It's vacation! I hope everyone is thoroughly enjoying these two weeks, relaxing and eating good food and not stressing about junior year finals (or whatever else it is that you stress about). Sophomore year was so stressful for me that I can only imagine what my junior friends must be enduring, so I really hope you are taking this break to rejuvenate and spend time with family and friends and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas on TV. Personally, I am doing alright at not stressing too much about school and trying instead to explore this beautiful country, but I do get depressed when I don't feel on top of things and even more depressed when I feel like my teachers are not impressed with me so I tried to make the last week of school count. I took notes for the entire 3 hours of economics on wednesday and I wrote a 3 page essay about an excerpt from a love letter by Denis Diderot (which I didn't turn in because she told us to turn it in on friday but we don't have french class on fridays so I was confused--but still, I did write it). Now that it is the second week of vacation I will start studying for the tests awaiting me when the holidays end, but I have successfully not thought about school since a man came into my history class on friday and said the buses weren't working because of snow so we could all go home.
That snow that showed up on friday kept on falling well into saturday and left us with 35 centimeters total. 35 centimeters is enough to leave our little village completely blocked off from the rest of the world. And it means that when the sun comes out on Sunday, the only thing to do after a big family lunch is have a giant snowball fight and go sledding and begin building a snowman (but stopping after you realize your hands are getting frostbite due to lack of gloves). I am definitely still digging this snow thing.
After the snow melted a bit, Alice and I hopped on the train for Paris. We got there tuesday at lunch time and spent a little while wandering the streets before we took the next train to her uncle's house which is just an hour outside the city. Then on wednesday, Disneyland!! A full day of waiting in lines (slightly less long than in Florida but still long) and riding roller coasters and eating gross mexican food and running around looking for mickey, who we never found. It was fun. And at the end, when the rain came, the lines shortened down to five minutes so we did our favorite rides again. It was fun. A good taste of the American lifestyle, but with crepe stands instead of dip'n'dots. We went back to the streets of Paris on thursday for a couple hours and then sprinted to catch our train home. Which apparently, every other citizen of Paris did as well. I was stuck standing in the entry way of the train with 32 other people for two and a half hours, and Alice was in a different compartment doing the same thing. That was maybe the low point of my vacation so far.
And then, finally, it was Christmas Eve. That's where the holidays start to become bittersweet. I have been having a great time, and I am so happy to be here. But there is a big part of me that wanted to be home. I miss the caroling and making christmas cookies and bonfires and stockings (no stockings in France) and waffles on christmas morning and party weekend in St. Petersburg and all of the holiday traditions in which I have participated every year since birth. And I'd been feeling this more and more in the week before the holidays and then as they began, but on Christmas Eve I really felt it. It's hard to be away from family so long. And it's hard to be without them at the time of year with so many traditions that you have never missed before. But it was also exciting to see how the holidays are celebrated here. Fun to compare cultural traditions.
Christmas Eve was giant family meal number one. It was dinner and we went over to Lucie and Romain (older host sister + husband)'s house. Romain's family all came over too so there were many people I didn't know which was a bit overwhelming. I helped out setting the table and serving appetizers in order to feel more comfortable and not just sit awkwardly with a bunch of strangers. Being a part of the production put me a little more at ease. The meal was incredible. First appetizers, little pieces of bread with toppings, and champagne. Then foie gras with jam and bread. I didn't love the foie gras, but that may be because I made the mistake of asking how it was and getting a very graphic answer. After the foie gras we had lobster with a special sauce and that I liked. The next course was coq au vin (rooster cooked in wine), belle peppers stuffed with rice, and gratin, a dish with lots potatoes and cheese and cream. The coq au vin was really delicious. Then came the cheese and salad. Then finally, dessert, the traditional buche de noel. We were still at the table at 11:30 at night. Part of the length, though, was due to a visit from Santa Clause in between the lobster and the coq au vin. He came in the front door and everyone sang a song to welcome him. He handed out two bags full of presents for the younger children and then everyone sang again and he left. It was a big production. I wish I knew the song! We got home at about 1:30 in the morning, and as I had been falling asleep since before the dessert came out, I pretty much collapsed in to bed on arrival.
And yesterday, Christmas! First all the siblings and their children came over for present unwrapping (the pile was demolished in about 15 minutes). Then we went over to the grandparents' house for a big lunch (foie gras again, salmon, vegetable puree and lamb chops, cheese and salad, and buche de noel) and more presents for the kids (that makes 3 rounds of present opening for the young ones). We stayed there all afternoon arguing over what movie to watch on TV and playing trivial pursuit. We also played a card game, and I participated but had no idea what was going on in the game. Apparently our team one, and apparently I helped, but I was really lost. We stayed for dinner and then returned back home. After skype-ing with my family for a little while, Alice and I watched 500 Days of Summer and one episode of Friends, and then finally fell asleep.
