My last few days in France

Friday, the 8th of April, I will be getting on a plane at the Charles de Gaulle airport and will quickly be leaving this wonderful country known as France. This Friday will be my 95th day in France. I have to say that these past few months have really gone by in the blink of an eye. I feel right now that yesterday was my first day here and that all of this time I've spent has only been a dream. I'm afraid to go home and feel like it really was all a dream, that I never actually went to France and the only evidence I would have to show for it is the weight I've gained and the chocolate I'm bringing back as gifts.

I'm excited to go home, to see everyone that I care about again, but I'm sad to leave the people that I've grown to love and care about over here as well. I know that this won't be the last time I'll be seeing my French family, and I hope that I can see again the friends that I've made at my high school. Just today I said goodbye to my class, out in front of the school as the sun shone down on us like it always has and always will. Just the other day I was sitting out in the soccer field with them, teaching them how to make daisy chains and listening to Bob Marley. I felt so at home, or as if I had never left home to begin with. I think that my home isn't a stationary one, it moves with me and settles for a time and right now, it's settled in La Folaine France. I am prepared to uproot and return to my American life, but I don't think I'll be able to do it without shedding a few tears!

I have a few updates though!

I finally tried snails! Les escargots, as they are called in that lovely French language. I ate the decomp-eaters and I enjoyed it (sortof..). My initial reaction was "oh well they aren't that bad at all". The texture was reminiscent of chewy octopus that you'd get from a sushi bar, but just a bit easier to chew. As you bite into them you release a little bit of whatever they had last eaten, so I got the vivid taste of dirt in between the tastes of butter and parsley. Honestly the snail doesn't have a specific taste at all, it just depends on how you cook it. So there, I'm officially a French person now that I have eaten snails.

A weekend ago I went and so the Deportation Beach in Normandy. That was very interesting as there is a huge cemetery there that was given to America as a gift from France so America could bury all of their dead after WW2. There were thousands of graves there, and it was overlooking the beauitful Normandy coast. I knew I was still in France, but technically the earth there is owned by the USA so I felt weirdly at home in this huge cemetery full of the honorable deceased.

Sitting here in my French living room, listening to Perrine playing songs from the Amelie soundtrack on the piano, I feel very melancholy that my joy ride is about to come to an end and soon I must return to the daily grind  at McKinleyville High. The good news is, once I'm back home I only have 9 weeks until I graduate highschool. I've had to pick a college while I've been here in France as well, and I'm announcing to the world that I am going to UC Davis and I will be majoring in Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior with intentions of one day becoming a surgeon.

But that's all besides the point, the point is that this exchange has been one of the most rewarding challenges I have ever undertaken in my life. I am so thankful to all of the people who made this possible for me. I feel so much more confident now and I'm so excited to come home and be able to freely talk with everyone again. It's definitely a wild experience, living somewhere and really having to work hard to be able to really connect with anyone. I would do it all over again in a second...

There is a bridge covered in 'lover's locks' near the Louvre. I liked the idea of a bike lock.

This bridge is covered in thousands of locks... it's incredible!

Sometimes I feel artistic.

Proof that I was in Paris!!!

Paris Part 2

So what is it like exactly to live in Paris? Well, after a week living in a Parisien apartment, using the metro, and dealing with tourists, I have a bit of an idea of what it is like. Living in Paris is like being a tiny bee in a huge, ornate bee hive. There is no such thing as a single-floor building here. Everything is at least 3 stories high in order to be smart about space and cram as many people on one square acre as possible. The appartments can be minute, just big enough, or huge if you're filthy stinking rich. Rarely are there townhouses that have remained towhouses, and the people lucky enough to own a Parisien townhouse are either incredibly rich or its been in the family for generations. A French apartment building works like this: the first floor is either the landlord's abode or a restaurant/store. In fact, I know a girl who lives above two porn shops. In the apartment you have to be smart and conserve as much space as possible. In the apartment where I was staying I noticd many ingenuis ways of storing things. The kitchen was about the size of a larger closet. The kitche also doubles as a dining room, and the dining room stools are stackable and go under the table when no one is eating. For hanging up coats, there is a collapsable/movable armoire. The walls are covered with various shelves and storage units, and the couch in the living room can double as a bed if there are too many guests over at once. Because you also have to keep in mind that you have nieghbors above, below, and right next to you, its important to walk with a lightness in your legs and scold your children quietly. You can have pianos, but you have to play them quietly and not at odd hours of the night if the feeling strikes you so.

