Well I'm writing this now because I won't have Internet starting around 9pm tonight for about a week... not like I've been updating anyways. i'm so horrible at keeping this blog! ;o Anyways, so there were a few Rotary functions - one was this movie about pink flamingos and their predators. That was in mid/late November - honestly the first thing I fell asleep at within Rotary, but my counsellor fell asleep in it along with about half the cinema so it seems I went unnoticed. Not like that finances' report from May long weekend orientation... I still haven't lived that one down, I swear. Ironically I NEARLY fell asleep in a Rotary meeting... for the half-hour finances report. Me and money only work together when I'm receiving and spending it. So that was on a Wednesday. No meeting Thursday. A "party" Friday. Now, on Wednesday, I got dressed up because i knew we were seeing a movie but didn't know what. I had my blazer on and my best pair of jeans (since it's troublesome to get my black pants out, or grey slacks, and I was thinking movie like James Bond, which was still out here in theatres then). When I go there and run into one of the Mexican students, she's wearing one of those gangster-style winter jackets and baggy jeans. I still dressed up some for this other party on a Friday in mid-November (I think it was the 21st), I put on the same jeans but put on my boots... my shirt wasn't as dressy, just my normal grey and black striped thing that goes over any other tshirt. This time it was a black tshirt with this griffin-ish design and under that was my purple tank top just for colour. I didnt realize I was playing dress-up for an hour. My counsellor's wife pretty much changed everything except for the black shirt and purple tank top... and other necessities. She even gave me nylons. The French share just about everything, I've come to realize. That one... ok, I fall asleep in an hour and a half movie that had some action, yet I'm wide awake for an hour long lecture with one guy droning on about la peine de mort (capital punishment, literally 'the pain of death'. Good description) and Marie Antoinette. I actually counted, it was exactly an hour, maybe about 2 minutes more. I wasnt paying attention though, not entirely, so I didn't catch everything. I was determined to not have another finances-report-incident; it came close once or twice but never happened thank goodness! Now December. Not much, really. The weekend before vacation starts (not yesterday and the day before, the weekend before), I went to Nantes with my host family. We went my host brother's and his girlfriend's place (he doesn't live with us) in the evening of Saturday and saw Nantes "by night". We were out for about 4 or 5 hours - we got in around 1am. Sunday we went to the marche de noel (put a colon flipped overtop the E so it looks like .. overtop the 'e', the HTML isnt liked on this site when I write it. That literally means "Walk of Christmas" but it sounds better in French) when they were all open, in the middle of the day. One was open at night. The marche de noel (a hat over the first "e" isn't liked. They're the French version of a pancake. Literally 'pancake') or chi-chis (all I can say to describe them is a big stick of a special bread with sugar and if you want Nutella to stick them into. Ill get a picture of that later when the chichi stand in town is open when I'm there).
Nantes is the big city in the district. There is always at least 3 students in the city because there are about 2 or 3 clubs. I don't know where everyone lives exactly - all I remembered was Greg living there, and he's from New Zealand so he's leaving in about a week (January 7th to be exact). Anyone else I didn't know.
It's a big city so I thought it would be rather amusing to run into a Rotary student I knew out of the 1000s of people in the city.
First marche de noel I go to is in the middle of a big plaza. Plazas in France are always full of performers or artists. The night before there was a guitarist. During the day, same guitarist was there and an artist was there too, with his dog, painting an awesome mural. Have a picture of it too, not fully finished but close.
An activist group was setting up a stand next to this art thing. They had pins, so I was curious. When I looked at the pamphlets, I saw it was a vegan group ("stop murdering animals", "you're doing wrong..." that's what the cover of their free pamplet actually says when translated, "you're doing wrong"). In the group of people I swore I recognized a face, but this girl had a fluffy hood and a kind of small head so I couldn't see her face clearly. She was standing behind the pins so I just went up and looked at them. She said something in French, I looked up...
Ever seen those movies where it's a whole cheesy two people knew each other years ago and havent seen each other since? They do that whole lean back slightly, looking at the person, then lean closer and squint, then a look of shock and they're like "*insert name*" in a shocked tone?
We did that. Minus the name thing (kind of blanked at the moment). We actually mirrored each other, doing the exact same thing.
She's the Rotary student from Sweden. I forgot she lived in Nantes. I don't even have her business card though... or I do and lost it somewhere. If I had that, I would've contacted her and asked if she was free because she's pretty cool. Realy fluent in English too.