It was nice, Christmas. It's fun seeing everyone's reactions when they open up their presents and the food was really amazing. I did have a really good time. I miss home, I miss christmas in Florida and seeing all of my family and Florida friends, but it was nice. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to everyone back home, hope it was amazing. I would love to hear all about it!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Still Good, But...
The last few weeks have been some of my best socially. I am finally feeling a bit more comfortable with my peers. I almost feel like a real member of the group, not just a tag-along. Good days have been frequent, and I have learned not to take good days for granted so that makes them even better. But every now and then a bad day comes up. A day where I feel completely lost and confused. Those days come out of nowhere and leave me wondering why I feel like crying if things have been going so well. I did some reflecting, and I think I understand why.
Coming to France for me was really like starting over again. No one here knows me. No one knows what I was like before. My first day of school, someone offered me a cigarette and wouldn't have been shocked if I accepted. Back home no one would offer because they know I would refuse. I knew who I was in California, and I had a whole lot of people around me to support what I knew. And so I was comfortable and I didn't doubt myself very often. I wasn't very self conscious; I had finally gotten past that phase. But now no one knows me. And as a result I sometimes stop knowing myself. I remember sixth grade, a year where I was so self conscious and so timid in everything I did. I hadn't yet figured out who I was. And then throughout seventh and eighth grade I gained confidence and stopped worrying. Coming to France was like being shot back to sixth grade, except now with a new language on top of everything. I have learned a lot about myself in these last three months and my confidence is slowly coming back. But there are still days where I doubt myself and every decision I make or have made. Like I don't trust myself to be the same person. I think I am the same person. After trying out a lot of new things and living differently for a little while, I realize that I eventually make the same decisions I would have made in California. I do know myself and what I need, but coming to a place where no one knows me, it is easy to wonder if everything I know is wrong. Things I'm learning about myself may not be all that different from the things I learned in sixth grade, but they need to be learned again. And there are days when that gets hard.
Thursday was a bad day. Thursday was a lost and confused day where I wished my mom could be here and reassure me that I was smart and am going in the right direction. But Friday picked me back up and put me back on track. Friday was a good day, where I stopped feeling self conscious and just enjoyed talking to people and living my life. Before, the bad days were more like bad weeks. Now just a day here and there. So that means I'm really doing better. I am making friends, and I have never been so appreciative to have friends, so each friendship feels so so amazing. I think I am on the right track and moving in the right direction, there are just moments where I forget that.
Yesterday (Saturday) was also great because I spent it in Paris! It wasn't an extended stay, but it was great all the same. Alice and I just zipped over with enough time to drink a coffee, eat a crepe, and buy a New Year's Eve dress and we were back in time for dinner. It actually didn't feel tight or cramped, just a nice day enjoying the city. I think we are going to try and return for a few days over the holidays (just one more week of school!), which will be nice because we will be able to see the city at night with all the decorations and lights for Christmas. But this time it was just a quick stop over. Nice to breath the Paris air and walk the Paris streets. Then I spent the night watching the Lion King in bed with a cup of tea. Need to rest and make this last week of school count before the crazy holiday season.
Miss everyone. With the holidays coming up I am thinking a lot about being in Florida singing carols with the family and making christmas cookies and bonfires. Please take pictures of your lives and show them to me somehow! I will do the same. Lots of love. A la prochaine.
Coming to France for me was really like starting over again. No one here knows me. No one knows what I was like before. My first day of school, someone offered me a cigarette and wouldn't have been shocked if I accepted. Back home no one would offer because they know I would refuse. I knew who I was in California, and I had a whole lot of people around me to support what I knew. And so I was comfortable and I didn't doubt myself very often. I wasn't very self conscious; I had finally gotten past that phase. But now no one knows me. And as a result I sometimes stop knowing myself. I remember sixth grade, a year where I was so self conscious and so timid in everything I did. I hadn't yet figured out who I was. And then throughout seventh and eighth grade I gained confidence and stopped worrying. Coming to France was like being shot back to sixth grade, except now with a new language on top of everything. I have learned a lot about myself in these last three months and my confidence is slowly coming back. But there are still days where I doubt myself and every decision I make or have made. Like I don't trust myself to be the same person. I think I am the same person. After trying out a lot of new things and living differently for a little while, I realize that I eventually make the same decisions I would have made in California. I do know myself and what I need, but coming to a place where no one knows me, it is easy to wonder if everything I know is wrong. Things I'm learning about myself may not be all that different from the things I learned in sixth grade, but they need to be learned again. And there are days when that gets hard.
