Hello. It has been officially 2 months since I’ve been here in France. Whaaaat?! How is that possible? It doesn’t feel like that long at all!!
This weekend I went to Nice with Gabi (an American) and Eamon (a Canadian) and it was pretty fun. Gabi and I went shopping, and then we pretty much just chilled and walked around Nice. It was really fun, because we all shared what our experiences were. And by shared our experiences I mean we complained about: the teachers at school, school in general, not being able to travel alone and not being able to speak French fluently. We’ve been here for 2 months… how come we’re not fluent yet?! Not being able to speak the language isn’t really a problem for me, I just wish I could wake up and be able to speak it, but that isn’t going to happen, so I actually have to work at it. Gabi and I took the bus back to her house in Vence, and in the morning we made rainbow pancakes:
School is school. It’s boring because I literally don’t do anything. I have gotten used to finishing at 5:30 everyday, and it doesn’t seem that long and I don’t have many problems with staying awake during class. Sometimes I fall asleep, but those are rare occasions that I try to avoid because I feel super guilty after. But it just sucks because I don’t understand anything, and the teachers still like make me take tests and whatnot, that I know I will fail. Beginner Italian is okay, I do pretty well in that, and Maths is really easy and good SOMETIMES. When we do Algebra, I breeze through it because I’ve been learning what they are learning since 7th grade, for example, I was the only person to get a 20/20 on a controle (test) when everyone else got below 13. (The grading is a lot different here, and anything above like an 11 is considered really good) but when the math is like word problems in french, or just really bizarre ways of going about solving the problem, I fail epically. Economics is impossible because the teacher gives notes orally, so I attempt to take notes but pretty much just try to stay awake and draw in class. He saw me not doing the work this week, and then asked me to come up to the board and show how to calculate some cost that I had no idea how to do, so the girl next to me gave me her paper, and he was like “she just copied what you did, she didn’t do that, blah blah blah”. Lol, sorry brah… French class is exactly like English class in America, but instead of analysing Shakespeare and translating old English into regular English, its analysing French Shakespeare equivalents, and writing essays. English class sucks because my teacher has a wicked French accent, and the class is so unstructured. She makes me translate the lessons into French, but I should be talking so the kids can here a native speaker but whatever. And the other classes are uneventful.
So Friday is my last day of classes and then I have a 2 week vacation!!!! CANNOT WAIT. This weekend I’m going to Cannes, Monaco, and maybe other places with the American girl in my district. It will be so fun!! I have already been to Monaco, (pshh, old news… I am completely kidding. It was AWESOME and I really want to go back. Here is a picture from Monaco by the way….)
I really like where I live in France because every sort of big city in the south is really close and accessible. A few weeks ago there was a Rotary get together in St. Tropez, and that was sick. St. Tropez is awesome! We took a boat from St. Raphael to St. Tropez and walked around. I saw a boat from Newport in one of the ports there, but didn’t find the owner. Dommage.
My host family and I are taking the train up to Normandy on Wednesday (the TGV, which is super fast so it takes about 5 or 6 hours to go from Nice to Paris). Then my host brother and I are taking the train from Paris to Rouen, and staying there for a day or two with their cousins. And then on Friday, Sarah (my friend from France who I did the Short-Term Exchange with) and her family are going to meet me (somewhere) and take me to the WW2 beaches! I am SOOOO excited to see her and the rest of the family, and plus, my French has improved since the last time we were together.
That is pretty much all I have to report. Everything is really really good here. I love my host family, the food is ridiculous, and I’m really enjoying myself. Well, bye bye for now!
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