Mondays in the Pays de la Loire

So I am going to describe my typical French school week.

Mondays are pretty relaxing days. I wake up at 8:30, take a leisurely shower, and then have a breakfast of bread with fresh cheese and an apple. The shower heads here are all hand-held and I've finally established a way of throwing the shower head over my back while I lather up my hair with shampoo/conditioner/french stuff etc...
I arrive at school five minutes before the class starts, just like at McKinleyville High although I often arrive right as the second bell rings, and then I enjoy two hours of "French Literature" which consists of me reading the occasional page of material that is passed around, highlighting the words I don't know and then looking them up in the dictionary. This is actually very good for me because by doing this I have learned such words like "se debrouiller" which means "to get by". Which is what I am doing here, "getting by".

After two hours of French Literature it is 12:30, lunch time. I head over to the cafeteria area and stand in line with 40 other hungry teenagers who crowd the door like a herd of ravenous lions waiting to devour their gourmet zebra. Its every man for himself waiting in the lunch line at this school. Friendships are made and broken in this line.... Anyways, after finally being ushered into the cafeteria I have to wait in another line and then I scan my card over this magical machine that pops out a tray. After recieving the tray, I walk past a wide array of salad/appetizers like diced beets, grapefruit, or just plain old salad, cheeses (my favorite at school is the camembert), yogurts, desserts like mousse au chocolate or pudding, then a varied selection of cooked meats and vegetables (I always take the fish and both choices of vegetables), and finally there is a huge bin of sliced artisanal bread (I take 3 pieces of that). The next challenge that comes with having a fine meal at the highschool is finding somewhere to sit. If its a good day, the group that I hang out with will find a table with enough chairs to for everyone, if it is a bad day we have to stand awkwardly by a table full of kids who seem like they are finished with their lunches and wait for them to leave. Once we've sat down, it seems to be common knowledge that youre supposed to take off one layer of clothing and hang that layer of clothing on your chair. When I say layer of clothing I mean the overcoat layer, no  one ever comes to school just wearing a bra and underwear... that'd be silly. Then somebody has to take the water pitcher that is always on the table and fill it up; I've taken up this job for my group since coming to school. Then it's food time. And oh, is food time the best time... Start with your appetizer, work on your main entree then finish off with some yogurt or fruit, or cheese and a dessert...whatever you want... My favorite part of French school is lunch and I look forward to it every day...

After lunch I wait around in the library for a few hours until my next class starts at 4, which is either Physics and Chemistry or Biology. This class consists of me attempting to follow along with the course material and either giving up and working on American homework or "getting by", looking up words in my dictionary every 5 minutes. At 6PM, when the day is almost over, I walk to the bus stop and hop on bus 84 and endure an hour long car ride back to my house. I say endure because I sit up front with all of the eleven year olds, as the teenagers in the back are scary. Anyways, there is one eleven year old, Mathias(pronounced Matt-ee-ASS) who has a crush on me and every day his friends taunt him about it. He gives me candy before he gives anybody else candy and he always sits right behind me. He's cute, but my boyfriend is cuter.

At 7:00PM I am dropped off about 100 feet away from my new house. It is dark and cold but I make it into the house and have an amazing dinner/dessert/etc (that's for another blog) and call it a night after doing a tiny bit of American homework.

What a day!

My bus stop

Awesome vest!

This is the view from my window

LUNCH, YUMMM

Super cute house next to my school

Old lonely widow's house

"smoking kills"