Thursday was a bad day. Thursday was a lost and confused day where I wished my mom could be here and reassure me that I was smart and am going in the right direction. But Friday picked me back up and put me back on track. Friday was a good day, where I stopped feeling self conscious and just enjoyed talking to people and living my life. Before, the bad days were more like bad weeks. Now just a day here and there. So that means I'm really doing better. I am making friends, and I have never been so appreciative to have friends, so each friendship feels so so amazing. I think I am on the right track and moving in the right direction, there are just moments where I forget that.
Yesterday (Saturday) was also great because I spent it in Paris! It wasn't an extended stay, but it was great all the same. Alice and I just zipped over with enough time to drink a coffee, eat a crepe, and buy a New Year's Eve dress and we were back in time for dinner. It actually didn't feel tight or cramped, just a nice day enjoying the city. I think we are going to try and return for a few days over the holidays (just one more week of school!), which will be nice because we will be able to see the city at night with all the decorations and lights for Christmas. But this time it was just a quick stop over. Nice to breath the Paris air and walk the Paris streets. Then I spent the night watching the Lion King in bed with a cup of tea. Need to rest and make this last week of school count before the crazy holiday season.
Miss everyone. With the holidays coming up I am thinking a lot about being in Florida singing carols with the family and making christmas cookies and bonfires. Please take pictures of your lives and show them to me somehow! I will do the same. Lots of love. A la prochaine.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Harry Potter, Thanksgiving, and Snow!
First of all, sorry. I didn't update my blog last week because I am a terrible person. The weekend was busy and then the week was busy and then it was Thursday and I thought I might as well just wait for the next Sunday. But I hope that means that this post will be more interesting because it covers two weeks instead of one.
So I did see Harry Potter, and it was dubbed in French. Some of the voices were fitting but some, like Hermione's, were just weird. I'm sad to have missed seeing the premier at midnight with the right voices and everyone dressed up and crazy but I suppose I'll just have to be satisfied with Part 2. It was fun though, and I did like the movie. I thought it was true to the book. And they didn't leave that much out. I thought the acting was fantastic; it looked like people really put their hearts into it. The group of people I went with took up about two rows which was fun as well. I think we might have been annoying at times for other people but that's okay. I did not see it in 3D but the only thing I saw that was definitely meant for 3D was the snake, and that was scary enough as it is. When the snake jumped out at Godric's Hollow I practically jumped out of my seat. What did you all think of the movie? Over all I think they are getting better and better at representing the books.
The day after Harry Potter was thursday and therefore Thanksgiving, but every thursday I have school from 8:30 until 6PM so that doesn't leave much time to cook a huge feast. I pushed my Thanksgiving to saturday. I was incredibly daunted to try and cook a whole Thanksgiving dinner on my own, but I didn't feel rushed or worried at all. It was fun to cook all day. My host mother helped a lot with the meat (we didn't find a whole turkey but we had a few large turkey legs in addition to a whole chicken) and the stuffing which was great but otherwise I did everything, starting at about 9AM with the pumpkin and apple pies. There were times where I had to get creative, like soaking dried cranberries in water for a few hours to get them to inflate because fresh cranberries don't exist in France, but things mostly went as planned. My only moment of panic was came when I saw the inside of the sweet potatoes I had bought were not orange and freaked out thinking they were just regular potatoes, but that was solved by a simple taste test that affirmed their sweetness. The full menu was turkey/chicken, cooked mixed vegetables, hot spiced cider, a really good beat dish that I'd made once before, stuffing, sweet potato biscuits, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. I invited a few of my closest friends over for dinner. We all got dressed up and it was really nice. Then after the meal, Alice and I invited a bunch more people over for a party, which was fun too. I ended up having a great Thanksgiving.