We caught up there, all in English... of course it kind of broke into some French when my host sister came over, then host mom... it was sad because as soon as I had to go into French I had so much difficulty saying "She's a Rotary exchange student too, from Sweden". I got over the problems of explaining exchange student and where from back in October - you get used to it after all.
So yeah, I ran into a student I knew on my last day in Nantes. I mused it and then it happened...
Well, I'm finally leaving this host family.
Note I say 'finally'.
Things haven't gone well with this family... even Steph said if she was in my position she would've been worse (like, more of a bitch or something) and requested a switch. Mom reminded her that she's also still in English so she wouldn't have had much trouble. I should've requested a switch, honestly, but I never did because I just figured it would get better the harder I tried. It did a bit but it dropped on certain days.
They treat me like I'm 5. Like, to the extent of language and knowledge of culture yes, I'm like a 5 year old but my host dad actually spoke to me like I was as ignorent as a 5 year old, they talked about me behind my back and never confronted me with the problems they were seeing... they kept comparing me to this Australian student. I do have an Aussie guy coming in January to my club but I didn't know his name so when they kept saying "Matthew" and "Australia" I assumed it was him, but they talked about him like they've lived with him... I found out before leaving for Nantes he was here LAST year. My current family hosted him before me.
So they constantly compared me to Matthew, put him on a pedestal, insulting me a few times by doing so...
You can't compare exchange students, that's kind of a given - different nationalities means different cultures, which have different priorities, ideals, etc.
My host mom and I had a big fight that resulted in my locking myself in the bathroom for half an hour... after which we FINALLY went over every miscommunication. That was two days before leaving for Nantes.
They kept saying I had to be more adult and stuff, but as I finally grew more to do that they started to baby me. One day they're nice, the next they're really rude to me. It made no sense. It MAKES no sense.
Basically it was a real learning experience that even the phrase "trial and error" is an understatement for this time.
The next family has two younger girls and one older son. The other son is in Oregon on Rotary exchange and is 9 months older than me, so same age there. I stayed a night at their place and besides my host mom being REALLY touchy-feely (she would touch my arm and face every 5 minutes, i kept count at one point. She's like that with her family though, but more like every half hour. When I say really touchy feely... I woke up to her hand on my face. Seriously. That was just plain scary, I'm sorry), but she's really nice! My current host mom is a real nag (she actually lectured my host sister's friend when he said no thanks to a chocolate offered, saying he had to take one because its impolite to turn down food... well she's done that to me once or twice, to Charlotte, her husband... I should've realized she's strong willed enough to do it to people who she barely knows).
It'll be a nice change basically. I leave in about an hour or two.
Oh, like I say, no Internet. Something about it's not working or they don't have it yet... from what I understood, they have a technician coming into their place on the 29th for the Internet and they'll have Internet then. So I can connect around New Years. But since it's winter vacation there isn't much going on so I probably won't update for some time... not a month and a half again, but like, 2 weeks? 3 at most.
Oh yea! Last thing before pictures.
France is known to have student strikes. Bertille actually said they're best to be away from though. After watching the news... it's enough to scare an exchange student to not go, they CAN get really violent! The police were at this one with these huge shields that're clear (see through, like plastic but more durable), and the students were throwing rocks and pipe bombs (lit bombs) at them, some of the marching with signs... wow.
I went anyways. It started on the Tuesday last week and was supposed to go til Friday, but it actually went til Thursday, the 'manifestation' day that was apparently scheduled around the country. Friday we had school... that kind of sucked, we had to go on the last day. We didnt do much. English class was fun for me because my teacher handed out information on how Christmas is celebrated in Canada and a map that she got me to show the class where I'm from, she then got everyone to write questions in English to ask me (about tradition stuffs in Canada). I then had to ask questions in French about Christmas.
They do not use candles here by the way. It's all lights. They're MUCH bigger on Christmas lights outside than Canada or the States! Entire villages are lit up, it's so cool. I went to Nantes just to see the lights, which were amazing.
Ok, anyways, then we watched Merry Christmas Mr. Bean. I haven't seen that in so long! It was hilarious as usual... stopped before Bean goes in to get the engagement ring his girlfriend pointed at in the window and he comes out with only the box. She also handed out chocolate things for everyone. Best class ever.