The roads of Paris vary. There are grand boulevards with 8 lanes or normal streets with 2, but the majority of the roads of Paris are small lanes where two cars can barely squeeze by eachother. Its things like these that remind that this city has been around for hundreds of years. Originally there were little horse-and-buggys driving through these streets, not Citroens and Volkswagons. This is why scooters are so popular here. When I say scooters, I dont mean the rusting razor scooter in the garage, I mean a bright yellow vintage Vespa that can reach up to 40 miles per hour. There are thousands of these scooters in Paris alone, and thousands more in the rest of France. Scooters in France come in all shapes and sizes, mondern, old, beat-up, brand new, futurustic. I was awed by the selection.

The rumors are true about Parisien food. It truly is the best. The cafes/pastry shops/ bakeries here, though often over-priced and over-hyped (can anyone say La Durée?), they are of the highest quality. I wish I could bring back the pastries of Paris for everyone in America so they can know that the pre-packaged Little Debbie cakes that they are fond of PALE in comparison to the Parisien equivalent.

Speaking if La Durée, I should probably explain exactly what it is and share a little story. La Durée is probably the most well known pastry shop in France. It has been stationed on the Champs Elysées since some random year like 1878 and has gained notoriety for its delicious macarons and flamboyant pastries. I went there to see what it was all about... After waiting 30 minutes in a line I finally got to look at the line-up of treats. At first I was impressed by the number of macaron flavors and the creative designs of the pastries, but then I was doubled-over with the prices. One macaron was almost 2 euros. Macarons are tiny puffy almond cookies with various fillings, something worth half a euro at the most. The cheapest pastry was the equivalent of 7 dollars. The rose-petal flavored cream puff pastry covered in thick cream and filled with homemade red fruit preserves was pretty delicious though, and almost worth 7 bucks.

Le temps passe vite

The time passes fast! Here I am, just a month away from returning to America and boy do I have a lot of things to recount! (I just realized that the verb "recount" sounds a lot like the french verb "raconter" which means the same thing... HMMMMMM)

These past two weeks I have been on vacation. I know coming to France is already like a vacation, so I guess I was in a vacation within a vacation, a DOUBLE vacation! OHMIGOD! IT'S SO INTENSE. And here is when I stop the "Double Rainbow" video references and commence with the interesting stuff. I was in Paris during the second week of vacation. I have a lot to tell, so this is the first part of 3 blogs on this experience. I left for Paris the morning of the 7th day of March. It was a Monday. After a train ride that lasted around 2 and a half hours, I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in Paris. Perrine and I navigated the metro to Perrine's Aunt's apartment where we dropped off our stuff and said hello to Perrine's aunt. We had sandwhichs for lunch made with the "good bread" of Paris. It really was good bread, better than a lot of bread I've tried. I'm totally at a loss as to how one can make one loaf of bread better than the other. It's just flour, water, and salt. How can different concentrations of such banal ingredients make for a better tasting loaf? Any bakers out there know the secret?

After lunch Perrine and I took the metro to the Montmartre area of Paris. Montmartre was and remains one of the areas of Paris most populated with artists, poets, musicians, and living statues. I say living statues because there are people around the Sacre Coeur who have painted themselves up and starched their clothes until they look like sculptures. They then stand on a little soapbox, also painted to look like a stone, for hours and hours and hours. They take pictures with people and hope that passers-by feel sorry enough for them to toss a coin into the little bowl at their feet. I wonder if the statues run if someone walks by and takes the money out of the bowl. That would defeat the whole 'statue thing' they had going on... I say musicians because there are tons of street musicians singing and playing instruments wherever there is space to perform. When ascended the staircase in front of the Sacre Coeur there was a man with a guitar and a microphone singing Bob Marley songs. He was doing a really good job too, I wanted to sit down with the crowd that was watching him and sing along. Vive la Humboldt! There are artists at every corner and famous poets have lived in Montmartre. Also, the film "Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain" was filmed in Montmartre. "Amelie" is one of my favorite films of all time and I was an over-excited fangirl when Perrine and I went to the cafe where parts of the movie were filmed, as Amelie worked as a waitress in this cafe: Le Cafe des Deux Moulins". I was starstruck as well, because Amelie is played by Audrey Tatou, who is a totally awesome French actress... (Also happens to be my favorite French actress next to Marion Cotillard, who Perrine doesn't like because she's pregnant with Guillaume Canet's baby and Perrine is in love with Guillaume Canet) After my wonderful experience at the Two Windmills I went to a little store where I found a music box that played the theme song of "Amelie"! I bought it, moving on...Another funny thing about the Montmartre area is the serious concentration of sex shops. There is the Sexodrome, Sexy Shop, a shop with separate video-viewing rooms for homosexuals and  heterosexuals, and at night there is a large community of prostitutes who prowl the streets. I, disappointingly, had to leave before the ladies of the night came out. I want to see if they're all like Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman. There's also the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre as well, the world famous home of scantily-clad girls shows.

