, and is then decorated with powderd sugar, plastic evergreens, and a little santa. Pretty much amazing.

So after helping a little with the cake, I went upstairs and skyped home. I of course missed my family a lot. But thanks to the miracle of the internets, I was able to see and talk with them . On Christmas eve my family always has a big party so I missed that a lot too .

After talking with my family I went back down stairs. My host aunt ,her son, and Claude's mother had arrived. We all sat in the living room, they drank champagne, and we talked and ate various appetizers(including fois gras) .

Afterwords we ate a huge dinner. The main dish was a chapon(an enormous chicken). For dessert we had some delicious Christmas log , and various candies, one of which included little noise makers, similar to booby trap fireworks.

I then went back upstairs and called my famdamily again. Around midnight, my host sister told me that they were opening gifts...I was slightly confused. When i got down stairs, there were about a hundred gifts under the tree. Apparently Papa Noël comes at midnight in France. Mel(their daughter, who's now in Missouri) was on video skype, and everybody sang along to "Petit Papa Noël" before starting to open presents.

[note: I asked around, and I guess they start opening the gifts at midnight on Christmas eve when the kids are old enough to think that santa's fake]

After heading up stairs around 3 AM ,( there was lots of new wii playing), I called my fam again, then went to bed.

Christmas day was just a day to relax around the house, hang out,play wii, skype my family and feel sad a lot...but, c'est normal .

It was nifty to be able to hang out with the Lalaus family during the holiday.

Well that's my Christmas!

P.S. : All the stores were very much into the spirit as far as decorations and what not, also most towns decorated with lots of lights and what not, including projections onto buildings.I saw video on the news of the festival of the lights in Lyon , it was awesome, they went all out with their projections onto buildings.




Time

When ever I wrote my last blog, I was just getting settled in with my new family, now, 5ish weeks have already passed! Time is so weird over here(for me). When I think that it has been 5 weeks since I moved in with my new family , it's hard to believe, I feel like it hasn't been that long. But at the same time , when I think of specific things that have happened the last couple of weeks, it feels like it's been ages...Sometimes when I think about the fact that I've only been here for four months, it's hard to believe, it feels more like a year has passed...but I don't know, it's not like time is dragging on , like in (insert most boring subject) class, I'm having a good time, it's not like the saying. Do you understand? If your confused, I see why, I don't really know what I'm talking about either! Point is, is that sometimes time throws me off.




I hope you had a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Eid, Joyous Kwanzaa, and are just doing well in general.

Thanks for reading, I'll have another post up soon, so check back!

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