Well yet another month comes to a blazingly fast end here in the countryside of France. When I think about it, the month of March seems to me more like the week of March. As it is getting closer and closer to the return date (and also my 18th birthday) the time seems to be sprinting, leaping forward even faster than it already was. There are times where this fact makes me really happy because I'll be able to go home, but other times it saddens me. There's a part of me, and its a huge part by the way that doesn't want to leave this life that I have worked so hard for, to leave all of the amazing and wonderful people here (bother exchangers and french), and just recently started to really be able to enjoy it to its fullest. I guess it just sucks that at the beginning I spent a lot of my time wanting to go home, and now that my time here, which used to seem that it would last forever is now severely limited. But anyway, enough for my sappy introduction, lets get on to what this blog is really about... what almost merits as a 'life' here in France.

Okay, so I guess the beginning of March started off pretty much like any other month, except for the fact that it started getting warmer. And when I say warmer I mean like before it was 20 degrees and now it is 45. So not really that much of a difference, but still its a nice change. So that means that there is finally no more snow here, and instead of having to wear the biggest scarf I have that its pretty much just a small blanket, I can now use a small scarf to keep myself from dying of hypothermia. Also the sun started rising at 6am in the morning here which I happen to like a lot because now its a lot easier to get up at the ungodly hour of 6 in the morning. Besides the weather I've kind of been doing what I normally do, aka going to school, having an enormous amount of fries/pizza/dessert/etc and then a coffee with les Anonnéens (other exchange students who also go to school in Annonay) and yeah, that's kind of my schedule now.

Except last week-end, there was an AFS week-end at the Anjou Chateau again, and it wasn't mandatory to go for the exchangers, but I went anyway because usually I have a good time with everyone even though some of the AFS people are strict. Considering that this weekend was mostly for the French people who are going to go on exchange this year with AFS, us exchangers didn't really have to do any stupid activities like we normally do and we were pretty much left to our own devices in a room with a few volunteers to make sure we didn't kill ourselves or something. So basically we did a variety of games together, my favorite being what was pretty much hide and seek in the dark. I had the perfect hiding spots the two times that we played, the first one being under a giant stack of chairs in a corner, and the other was hiding in the space that was created in between the shutters and the french doors. The last hiding place didn't work as planned because someone had to shine their phone light in my face from the other side of the window and scare the living daylights out of me and then therefore I was caught. The first night of the weekend we ate what I think was supposed to be Morroccan style, so that means  we were all seated on the floor in little groups and all ate out of the same bowl thingy with out right hand. It was a pretty positive experience that I'd definitely do again but at the same time I felt that it was too much effort just for eating. I don't know why but I've realized that in the US we are used to always being able to eat right away when we get our dish without having to do much work beyond cutting the meat or something, but here sometimes a lot of work is involved. Like peeling the shell off of a shrimp for example, which is really annoying and takes a lot of time. I guess old habits die hard.

During the night of the AFS weekend we of course all tried to have a powow in the room of someone.. this doesn't really sound that rebellious but considering how strict my AFS chapter can be, it totally was. We all waited for about thirty minutes before we started converging all in the same room. I was one of the first one's there and in about no time, there was like 20 people all in the room. It would've gone as planned to if everyone wasn't giggling so much which I guess the volunteers heard and then they came to the room and shepherded us all back to our rooms, I did, however make an attempt to try to not be caught by hiding under the bed but for some reason that made everyone laugh so I got caught. The second day of the weekend was kind of a repeat of the first day, except that I got woken up by some girls coming into my bedroom, singing the beatles and then jumping on me. So that was wonderful.

In school related news, I have finally started getting good grades in my subjects! If you're following my facebook you should already know that because I posted screen shots of the exams earlier today. Its not really my level of French that has been the cause of my bad grades until now, because I'd say that I could speak French proficiently starting around December, but really it was because of my lack of motivation really. Like I didn't even try to apply myself, but now or some reason I want to take notes and do my homework, so that's good I guess.

So that's basically all I have to say about this month of March... I'll be writing another post again before you know it!