Not too long ago I talked about meeting my first real Autumn with all the changing leaves and such. Well, Autumn is gone and Winter has come storming in. That means....Snow Days!! At this rate, with strikes and blocking the school and now snow, no one will learn anything and we will all fail our tests and have to repeat the year. But that's okay because I got to go sledding instead of sitting through economics and history. Okay, yes, I have seen snow before, and I've gone sledding before, and I have had snowball fights and hot chocolate and all that. But it's different. It's different when you see the snow falling from your classroom window. It's different when you go to sleep to fields of green and wake up with everything blanketed in white. It's magic. And also cold. Thursday was our first snow day and I didn't take advantage of it because I was exhausted but I luckily got another shot Friday. We actually went to the school Friday but didn't go to any classes because there were no students in class and some teachers were missing too (schools don't close hear because of snow, it's just that the buses stop working and no one shows up). It was nice, we just got to see our friends and walk around the town looking for a place that sells sleds. Then around 4:00 ish we walked over to a huge hill by one girls house and took turns sledding and taking pictures. I was kind of looking at this winter as a test to see if I could really handle going to college in a place where it snows, and the answer is definitely yes. Snow is amazing. You just can't forget the long underwear.
Things have been going well the last few weeks. I feel like I'm connecting with people more and I'm starting to understand my classes (which my teachers make sure everyone else knows, which is embarrassing). I'm still too quiet and shy with many people, especially the attractive boy-type people, but I think I'm making progress. Gonna keep trying to make some more.
Love you and miss you all!
So I did see Harry Potter, and it was dubbed in French. Some of the voices were fitting but some, like Hermione's, were just weird. I'm sad to have missed seeing the premier at midnight with the right voices and everyone dressed up and crazy but I suppose I'll just have to be satisfied with Part 2. It was fun though, and I did like the movie. I thought it was true to the book. And they didn't leave that much out. I thought the acting was fantastic; it looked like people really put their hearts into it. The group of people I went with took up about two rows which was fun as well. I think we might have been annoying at times for other people but that's okay. I did not see it in 3D but the only thing I saw that was definitely meant for 3D was the snake, and that was scary enough as it is. When the snake jumped out at Godric's Hollow I practically jumped out of my seat. What did you all think of the movie? Over all I think they are getting better and better at representing the books.
The day after Harry Potter was thursday and therefore Thanksgiving, but every thursday I have school from 8:30 until 6PM so that doesn't leave much time to cook a huge feast. I pushed my Thanksgiving to saturday. I was incredibly daunted to try and cook a whole Thanksgiving dinner on my own, but I didn't feel rushed or worried at all. It was fun to cook all day. My host mother helped a lot with the meat (we didn't find a whole turkey but we had a few large turkey legs in addition to a whole chicken) and the stuffing which was great but otherwise I did everything, starting at about 9AM with the pumpkin and apple pies. There were times where I had to get creative, like soaking dried cranberries in water for a few hours to get them to inflate because fresh cranberries don't exist in France, but things mostly went as planned. My only moment of panic was came when I saw the inside of the sweet potatoes I had bought were not orange and freaked out thinking they were just regular potatoes, but that was solved by a simple taste test that affirmed their sweetness. The full menu was turkey/chicken, cooked mixed vegetables, hot spiced cider, a really good beat dish that I'd made once before, stuffing, sweet potato biscuits, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. I invited a few of my closest friends over for dinner. We all got dressed up and it was really nice. Then after the meal, Alice and I invited a bunch more people over for a party, which was fun too. I ended up having a great Thanksgiving.
Not too long ago I talked about meeting my first real Autumn with all the changing leaves and such. Well, Autumn is gone and Winter has come storming in. That means....Snow Days!! At this rate, with strikes and blocking the school and now snow, no one will learn anything and we will all fail our tests and have to repeat the year. But that's okay because I got to go sledding instead of sitting through economics and history. Okay, yes, I have seen snow before, and I've gone sledding before, and I have had snowball fights and hot chocolate and all that. But it's different. It's different when you see the snow falling from your classroom window. It's different when you go to sleep to fields of green and wake up with everything blanketed in white. It's magic. And also cold. Thursday was our first snow day and I didn't take advantage of it because I was exhausted but I luckily got another shot Friday. We actually went to the school Friday but didn't go to any classes because there were no students in class and some teachers were missing too (schools don't close hear because of snow, it's just that the buses stop working and no one shows up). It was nice, we just got to see our friends and walk around the town looking for a place that sells sleds. Then around 4:00 ish we walked over to a huge hill by one girls house and took turns sledding and taking pictures. I was kind of looking at this winter as a test to see if I could really handle going to college in a place where it snows, and the answer is definitely yes. Snow is amazing. You just can't forget the long underwear.
Things have been going well the last few weeks. I feel like I'm connecting with people more and I'm starting to understand my classes (which my teachers make sure everyone else knows, which is embarrassing). I'm still too quiet and shy with many people, especially the attractive boy-type people, but I think I'm making progress. Gonna keep trying to make some more.
Love you and miss you all!
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