The next day Perrine and I walked around Paris a little. We went to the Petite Palais for the little museum there, and across the street from the little palais was the Grand Palais, where Chanel was having their fashion show right as Perrine and I were walking by. The people gathered out front where people of another world. Such fashion, such style, such exuberance and flamboyance...I wanted to stay and watch the people coming in and out of the building but Perrine and I were in a hurry to get our planned schedule in so I could only linger out front for a few moments... but luckily enough we walked by big black tents where fashion shows for other designers were being held and I got to see even more crazy outfits!!! I also walked by models who were being trailed by a pack of paparazzi. It was the first time I've ever experienced the celebrity situation. The poor model was just trying to get from one place to the next and she had to politely pose for a few pictures in order to prevent becoming tabloid fodder as some sort of rude, evil person who attacks paparazzi.

Tuesday was also Mardi Gras! My only Mardi Gras experiences was seeing Shrek on the metro and a group of kids walking by their highschool absolutely covered in flour. Mardi Gras in France is pretty low key, although for some it's an awesome opportunity to dress up and throw eggs filled with flour at their friends. That's what they do here in celebration, Mardi Gras is the only holiday where costumes are worn as there is no Halloween in France. (GASP) Otherwise you have to be invited to themed parties, which do happen often so the French have good outlets for the costume-wearing jitters that strike all humans at one time or another.

Tuesday afternoon I went to the famous Parisien cemetery: La Cemetiere du Pere Lachaise. There I saw the graves of Edith Piaf, a legendary French singer, Oscar Wilde, Moliere, and Chopin. It was sunny and warm and the cemetery wasn't morbid, but a beautiful homage to those who have transformed into something beyond us, be it simply dirt or a being of pure energy, who knows!

So famous their sign is in English and French!

The Cemetary

Edith's Tomb

Just an example of some of the wonderful graffiti in the streets of France. Montmarte has the best graffiti.

Geisha. By the way, help Japan readers! Help all who were affected by the earthquake! Even Crescent City.

A wall in Montmartre where "I love you" is written in x number of languages. Can you find the english, french, and hand language I love yous?

Moliere!

Moulin Rouge

I think he's more popular dead than alive. Huh!

RESIST EVERYTHING BUT TEMPTATION

Le Sacre Coeur... the pinnacle of Montmartre.

Now I'm not a very religious person, but this message made me tear up and get all blubbery nevertheless: It reads: "God reunites those who love each other." Edith Piaf's very words. Sigh!

This is me, in the cafe. And to the upper left you can see the Amelie character smiling her little smile!

Shrek, I had to be very discreet given he was two inches away from me and we were all packed like sardines into a metro tram..

Spring is starting in France!!

Pardonnez-moi, mais est-ce que vous avez une cigarette?

The other night I was walking past a tram station with some other French teenagers. There was one lone person sitting on the bench and as we passed, he politely asked us with a strained, shaky voice if we had a cigarette. As he stood up to take a cigarette from the token chain smoker of the group, I noticed that his hands were covered in bloody and oozing cuts, his face was pale, and he had dark circles under his sunken eyes. The white stripes on his dirty blue track suit glowed slightly in the light coming from the street lamps... This haunting figure has now become someone I find myself thinking of often. I wonder why he was there, why his hands were cut, and what ever became of him afterward. Did he enjoy his cigarette? Did he stumble down to the Loire, fall in and drown? (This fate is pretty common in Nantes and at least one body is pulled from the river per year) I've also wondered if he was he a ghost... When we walked away from this man, no one said anything but everyone knew that he was having a rough night... At least he got a cigarette to keep him company in his upsetting condition.


