It has been almost a month since I last wrote a blog post. That also means that I've been in France for two months. At this point, it feels like I've been here forever. Living in Florida feels like it could be months or years ago. Time in France goes by so fast. I don't know if I want to to slow down or speed up. There's obviously a part of me that really wants to go home and see my friends and family, but I want to be here so badly that going home isn't even an option.
This past month has been... weird?
We got back from Italy about three weeks ago. Rome was really beautiful. We went and did all of the normal tourist-y things but spent most of our time walking around (or eating) and exploring the city. We went to the Colosseum and people watched for an hour, then went and walked around the old roads and ruins next to it. One day, we had tickets for a guided tour through the Vatican. Our tour guide was a French lady who was very enthusiastic, slightly crazy, and asked me several times throughout the tour about my comprehension of what she had said. I was mostly interested in looking at the art, not knowing the ALL the history, so I wasn't putting that much effort into understanding the tour. I was thoroughly confused by the end of the visit. Oh and we lost my host mom for two hours when we were in a room with blocked cell service. That was interesting. I'm not about to complain about being in the Vatican though. The rest of our Roman adventures did not involve a lot of getting lost, even on with the bus and metro rides we had to take to get into the city. We went to the main shopping street where there was a Vans store, two H&Ms, an addidas store, and one street over to see a Chanel store and a luxury fur store. It was a very posh neighborhood. Overall, Rome was really good even though we all did get a little frustrated with eachother by the end (but what group of people can go somewhere for a week and not get frustrated when you can only communicate amongst yourselves?) NOTE: ITALIANS ARE SCARY DRIVERS. No one in Rome used turn signals OR stayed in their lanes, or even acknowledged that lanes even exist.
During the rest of the two break, I baked a couple cakes with my host mom, Fabienne. She never really follows recipes but somehow all the food she makes ends up being reeally good. I also went to Longué with Laura to hang out with Tom for the day. We walked into the centre ville and ate croque monsieurs. Then we walked to a park and swung on some swings, then we went to Leclerc (the french Walmart?) and bought snacks. then, of couse, we ate our snacks. The next day Laura spent the night at my house which was fun. We had a long conversation with my host parents about the differences in France, Brazil, and the US. The next morning we got up and Fabienne suggested we carve a pumpkin for Halloween (the next day). I showed Laura how to carve a pumpkin since it seems that only America does jack o' lanterns. We ended up with a really handsome pumpkin. It is still sitting on the windowsill (window-sill, windowsil, window-sil? can you see my English getting progressively worse?) outside and since its freezing (sometimes literally) Jack is still perfectly intact.
We went back to school on Monday (today is Friday). I was welcomed back witha butt-load of confusion. I never got most of the homework given out before the break (while I was in Italy) and understood almost none of what happened this week. But honestly, that's nothing new. I've basically given up on trying to make good grades(US standards). A lot of the work I got back from before Italy, I got fairly good grades on. The best grade I have gotten since being in France has been a 8.75/10 on a SVT (science de la vie et de la terre= earth and life science=biology) assignment. The teacher complimented me on my work. actually complimented me. Usually, if they tell you something about your assignment it's to tell you that you suck and need to start being such a suck-up. The teachers will literally go around the room and interrogate everyone about why they didn't study and basically tell them they suck. Moving on, I got a 6.8/10 on a history test. That's better than half the class. But in the US, that's failing. In pysics/chemistry, I got a 13.5/20 on a history test which was probably just below the class average. There's no way I want my grades in France to transfer back to the US.
This week, I presented a powerpoint about Florida to my French class. It took me about an hour and a half the night before to do it. A for A(E)fficiency :) It was honestly very sloppy but everyone was pretty interested to learn about Florida. I included the fact that Florida has 246 days of sun a year and everyone was like "WHAT". Tom did a presentation on Belgium too, and we both showed our houses on google maps street view to which everyone was again like "WHAT". Sometime next week, I have to present a powerpoint on my high school in the US, but to my English class.
On Tuesday, Tom, Maxime from our class and I went into town during our break. Originally it was just so Tom could buy a jumbo pack of tissues. We ended up going to eat kebabs too. We sat in the top floor of the little restaurant and ate our sandwiches and watched NRJ (French MTV). It's always really difficult to have a conversation with me and Tom because we both speak broken French and confuse ourselves while speaking it. We have to have things explained every ten seconds but it's good for learning I suppose. We both are good friend with Maxime so he doesn't mind too much and tries his best to help us.
After kebabs, I had my first beginning Spanish class (i take a beginning Spanish class once a week now to help me catch up with the rest of the kids in my class who have been taking Spanish for a few years). I still understood almost nothing because the teacher speaks almost only Spanish, but I did learn some things. i can say red and green, can conjugate the word 'go' which is 'ir' in Spanich,and can conjugate all regular -er, and -ar verbs in the present tense! I've decided that after French, the next language I want to learn in Spanish.
That was mostly just a summary, nothing TOO interesting but maybe someone would like to know? Mom. Dad. Maybe. I hope.