Saddest library in the world

The Current Trends in France

So Ive noticed some trends here in France. If one wants to be a fashionable young French person even when its 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside, there is a certain look you want to achieve. Step one, skinny jeans or bootcut jeans. Light wash or dark wash, it seems like everybody gets together and decides one week to only wear light colored jeans and the next week only wear dark colored jeans. I have rarely seen people wearing flared jeans unless they are unfashionable boys. Step two, little vans-like shoes or ankle boots. Ive seen a lot of black calf-high boots as well, flat bottomed and well-heeled alike. Next, you wear any kind of shirt with a small cardigan or sweater over that, and over all of that you have to wear a long black peacoat, or else you will stick out like a sore thumb. (I stick out like a sore thumb here with all of my warm gray jackets, no one wears gray here) Finally, you finish your outfit with a FAT scarf. The bigger, the better. And if you can wrap it around your neck three times or so and still have enough scarf to tie in a knot in front of you, all the better. Major plus points! Your scarf can be either black or white, unless youre wearing a small normal sized scarf which can be any color. I have to mention that these are rules for both sexes, girl and  boy. In fact, Ive noticed boys wearing larger wooly scarves then girls. Oh, and black is the color of the season. No black? Thats whack.
If you shop at H&M, youre cool. If you shop at the local French version of Walmart, known as the Super U, youre not so cool, as your clothes might get cheese stink on them when all thrown together in a shopping cart.

Another amusing trend I have noticed is the ugly christmas sweater trend and the wooly grandma cardigans. Now, I personally love ugly christmas sweaters and wooly grandma cardigans, but I know others feel differently about the stylishness of these things. My point is: Kaylyn Sims, I am not unfashionable for wearing grandma sweaters. And you were right about the uggs, no one wears them here except the New Zealander, but hey, she's from New Zealand.

The other weekend I made sure to purchase myself a fat wooly scarf so I could be like everybody else. I was difficult finding a white long sleeved t-shirt with thin black stripes, as that is very French as well but maybe I will get lucky when I go to Paris.

Seriously

Ill try and take some sly pictures of my class mates for another blog post....

The Area I live, French Humboldt

The place where I live is basically the French version of McKinleyville and the Arcata bottoms. I am surrounded by farms and farm animals. The roads are incredibly narrow, and I'm very impressed with the ease that the gigantic school buses maneuver through them. Many times I catch myself cringing, expecting a collision with a pole or a tree but the bus driver just dances around it like the bus is a bicycle...
Something very bizarre about France is that the sun comes up extremely late in the morning. The sun rises around 7:30 in California but here, it rises around 9 and sets by 7. The days are extremely short and very cold.... its funny because my school is so long that I get to school when it is dark and I leave my school when it is dark. School here is totally different than American school; French school is going to take up a whole blog on its own.
Yesterday I went on a bike ride with my host-brother Noé. I saw lots of sheep and a very strange type of tree ornament. The little town next to where I live is called "Le Temple-de-Bretagne", and there are 5 little shops there.
It's incredibly cold here, sometimes it is 30 degrees Fahrenheit at midday, but I've heard that it never snows. Super!!
The other day at school while I was waiting for the bus, a horse and buggy went down the street in front of me. This was no tourist attraction, not at all. It was just two dudes having a good time going where they wanted to go. I thought "at last I know I am in France". There are other obvious signs of where I am in the world, like how I'm eating cheese all of the time, especially old and salty cheeses. (But I don't prefer those, I like the chevre) I also have nutella at least once every day with something, and the lunches at my school are amazing. I eat so much food at lunch here, as it is supposed to be the biggest meal of the day in France. I always take the fish and whatever sort of delicious vegetable they are serving. I'll take some pictures of the incredible lunch food. But there are cheeses and fruits and yogurts... speaking of yogurt, my host-mother makes some pretty awesome yogurt, among other things.

Tonight I tried Andouille sausage for the first time. It tasted like a farm, like the smell of a pigs pen. Later I found out that Andouille sausage is actually ground up pig intestine. I kindly let my host-family know that I didn't like the sausage even when I didn't know what it was... Many more food adventures to come I think. I will be trying escargots and frog's legs....
So my first week here is almost over and I am finally settling in. By no means can I understand everything that people are saying, but I know that I will improve. While I am on the subject of language I have to mention that my awesome host-father and I started the same incredibly difficult calculus problem and we both came up with the same answers so... as a nod to Ms. Susavilla, math can be pretty cool sometimes. I suppose it is a language that can be understood by all... I am just pretty excited that my host-dad can do calculus, maybe I won't fail my class the second semester...

my bed

this is where my scarves live now...