You may be asking yourself now, what is the point of this bizarre little story? Well, it's the prologue to my blog about smoking in France.


Smoking in France! When one pictures the stereotypical French person, what does one see? Well, when I picture this person, I see a skinny man with a bushy mustache, black beret, striped sweater, black pants, a baguette under his left arm, and in his right hand: a cigarette. Oh! There are is also a stain of snail juice on his shoe from the escargot he ate earlier that day. I'm sure that what you were all picturing was more or less the same. It turns out that this stereotype, while being horribly wrong, is at the same time a little right. A lot of French people smoke, somewhere around 20% of the population, and everyone eats baguettes. I've also noticed a lot of striped shirts as well... I've only seen one person wearing a beret since being here, and it was purple.

At high schools in France, it is illegal to smoke cigarettes on campus. But once you're off campus you can smoke to your heart's content. (No pun intended, given that hearts don't want their owner's to smoke as it kills them) The high school that I go to is split up into two separate buildings on each side of a road. The road and sidewalk in between the buildings is considered off-campus. Therefore between classes and during breaks there are hoards of teenagers out on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes. I would say that a little over half of people at my high school smoke, despite the school's valiant effort to curb it. (When I say valiant I mean paltry. I've seen two posters at the high school that talk about negative effects of smoking on the body. That's one poster for every 400 students there.) When I have to walk in between buildings I always hold my breath because the air reeks of tobacco, and if you're unlucky enough to accidentally inhale you get a nice blast of second-hand smoke. The ground is also covered in the leftover butts; there is a little puddle where I think people have a subconscious agreement to throw all of their butts. Poor puddle.
I've already mentioned as well how I discovered two French boys smoking pot in the girl's bathroom, so marijuana is around too. In fact, a boy who goes to Perrine's school smokes pot between every class while all of his other friends are smoking tobacco. This is the chain-smoker I was talking about. Over the course of a night he smoked about a pack and a half of cigarettes. I was impressed and grossed out at the same time. I wonder what shade of black or brown his lungs are.

When I've asked around as to what the specific age is for smoking cigarettes here, no one really knows. Sometimes I hear "oh anyone can buy cigarettes" and other times I hear "it's definitely 16". I don't think it matters as I've seen people aged 13 and up smoking cigarettes.I'm lucky because no one in my host family smokes cigarettes but they certainly do love cheese!

Cheese > cigarettes.

French boys are crazy, but not as crazy as MOATS

I'm going to start off this post with a quick analysis of French boys.
French boys:
1. They like rugby and handball.
2. They can all cook but don't know how to NOT leave a huge mess behind.
3. They are insane.*
4. They are all very fashionable and they all take as much time in the morning as girls do to get their hair looking just right...


*(Boys everywhere are insane, but especially French ones)
 And now here is the anecdotal evidence:

