Oh I don't even know what to say now! Okay... ummm let's just summarize the last few weeks, shall we?
I started doing a bit of work in school...
Hey I was in the news paper! That's Christophe, my host dad, me, and Coralline! It was for some town meeting or town review where you meet the mayor and review and celebrate all the accomplishments of the town.
I started Yoga! Starts 12:15pm on Wednesdays and so I have written permission to not go to my English class in order to go to Yoga! (Not really a problem since English is my language anyways!!!) However, just recently the English teacher has fallen ill ( :/ ) and supposedly will not be returning to work until September. What this means for my English class now... I don't know. The kids at school say there will be no more English but Christophe said he thinks the school will hire a new teacher. I think that Christophe's theory is more legit than the students' but I can keep hope.
I also started doing Tennis again! After school on Fridays starting at 5:30pm! I get excused from Sports about 10 or 15 minutes early so that Christophe can pick me up and then we go to Tennis! I am really improving too! In my class is one of Coralline's best friends, Solenn. She is really nice and smiley and fun to be around.
I also FINALLLY understood my first movie in French! It was a movie called Ma Première Fois. Very cute, romantic love story with a tragic, heartbreaking ending. Kind of like the Titanic or The Notebook! Definitely a must see if you are into movies like that! I watched it with Coralline and when we turned on the lights afterwards, we saw that we were both sobbing and had makeup dripping down our cheeks and under our eyes. Ahhh good memories!
Out of sheer excitement in finally understanding French TV, I found online Legally Blonde in French and watched that the next day too. Minded I had to take a cat nap half way through in order to keep going (watching TV in French I find is kind of like how it was back in November or December, you understand it but it gets tiring after awhile!) But there's something more exciting about watching a movie in French rather than in English when you can actually understand it. So I've taken to try watching movies I already know well in English, in French. Next movie is Titanic. I've seen in nearly a hundred times and am disappointed to admit, although it is always a heartbreaking ending, I've been watching it for as long as I can remember and I just can't get myself to cry in this movie any more. According to my friend though, it's even more heartbreaking in French. Alors, I will watch it in French with the goal of crying!
TV is grossly improving though. As are my language skills. I've noticed that I'm starting to understand things without even thinking about it! But that doesn't mean everything to those French people out there... I still have more vocabulary to learn :P
Last week I went to my friend, Anna's house for the weekend! It was so nice to see her! She had just turned 19 years old and so I was there with another girl from New York State, Grace! We walked through her neighbour town, Roscoff and I got some really pretty pictures!
Then we went into Brest to see the movie, Les Misérables. Such an incredible beautiful movie and story. The ultimate story of love in every shape and form. Not only were the singing performances spectacular but the acting was some of the best acting that I have seen in awhile. Anna Hathaway who plays Fantine definitely deserves an Oscar for her song "I Had A Dream." Les Mis is a must see.
After the movie, the three of us were pooped! And so we all clonked out on Anna's bed for a cat nap and stayed that way until guests arrived for Anna's birthday dinner! (It was both of her host families and a friend from school. I just loved Anna's families! They were all so so so sweet and caring and encouraged Grace and I to come back and visit them! I might have to take them up on their offer, I miss Anna already! Thank goodness she only lives in California. It's far but doable!) I left Anna's the next day around 12 and was home in time for lunch at 1! It was a really nice weekend!
Grace is on the left, Anna in the middle and I am on the right:
Did I mention that the German student at my school, Maik, left? Apparently he got sent home for doing graffiti and skipping too much school. Lais and I decided that the school is now becoming survival of the exchange students. Goodbye Maik.
On the brighter side of exchange students, I started talking to some people from New Zealand who will be coming here just after the vacations! They all seem really nice and I'm excited to meet them! There is also another Canadian who has arrived at school! A boy from a small town in Ontario (then again if you're not from a big city (or a small town close to a big city like me...) then everyone is from a small town in Canada! He's nice but a little homesick. He'll settle in eventually though.
