1st AFS Weekend
The first AFS weekend we were in a "château/castle" in Anjou, France but don't get too excited it was more of a large old house than a castle. I think that the first weekend was a real comfort for the majority of the exchange students. We were reassured that our worries, stress, and period of adjustment were all normal and we got to express with others our likes and dislikes of the culture without fear. I know that after two days of changing between English and French and hearing many more languages, me and a few others had a headache. After the first AFS weekend I also realised how much less I talk in French than i do in English, when you talk in your second language you have a handicap compared to those who speak it as a first language, everything takes more effort; being funny and making jokes, day to day "boring" talk, and deeper subjects or ideas.
The View from our room.
And our room...
All of the exchange students in our Region. There are kids from Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and the USA.
2nd AFS Weekend
For our second get together we traveled to Pont en Royans, France where we got to be tourists, instead of being cooped up the whole weekend we got to see "suspended houses", a water museum, a house where a French movie was filmed and caves.
Beautiful Scenery on our way to Pont en Royans.
Getting off the bus.
It was flooded!
Good thing those houses are suspended.
The Americans from our region. (Kevin, Laura, Eliza and Me)
Next to the waterfall.
In the water museum they had water bottles from all over the world.
They also had tons of water for sale, including bling water which costs anywhere from $50-$2600 and are covered with Swarovski crystals.
Holly (from New Zealand) and me outside of the Water Museum.
The end of our tour of the water museum was a water sampling. We got to enjoy four different kinds of sparking water. The French are apparently just as excited about water as wine, when the woman who worked at the museum talked about the water she would tell us that each kind of water is unique and that you have to savor it to taste its difference. We were given very expensive water to taste and since they either didn't taste that wonderful to me or tasted the same, it made me wonder how people could pay that much money for something as simple as water. One of the sparkling waters that we tasted was apparently one that Louis XIV (the sun king) drank and therefore given the name "the water of the sun" and was the first water in France transported in bottles.
The water museum was well a water museum and therefore a museum that most people will go to once and have seen everything they want to, however the views around Pont en Royans were well worth the visit. After that we got on a bus to go to the building that we would be sleeping at, but before we went to bed we played bingo. Bingo in France is a little different than in the US, in France there is no B-I-N-G-O written across the top and are 3X9 cards instead of 5X5.
Getting ready to play.
It was a successful night, I won creme de marrons (a regional speciality) and a mini Citroen toy car.
The next day we got up around eight, had breakfast and then got ready for our walk in the mountains.
Cows! Whenever I think of Switzerland this is what I think of.
Our destination for our walk in the mountains was a small, run down farm which was used in the French Film Une Hirondelle ne Fait pas le Printemps, which is a french proverb and in English means one swallow does not make a spring. Then we all piled into the bus to drive to les Grottes de Choranche/ the Choranche Caves.
Outside the caves.
The photos I took don't do it justice, in person it looked so much bigger, beautiful and more unimaginable.
The largest stalactite they had was more than three meters tall.
The caves were formed by erosion and chemical dilution from the carbon dioxide in the water runoff.
The cave is always around 10 degrees C or 50 degrees F.
This is a photo of a very rare (and weird!) species of salamander that is only known to live here and in a few other caves in Slovenia.
Holly (New Zealand), Maren (Norway), Me (USA), Matilde (Denmark) and Iris (Iceland).
All of the volunteers and exchange students.
3rd AFS Weekend
The third AFS weekend was only last week, so everything will still be fresh in my mind to tell you about it in detail. This weekend was more "boring" compared to the last one, no trips or sightseeing, but we still all had a good time. Saturday started off with my host dad, Sarah (my host sister) and me in the car on our way to pick up a fellow AFSer, named Matilde, who changed families too, now goes to my school and is in my class. Then we were on the road for an hour and a half to get to Bourgoin-Jallieu, France, which is well known in France for its rugby. Then we unloaded the car, said goodbye to our host families and said hello to all of our friends that we hadn't seen since November. This meeting was obligatory and was kind of a halfway check up. By now we've gotten over the culture shock, settled into our families and schools, have a steady group of friends and are getting a hold of the language. It was neat to see how much we've changed in such a little time, I think we all see the world in a different way now, we've seen another way of living and thinking and because of that, for better or for worse we will never be the same. I think that for most of us it is the former that is true; being an exchange student has given me a stronger sense of self, made me more aware of my culture and others, forced me out of my comfort zone and will have changed me in an immeasurable way.
That night one of our activities was to write down things we liked and didn't like about France, some of the things we wrote down in the negative column were; the school food, school ends at 5:30, smokers, when to use tu/vous, the school system and public toilets.
Here's the other half of the chalkboard with the positive things we like about France, a few of the things we wrote were; the bread, cheese, chocolate, the fashion, the landscape, the architecture, the vacations every six weeks, fountain pens/4 color pens, host families and friends and NUTELLA. The majority of things written on the positive side were food items, which isn't a surprise considering we're in one of the largest gastronomical capitals in the world.
Then we wrote down the stereotypes we had about France before we came and then put a plus if we considered it true and a minus if we didn't after living here for five months.
Can you guess some?
That night we had to prepare a talent for the talent show the day after and it wasn't optional. Since we were at a loss for what to do we decided to sing Frere Jacques in 7 languages and in a round, the languages we ended up singing in were English, Icelandic, German, Danish, Chinese, Norwegian and of course French.
After dinner we all stayed up until midnight to talk and drink some tea.
I shared a room with Elise (another American from Wisconsin) and two French girls who are going to the US next year, they were both a little stressed because in the morning they had to pass an English comprehension test to be accepted to go to America (which I think is the only country with AFS that you have to pass a language test for).
Our view.
The next day we got up, enjoyed breakfast, packed up, had a few more cultural activities, prepared our sketch and waited for our host families to arrive. After an interesting lunch of chili on rice we got to meet a few of the new six month exchange arrivals and included them into our talent group, lucky them!
The talents that we presented to our host families and volunteers included a skit on Scandinavian stereotypes, singing in seven languages, Latin dancing and a traditional Thai dance. After the talent show we all had a snack, which I really enjoyed because one of the Americans had brought Reese's peanut butter cups, and then said goodbye until the next AFS weekend.