Exhibit A: Noe
Relation to me: Host brother, aged 11
Noe is totally, completely insane. He was watching innocent cartoons like Totally Spies on TV when suddenly he started screaming at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. I asked him why he was screaming and he just shrugged his shoulders. He really was screaming for no reason at all. When Noe doesn't get the flavor of yogurt that he wanted because Clement (Other host brother, aged 14) took it first, Noe will scream, yell and cry about the horrible injustice that has been done to him. When things like this happen, when Noe gets so serious about something as simple as not getting the last container of cherry-flavored yogurt, I can not help but laugh the whole entire time and hope that he doesn't notice. Once, Noe tried to bake a cake. He forgot to add the eggs, the butter, and the sugar. When he tried to add chocolate sprinkles to the batter he accidentally ripped open the sprinkle bag and dumped half a pound of sprinkles on the ground. I heard him say "OH NON!", watched him leave the kitchen, and was dumbfounded when he turned on the TV and starting watching the Simpsons, leaving the huge mess for some sucker to come along and clean up. (That sucker was me; I cleaned up his sprinkle disaster) Noe also does his hair in the mornings right before we get on the bus. He coats his hair in gel and then smooths it up into a little wave that comes to a point right above his forehead. I noticed that once Noe started doing this all of his friends on the bus started to do it too.
Exhibit B: Matteo
Relation to me: Kid on the bus who sits in front of me, aged 11
One day I told Matteo about how I have a boyfriend. Next thing I know he's drawing pictures of stick figures having sexual relations on the windows of the bus and the stick figures are named Bob and Sam. He is eleven.
Exhibit C: Clement, Simon, and that other guy who wore a sweater with "Japan Rags" scrawled across the front
Relation to Me: Three older teenage boys in Perrine's class
These crazy Frenchmen-in-training had one simple task: Make spaghetti. Not only did they burn the spaghetti while it was being boiled in a huge pot of water, but they also got spaghetti noodles on the ground, on the stove, in the sink, on the table, on the floor, and all over Clement's pants. They didn't have a specific sauce to put on the noodles so they told everyone to just use butter and ketchup to add flavor. When Clement served himself, he put the spaghetti on his plate and then he gently set his plate down on the table. The plate broke in HALF as soon as it touched the wood. That's just a big red flag that he's totally insane. The boy wearing the sweater has been to Japan and didn't like it there. Another red flag of insanity.
Exhibit D: McFlurrion
Relation to me: Dude at my highschool
McFlurrion (clever word-play of his actual name) loves to watch me on the computer in the library. I will be innocently doing my homework when I hear a little noise behind me. I turn around and realize that McFlurrion has been a foot behind my chair watching what I was doing. I say "Bonjour" and ask him if everything's okay. He answers me with the bare-minimum that he could possibly say and then walks away. One day he did this 4 times with about fifteen minutes of time between each 'visit'.

So that ends my little tidbit on French dudes. Now I want to talk to you about something else that's very, very French: Merde. Merde is the French word for poo, but a little bit more vulgar. Have you ever wondered what the plumbing system was like in castles of the Middle Ages? Well the other day I learned how it all worked and the knowledge will never leave my memory.

So moats are pretty cool right?  They seem to serve a good purpose by making it more difficult to breach the walls of a castle and can harbor man-eating crocodiles as an additional deterrent to invaders. Moats also serve aesthetic purposes by adding a certain island-esque charm to the castle or serving as a cool watery-lily gardens. The truth of the matter is that moats actually serve a much darker purpose...

In the Chateau of the Dukes of Brittany I found a little room with a stone block that had a hole in it. This room was very discrete and had a little window from which you could see the surrounding buildings. I thought to myself: 'Oh, it's the latrine!' My host mother proceeded to explain to me how the latrines worked. When people had to go to the bathroom, they would go into these little bathrooms, do their business sitting on a wooden board posed over the hole, and leave. The hole leads directly to, you guessed it, the MOAT. And how was it possible for fish to survive in these moats for so long? Well the fish ate what dropped out of the holes. People were also known to hunt the fish that lived in these moats and I'm sure they would take pride in the specific "freshwater" flavor of their bounties. Moats were the waste-treatment plants of the dark-ages. No wonder it was such a terrifying prospect, to be thrown into the moat. I honestly think that crocodiles have never been a part of the natural fauna that lives in moats, and perhaps the idea of a moat filled with man-eating crocodiles originated from the fact that moats were full of POOP. And the word "crap" sounds a tad-bit similar to "croc", in crocodile, or a "crock of crap". I'm rambling now, but basically I just thought you should know that moats are a lot worse than you may have thought.

What once lurked in that innocent-looking water just a few hundred years ago?

The extra kilos and a chateau

Hello world, it's me again. Your friendly neighborhood Sam. So guess what? It's vacation in France! It's a bit complicated, but vacation technically starts in a week but because my class at high school went to Liverpool this week I can just loaf around the house for the time being. In fact, I'm loafing around the house right now. I did just go on a twenty minute jog around the fields with Vick, the scary guard dog. Vick is such a ferocious animal that when this house was broken into some time ago he didn't make a single noise and let the burglars lock him in the walk-in freezer. Vick is one of the nicest giant dogs I know; he makes me happy and he loves running with me because it's an opportunity for him to pee on everything.