Anyways, so student strike... freezing cold. People were smoking twice as much because it apparently warms you up, so as if the air wasn't bad enough with the wind, you know? (well, before I couldn't breathe around the smoke, I hated it that much. Now I can live with it. I actualy have to live with it, my host parents are chain smokers. My host brother at my next place smokes, I believe, but I didnt see the parents doing it at least. My clothes are forever tainted with smoke, some actually stink that bad of secondhand smoke). All we did was hang around outside - the most action we got was the police coming and trying to take away more of the metal barriers we used to block every entrance. Everyone was going to Lidl's, the grocery store a 5 minute walk away from the lycée just to warm up and buy food. I bought a ton of chocolate and a 1,5 litre of Fanta and shared it with everyone. I found it's kind of hard to buy warm drinks pre-warm from grocery stores, so pop worked. It was weird because... this is the only grocery store that puts their pop under the heaters. But because of that I found it was so cold outside that after 4 or so hours the pop was cold like it came out of a fridge just from the air. It got freezing cold by about 4pm (the buses arrive at 6pm - I was there from 7:45am til 6:15pm). I'm surprised ice didn't form in there.
So yea, it was actually really boring. I was kind of hoping for some scary action. Just to watch as I'm walking away towards the supermarket 20 minutes (walking) down the slight incline of a hill of course.
The supermarket with the espace culturel and search for a DVD (American films have original version English as well as French. I can apparently change region codes on my laptop but either way I watch them on my laptop this way) and a CD I've been wanting to get since its release in May.
So that's all for the past month... not too much really.
...
PICTURE TIME!
Nantes is the big city in the district. There is always at least 3 students in the city because there are about 2 or 3 clubs. I don't know where everyone lives exactly - all I remembered was Greg living there, and he's from New Zealand so he's leaving in about a week (January 7th to be exact). Anyone else I didn't know.
It's a big city so I thought it would be rather amusing to run into a Rotary student I knew out of the 1000s of people in the city.
First marche de noel I go to is in the middle of a big plaza. Plazas in France are always full of performers or artists. The night before there was a guitarist. During the day, same guitarist was there and an artist was there too, with his dog, painting an awesome mural. Have a picture of it too, not fully finished but close.
An activist group was setting up a stand next to this art thing. They had pins, so I was curious. When I looked at the pamphlets, I saw it was a vegan group ("stop murdering animals", "you're doing wrong..." that's what the cover of their free pamplet actually says when translated, "you're doing wrong"). In the group of people I swore I recognized a face, but this girl had a fluffy hood and a kind of small head so I couldn't see her face clearly. She was standing behind the pins so I just went up and looked at them. She said something in French, I looked up...
Ever seen those movies where it's a whole cheesy two people knew each other years ago and havent seen each other since? They do that whole lean back slightly, looking at the person, then lean closer and squint, then a look of shock and they're like "*insert name*" in a shocked tone?
We did that. Minus the name thing (kind of blanked at the moment). We actually mirrored each other, doing the exact same thing.
She's the Rotary student from Sweden. I forgot she lived in Nantes. I don't even have her business card though... or I do and lost it somewhere. If I had that, I would've contacted her and asked if she was free because she's pretty cool. Realy fluent in English too.
We caught up there, all in English... of course it kind of broke into some French when my host sister came over, then host mom... it was sad because as soon as I had to go into French I had so much difficulty saying "She's a Rotary exchange student too, from Sweden". I got over the problems of explaining exchange student and where from back in October - you get used to it after all.
So yeah, I ran into a student I knew on my last day in Nantes. I mused it and then it happened...
Well, I'm finally leaving this host family.
Note I say 'finally'.
Things haven't gone well with this family... even Steph said if she was in my position she would've been worse (like, more of a bitch or something) and requested a switch. Mom reminded her that she's also still in English so she wouldn't have had much trouble. I should've requested a switch, honestly, but I never did because I just figured it would get better the harder I tried. It did a bit but it dropped on certain days.
They treat me like I'm 5. Like, to the extent of language and knowledge of culture yes, I'm like a 5 year old but my host dad actually spoke to me like I was as ignorent as a 5 year old, they talked about me behind my back and never confronted me with the problems they were seeing... they kept comparing me to this Australian student. I do have an Aussie guy coming in January to my club but I didn't know his name so when they kept saying "Matthew" and "Australia" I assumed it was him, but they talked about him like they've lived with him... I found out before leaving for Nantes he was here LAST year. My current family hosted him before me.
So they constantly compared me to Matthew, put him on a pedestal, insulting me a few times by doing so...
You can't compare exchange students, that's kind of a given - different nationalities means different cultures, which have different priorities, ideals, etc.
My host mom and I had a big fight that resulted in my locking myself in the bathroom for half an hour... after which we FINALLY went over every miscommunication. That was two days before leaving for Nantes.
They kept saying I had to be more adult and stuff, but as I finally grew more to do that they started to baby me. One day they're nice, the next they're really rude to me. It made no sense. It MAKES no sense.
