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!
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!
Leave reply