I'm running because... I've put on some weight. We all knew it would happen. A girl who loves food goes to France, land of good food, and doesn't gain weight? Impossible. So I've gained a couple of kilos which roughly translates to 5 pounds. I knew I couldn't eat pastries next to every single day and not gain a bit... but I can always hope. Now that's its vacation it will be a lot harder to find pastry shops though; there are three within 10 minutes of my highschool but only one about twenty minutes away from my house. At school I would get very bored in between classes and walk down and get a tartelette aux pommes... (Apple Tart) Here it's not worth the sorrow to walk 20 minutes for a quick nibble of something delicious but calorie-laden. So yeah, I've been jogging now and will jog every day this week. And try to avoid putting too much nutella on my morning "pain complet". (Complete Bread)

Saturday I went shopping around Nantes. All I want is a really cute bag and a new pair of shoes because my turquoise converse are dying, my black heeled boots are in their death throes, and my cut-out oxfords are withering and getting stained with French things. My fake toki-doki purse is also stained and too big for my evolving fashion tastes. Now I want a old school canvas knapsack. This is uninteresting, I'm going to stop talking about what I want to buy and will wait until I've actually bought something... So I didn't buy anything saturday, but I did go to a creperie and got a crepe titled "chevre chaud", which means hot goat cheese. It was incredible. Readers, if you have never eaten a crepe before, leave your house right now and find the nearest one. Go inside, buy a crepe. Eat it and never be the same....

Sunday! Sunday I went to the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne in Nantes. (The Castle of the Dukes of Brittany) The Chateau was very pretty, but my favorite part was the huge museum that was installed in one of the main chateau buildings and afterward sitting on a bench watching a French dad play 'cache-cache', hide-and-go-seek, with his daughter who had obviously just learned how to walk. I was surprised watching the dad and his daughter. He would just put her down and then run and hide behind a bush about 20 feet away. She would stand there, slightly wobbling, and then start walking/running/stumbling in any odd direction until her dad would call out her name. Once she would hear her name she'd fall over, get back up like a frog launching off a leaf and toddle over to wherever she heard her dad. They played this game for 15 minutes and I watched and laughed the whole time... It was more entertaining than watching the European Championship Handball match between France and Denmark. (France Won)
PICTURES!

Traditional French Instruments...

The Original Array of LU biscuits.

Camille is Pensive

Happy Chocolate Lady Sculpture

When I jog, this is all I can see for miles

Ever wonder how they make so many cookies that have the same shape and size? Well this is how. I don't know about you, but my mind was blown.

macarons....

This is a map of the area. I'm on that map right now, somewhere in the lower right corner above the huge black river.

The Chateau

Pretty Pastel Window Panes

In France, there are cigarette butts

Something for the males. A French sword!

A window display outside the Gallery Lafayette!

Little Old Me in the Chateau. I was trying to appear very regal, just didn't work out

Fortress and the Machines

So I went and saw some pretty cool things this weekend. Oh, and today is also Valentine's Day so HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY AMERICA!!!

Saturday I experienced "Les Machines de l'Ile". That directly translates to "The Machines of the Island". Now, the Machines are located on a little island in the middle of Nantes, the 6th biggest city in France. Nantes is very well known for its ship building and biscuit industry. Ever heard of LU cookies? Well, they're pretty much the most popular brand of ANY food item in France. The LU company makes all kinds of biscuits too...buttery biscuits, chocolaty biscuits, waffle-esque biscuits, pocky-like biscuits... Anyways, they singlehandedly own the French biscuit/cookie market and their factory is in Nantes. It is my goal to go visit it and eat some biscuits fresh from the corporate oven of France. (The cupboards here at my house are already full of their products though)

The Machines of the Island were dreamed up by two French dudes with tons of money and nothing better to do with their lives. (At least I think that's what the tour guide said...) These machines shaped in many different kinds of animals are powered by people and by electricity. The most impressive machine by far is the towering mechanical elephant that is about the size of a three story building and was walking around the industrial park when I first arrived at the Gallery of the Machines. This huge elephant is made of metal, wood, and leather. It's ears flap around, it's trunk moves and sprays the bystanders with steams. The huge glass eyes look around and wink at people... there is also a stereo that yells some very authentic elephant noises to further enhance the effect. One thing that I thought was even more impressive was that this megalith of a machine wasn't behind a fence or anything. It was just walking around right next to the people who looked like toys in comparison to it. In America I'm sure this creation would be behind bars for fear of some idiot running out under it's feet... I'm happy that the French have faith in their own idiots to not do something like that.