Last week was the last week of school before vacations!! WOO HOO!! To kick off vacations, Christophe took Coralline and I to a chorale and Jazz band mini concert in a small bar in Lannion. It was nice and fun to see adults going up on stage and having fun performing.
It was also nice to eat my Bon Vacances candy flower and watch Coralline sing the choir songs with it as a microphone :D (Okay these pictures aren't great... I know, but I'm feeling too lazy to bother editing them for the moment).
And then, another great weekend kickoff! I had a friend sleep over last night. Laetitia! It was a lot of fun! We talked boys, showed eachother cute boys, then compared cute boys in Canada to cute boys in France! She showed me this website where you can take photo booth pictures online! Here is our picture but I can't figure out how to save it :/
Then it snowed!!!! So casually and quite normally I would say too, Coralline and I ran outside and stood there not doing much but just enjoying watching it fall around us! Laetitia took pictures from indoors! The snow didn't stick until morning though :(
Next week I start my bus trip to Barcelona!!!! I'm so excited! I know of one friend on my bus, Amit from India! There are some other people from my district too but I don't talk with them so much... yet!
We will start off the day in Paris and I will FINALLY get to climb the Eiffel Tower!!!! :D We will also see the Louvre again and then I will go to Versailles and see the castle there! (EEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!!!) I want to see all the Marie Antoinette stuff because I remember seeing a movie about her and then studying her a few months later in school! I know more about her and King Louis XIV than any other royalty (apart from the modern Royal family- Will and Kate, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, King George a little... all of them). In Barcelona we will see Museams galore!!! Afterwards, Christophe will pick me up in Paris and we will visit family members and see the Musée d'Orsay! I am very excited for that! We will also meet one of the brothers, Roman I think, and then come home to finish the vacations!
I will try to blog my voyage daily like I did with Paris but I'm not sure if I will be able to... if the bus trip is anything like a Rotary weekend, there won't be any internet nor will there be much avaliable time (I get car sick so maybe blogging on the Bus isn't a good idea).
To finish things off... I finished my series- How I Met Your Mother. Well, it's not finished yet but I believe I could be in my last season and I've caught up with the episodes :( I'm going to miss that show. A lot. I guess it's time to move on though. I've still got Pretty Little Liars, and Community. They aren't the same as HIMYM though. Gosh why does the story have to end after 8 years?!
OH! I got my plane ticket home. This is important to blog about.
July 16th is when I leave Paris and July 16th, at 8:30pm is when my plane lands in Vancouver. It occurred to me, that is when my exchange is over.
I have a friend who did an exchange once. She told me that when she had arrived back in her home airport, she sat down, with her bags, on a bench in the airport for an hour and cried before she went to look for her family. I didn't understand why before but after looking at the time of arrival on my plane ticket... I get it:
The second that I walk out of those doors in the Vancouver Airport, after my year abroad, my exchange in France is officially finished forever, and then what's changed? Nothing. I'll be back home on summer vacation just like before I left, and my life in France will be over forever; no more French friends, no more French families, no more French language, no more French bread and cheese, no more Lais or other exchange friends... it will be over and finished forever. And I probably won't see most of those friends again anyway. And at that point it will be 21 months of my life, that was devoted to this exchange, my childhood dream, that's become a memory. 10 months of planning for an 11 month exchange, and then it's just over and gone. Kind of a bummer :/ But I guess it's only the type of bummer (pour mes amis françaises, un "bummer" est une chose mauvais ou décevants ou dérangeant.... mais je ne sais pas s'il y a un mot direct en français ou pas).
But it made me realize just how special this opportunity is to me and how lucky I am. I have to grasp every moment and every opportunity, with my friends, family, experiences, I don't have time to waste here... I've got a lifetime of memories to make. And on that note, what am I doing on a Sunday night? Sitting blogging....
Later world!
PS: Oh and for everyone going to the airport to pick me up in Canada... I expect nothing less than this welcome below:
Here are some classic exchange memes (from a Canadian) to lighten the ending of this blog even more ;)
(Actually... I think I will start a tumblre blog just for my memes... come back here in a couple days for the link, okay? Okay!