Basically it was a real learning experience that even the phrase "trial and error" is an understatement for this time.
The next family has two younger girls and one older son. The other son is in Oregon on Rotary exchange and is 9 months older than me, so same age there. I stayed a night at their place and besides my host mom being REALLY touchy-feely (she would touch my arm and face every 5 minutes, i kept count at one point. She's like that with her family though, but more like every half hour. When I say really touchy feely... I woke up to her hand on my face. Seriously. That was just plain scary, I'm sorry), but she's really nice! My current host mom is a real nag (she actually lectured my host sister's friend when he said no thanks to a chocolate offered, saying he had to take one because its impolite to turn down food... well she's done that to me once or twice, to Charlotte, her husband... I should've realized she's strong willed enough to do it to people who she barely knows).
It'll be a nice change basically. I leave in about an hour or two.
Oh, like I say, no Internet. Something about it's not working or they don't have it yet... from what I understood, they have a technician coming into their place on the 29th for the Internet and they'll have Internet then. So I can connect around New Years. But since it's winter vacation there isn't much going on so I probably won't update for some time... not a month and a half again, but like, 2 weeks? 3 at most.
Oh yea! Last thing before pictures.
France is known to have student strikes. Bertille actually said they're best to be away from though. After watching the news... it's enough to scare an exchange student to not go, they CAN get really violent! The police were at this one with these huge shields that're clear (see through, like plastic but more durable), and the students were throwing rocks and pipe bombs (lit bombs) at them, some of the marching with signs... wow.
I went anyways. It started on the Tuesday last week and was supposed to go til Friday, but it actually went til Thursday, the 'manifestation' day that was apparently scheduled around the country. Friday we had school... that kind of sucked, we had to go on the last day. We didnt do much. English class was fun for me because my teacher handed out information on how Christmas is celebrated in Canada and a map that she got me to show the class where I'm from, she then got everyone to write questions in English to ask me (about tradition stuffs in Canada). I then had to ask questions in French about Christmas.
They do not use candles here by the way. It's all lights. They're MUCH bigger on Christmas lights outside than Canada or the States! Entire villages are lit up, it's so cool. I went to Nantes just to see the lights, which were amazing.
Ok, anyways, then we watched Merry Christmas Mr. Bean. I haven't seen that in so long! It was hilarious as usual... stopped before Bean goes in to get the engagement ring his girlfriend pointed at in the window and he comes out with only the box. She also handed out chocolate things for everyone. Best class ever.
Anyways, so student strike... freezing cold. People were smoking twice as much because it apparently warms you up, so as if the air wasn't bad enough with the wind, you know? (well, before I couldn't breathe around the smoke, I hated it that much. Now I can live with it. I actualy have to live with it, my host parents are chain smokers. My host brother at my next place smokes, I believe, but I didnt see the parents doing it at least. My clothes are forever tainted with smoke, some actually stink that bad of secondhand smoke). All we did was hang around outside - the most action we got was the police coming and trying to take away more of the metal barriers we used to block every entrance. Everyone was going to Lidl's, the grocery store a 5 minute walk away from the lycée just to warm up and buy food. I bought a ton of chocolate and a 1,5 litre of Fanta and shared it with everyone. I found it's kind of hard to buy warm drinks pre-warm from grocery stores, so pop worked. It was weird because... this is the only grocery store that puts their pop under the heaters. But because of that I found it was so cold outside that after 4 or so hours the pop was cold like it came out of a fridge just from the air. It got freezing cold by about 4pm (the buses arrive at 6pm - I was there from 7:45am til 6:15pm). I'm surprised ice didn't form in there.
So yea, it was actually really boring. I was kind of hoping for some scary action. Just to watch as I'm walking away towards the supermarket 20 minutes (walking) down the slight incline of a hill of course.
The supermarket with the espace culturel and search for a DVD (American films have original version English as well as French. I can apparently change region codes on my laptop but either way I watch them on my laptop this way) and a CD I've been wanting to get since its release in May.
So that's all for the past month... not too much really.
...
PICTURE TIME!
In a plaza by the marche de noel in Nantes Sunday afternoon
Some awesome lights at the hanger in Nantes... at 12:20am
The Chateau des ducs du Bretagne in Nantes at night.
Me, my host sister Charlotte, host dad Larbie (he's Moroccan), my host mom Jocelyne, and my host brother Jonathan (but in French it's pronounced something like "Jen-a-tao". I thought it was spelled like my next village's name "Genneton" for months)
Some of the lights over the streets in Nantes