The Machines were fantastic and Noe, my host brother, was especially happy that we went to see them because our original plan was to go to Mont Saint Michel that day instead and he really didn't want to go there. In fact, while we were all sitting around eating lunch we were keeping a tally of how many times Noe said "I don't want to go there", or in French, "Je n'ai pas envie d'y aller!!!" I'm pretty sure he said it about 8 times while we were sitting down eating a meal of curried chicken over rice...
Nevertheless, Sunday we made it to Mont Saint Michel after a two and half hour drive through the extremely beautiful and peaceful countryside of Normandy. It was also foggy, raining, and cold but that's besides the point. A little note here, in France a two and a half hour drive is considered a very long drive to get anywhere. To put this in perspective, to get from the northern tip of France to the southern tip of France takes around 8 hours of driving. France is about the size of California if you cut CA in half and put the two pieces side by side. In other words, France is small and the people don't like driving. Anything more than an hour is a really long drive and should be avoided at all costs... but I am here now so long drives are necessary to show me all of the cool things within a four hour radius of where I live.

Mont Saint Michel is a fortress built on a huge slab of granite that resisted the erosion of the constant battering from the tides of the English Channel. The commune on this island is a real medieval town. The streets are so narrow that only 6 people standing shoulder to shoulder could walk through them at some points. There is a moat, and slits in the wall for people to shoot arrows through. There is also a draw bridge and huge metal doors to close as a last ditch effort to fight back the invading Roast Beef (The French name for the English, American's are yankees). In fact, a lot of English own homes in Normandy for retirement or vacationing during the summer, and my host father told me that on the first day of summer all of the French line the streets of Normandy holding little rocks for throwing at the vacationers. He said it was a sort of festival marking the beginning of summer. Haha, funny Antoine and his funny jokes...

LE MONT SAINT MICHEL!!! GLORIOUS EVEN IN 30 DEGREE WEATHER!

Arrow Slits for Protection

DRAW BRIDGE

Total Medieval Town, especially with the japanese writing on the sign. Oh those tourists!

Look, I'm so historic!

The Cathedral

At Mont Saint Michel there were more Japanese people than French people. In fact, all of the signs were written in English, French, and Japanese. I saw more Japanese people crammed in those narrow streets than any other place in my life. They were everywhere, taking 'kawaii' pictures, being adorable in general, speaking Japanese... Antoine cracked a joke that the Airbus from Tokyo had just dropped its load off at Mont Saint Michel. Funny Antoine and his funny jokes... This is all besides the point. What the point is? I don't know. Mont Saint Michel was really awesome and I thought about a million times "ancient lords and knights have walked where I am walking with my beaten up old converse... coooooool...." There's the teenage brain for you. I feel like I've already written a thousand words so I'm going to just show some pictures to make up for the next few thousand.

Valentine's Day in France... If I was in Paris I'm sure it would have been a lot more obvious, but the only way one could tell that it was Valentine's Day was the fact that while I was sitting out in front of the Supermarket I counted ten guys in twenty minutes who walked out holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and some form of alcohol in the other. Why I was sitting in front of a supermarket? Camille and Brittany needed to buy chocolate and we celebrated the day by sitting on a bench and eating next to all of it. Tonight I made my host family old-fashioned banana bread. They loved it... I guess American food is good enough for the spoiled French taste buds! Woohoo! A little interesting tid bit... while I was at a local book store I stumbled upon this book full of recipes from "all around the world". The recipes from America were things like Meatloaf, cornbread, and Banana Bread. Random...
Here's an iffy picture of my French family. Not a single picture turned out with everyone looking the same direction, forgive me, but at least you guys can all get an idea of the awesome people I'm staying with.

One last thing before I go... I was at school the other day waiting for my turn in the girl's bathroom. I waited about five minutes in front of the door, clearly marked with a person in a dress, when suddenly two guys walked out and brought a strong smell of pot with them. I went in a few moments after, registering the fact that two dudes just smoked pot in the girl's bathroom of a French high school. I had to brush little pieces of pot off of the sink and the pot stink was heavy in the bathroom. This is France, not Arcata!!