Exchange is change. Rapid, brutal, beautiful, hurtful, colourful, amazing, unexpected, overwhelming and most of all constant change. Change in lifestyle, country, language, friends, parents, houses, school, simply everything.
Exchange is realizing that everything they told you beforehand is wrong, but also right in a way.
Exchange is going from thinking you know who you are, to having no idea who you are anymore to being someone new. But not entirely new. You are still the person you were before but you jumped into that ice cold lake. You know how it feels like to be on your own. Away from home, with no one you really know. And you find out that you can actually do it.
Exchange is thinking. All the time. About everything. Thinking about those strange costumes, the strange food, the strange language. About why you’re here and not back home. About how it’s going to be like once you come back home. How that girl is going to react when you see her again. About who’s hanging out where this weekend. At first who’s inviting you at all. And in the end where you’re supposed to go, when you’re invited to ten different things. About how everybody at home is doing. About how stupid this whole time-zone thing is. Not only because of home, but also because the tv ads for shows keep confusing you.
Thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong. About how stupid or rude you just were to someone without meaning to be. About the point of all this. About the sense of life. About who you want to be, what you want to do. And about when that English essay is due, even though you’re marks don’t count. About whether you should go home after school, or hang out at someone’s place until midnight. Someone you didn’t even know a few months ago. And about what the hell that guy just said.
Exchange is people. Those incredibly strange people, who look at you like you’re an alien. Those people who are too afraid to talk to you. And those people who actually talk to you. Those people who know your name, even though you have never met them. Those people, who tell you who to stay away from. Those people who talk about you behind your back, those people who make fun of your country. All those people, who aren’t worth your giving a damn. Those people you ignore.
And those people who invite you to their homes. Who keep you sane. Who become your friends.
Exchange is music. New music, weird music, cool music, music you will remember all your life as the soundtrack of your exchange. Music that will make you cry because all those lyrics express exactly how you feel, so far away. Music that will make you feel like you could take on the whole world. And it is music you make. With the most amazing musicians you’ve ever met. And it is site reading a thousand pages just to be part of the school band.
Exchange is uncomfortable. It’s feeling out of place, like a fifth wheel. It’s talking to people you don’t like. It’s trying to be nice all the time. It’s bugs.. and bears. It’s cold, freezing cold. It’s homesickness, it’s awkward silence and its feeling guilty because you didn’t talk to someone at home. Or feeling guilty because you missed something because you were talking on Skype.
Exchange is great. It’s feeling the connection between you and your host parents grow. It’s knowing in which cupboard the peanut butter is. It’s meeting people from all over the world. It’s having a place to stay in almost every country of the world.
It’s cooking food from your home country and not messing up. It’s seeing beautiful landscapes that you never knew existed.
Exchange is exchange students. The most amazing people in the whole wide world. Those people from everywhere who know exactly how you feel and those people who become your absolute best friends even though you only see most of them 3 or 4 times during your year. The people, who take almost an hour to say their final goodbyes to each other. Those people with the jackets full of pins. All over the world.
Exchange is falling in love with this amazing, wild, beautiful country. And with your home country.
Exchange is frustrating. Things you can’t do, things you don’t understand. Things you say, that mean the exact opposite of what you meant to say. Or even worse…
Exchange is understanding.
Exchange is unbelievable.
Exchange is not a year in your life. It’s a life in one year.
Exchange is nothing like you expected it to be, and everything you wanted it to be.
Exchange is the best year of your life so far. Without a doubt. And it’s also the worst. Without a doubt.
Exchange is something you will never forget, something that will always be a part of you. It is something no one back at home will ever truly understand.
Exchange is growing up, realizing that everybody is the same, no matter where they’re from. That there is great people and douche bags everywhere. And that it only depends on you how good or bad your day is going to be. Or the whole year.
And it is realizing that you can be on your own, that you are an independent person. Finally. And it’s trying to explain that to your parents.
Exchange is dancing in the rain for no reason, crying without a reason, laughing at the same time. It’s a turmoil of every emotion possible.
Exchange is everything. And exchange is something you can’t understand unless you’ve been through it !

Credit- Patricia from the Exchange Student page on Facebook. 

So I've decided to really just update my blog once a month now(ish) since my life here has kind of fallen into a pattern and not everything is new here so therefore there isn't much to write about. The exception would of course be if something exciting or out of the blue happened, then I might write about it. So since February is the shortest month of the year, there will obviously be much less to write about this time around.

I guess the month started like any other month meaning that I had to drag my butt out of bed at 6 in the morning and go to school. That is really one of two things that I absolutely hate about France.. I know its not France's fault in particular that I have to wake up at 6am (as I used to do the same back home a few years back) but the point is if I were back home, I could wake up at like 8, which is much more preferable to 6. The other thing I hate about France is that if Sundays weren't boring enough, France set out on a mission to make them even more boring than they already were. When I say this, I mean that absolutely everything (besides the bakery) is closed. And sorry, but the bakery isn't the same thing as the mall. Like apparently its French Law to have 99.9% of everything closed on Sundays... needless to say that law sucks. I miss things being open 24/7!

School this month was pretty good all in all, even considering the fact that I had the 3x 500 meter in gym class, (1,500 meters or 1.5km is almost a mile just by the way). The reasons that school this month was pretty good was because it happened to snow a lot this month so that meant I got one snow day, and at least two days off of gym because of the snow. (I also took a few days off of gym for myself because one time I was genuinely sick and the other time I forgot my clothes and said screw it) oh, and also because I only had like 3 full weeks of school this month because I now am on vacations. Thankfully I only have gym class here once a week, but even then its too much only because we had running. Running sucks, I don't know why anyone enjoys it... even though I only ran three times in gym this year I really dislike it. Like the first time I felt like I was going to die, the second time I almost threw up and the third time I'm pretty sure I was starting to have a heart attack the last 250m of the thingy. But I am proud to say that I ran an almost mile in 7:05 minutes, which happens to be really surprising. I guess its because I have 22 lbs less of blubber weighing me down.

I, for some reason have the feeling that I had already made a post about going to work at the bakery, but it isn't on the blog so maybe I'm thinking about something I wrote in my journal. Anyway, I went to the bakery! I woke up around 6am on a Saturday morning and then went with my host mom to the bakery and before I know it I was with all the other pastry chefs doing things, like bringing down racks of things to be sold and praying that I wouldn't drop them.. luckily the first few things I had brought down to the shop part of the bakery I didn't drop but of course life has to be a beach and I dropped some kind of cake thing but luckily only one person saw. For the rest of the day I rolled an endless amount of croissants and pain au chocolats.

So that's about it for February... I'll post soon!