Some proof that I'm in France

As you can see, this place is very similar to the Arcata Bottoms

The Cheese selection in the French version of Roger's Market, there's plenty more to the right too

A Church in Temple-De-Bretagne. Very old, very cool, and needs to be rotated

yummy, simple dessert. Eggs, sugar, and milk

A nasty phone booth in Temple-de-Bretagne. xD

I have to mention that right now in France everybody is super crazy because of the "Soldes". The word "solde" is French for sale. In France, there are sales at preset times every year, and for the rest of the year everything is full price. No ever-present sale rack in France land... What happens is that at the end of a season the stores mark down all of the clothes in order to make room for the new clothes of the coming season. The sales, like all sales all over the world, are full of hit or miss clothing. I bought a fat scarf on sale for 6 euros. Right now, humongously long and thick scarves are TOTALLY fashionable in France right now. I'd never seen scarves as huge as the ones I've seen here. And me, being a lover of all things soft and thick, had to buy one. It's black but it gets the job done, I can wrap it around my neck quite a few times and tie it in a knot in front of me and it still hangs to my belly button... love the fat scarves here. I didn't buy anything else because I'm a penny-pincher and hate spending my money on clothes...

This is my new adorable French home situation on a lot of acreage used mainly for horse pasture....  My room is the top floor, where the central window is. The red things are shutters that are for protection as well as asthetics, at night they are closed and at daybreak they are opened. Note: Everyone here has shutters.

This is my new brother Noe. (Pronouned know-AY) He is eleven and loves Kesha.

Perrine and I on the tram in Nantes, heading towards the Soldes!!!

The French know how to do some tight graffiti

That's the Black Eyed peas on the TV there.

I don't know if you can see the bags full of colored sand hanging from the branches of the tree, but that's what those things are. Bags of colored sand. I thought it was interesting...

 A regional specialty of Alsace that is incredible... super thin crust with fromage blanc, thinly sliced potatoes, a ton of onion, and little pieces of ham. Everyone must try this some day, it's incredible French pizza.

International Travel Limbo

(note: I am writing this during school in my French Literature class. I don't have to do anything in this class, in fact, the class is going to go see an American film tomorrow. I guess it has something to do with what they are studying.... I will do another post on the school later)

Anyways, international travel limbo... in a nutshell, it was a day and a half of trying to sleep and hoping that we were following the right sign. But this blog isn't about nutshells, its about the big picture.
So Camille and I commenced our journey at the Sacramento international airport. It wasnt crowded at all and going through security was extremely low key. After a tearful goodbye to my mom, Camille and I went up an escalator and into the security check. I was surprised that I did not get any curious looks from people because I was carting around a sloth doll. I know that I would have given myself a curious look. Security took 4 minutes, and i didnt even have to take off my shoes, but I still did because I thought that we had to. We waited in the gate for fifteen minutes or so and then we boarded the plane. The flight to Chicago was only three and a half hours long. The airplane played "The Office" and "You Again" on their dvd players. The man sitting next to Camille and I was from Chicago and he suggested that we should have a Chicago -style hot dog while were there. I unfortunately never got to try one...

So we arrived in Chicago and we had about forty five minutes to walk about until we had to board our next plane. We looked at the food options and Camille bought a very dry croissant. I had nothing because I was looking forward to my special vegetarian meal that I had requested when we bought our tickets. When I went to the bathroom I accidentally walked in on a tiny Asian women doing her business. She shouted at me in some language and I just hid in another stall until she left. After this is when the near disaster happened. Somehow we lost track of time and went to our gate fifteen minutes before the plane was scheduled to take off. Alright, I know exactly how we lost trqck of time, we just didn't check our cell phones. Plain and simple. So we arrived at our gate and sat down. There wwas a handful of other people at the gate and I found this to be very strange and thought that we were somehow early... we werent. The man in charge of the gate announced over his speaker, with attitude, "last call for boarding the flight to paris" while staring directly at Camille and I. Camille and I freaked out and ran to our airplane, leaving a trail of destruction in our wake. (I just accidentally knocked over a marquee pole) We made it in time, but we had to put our carry on in first class as there was no more room in second class, what a shame right?

The flight was long, but the view out the window had moments of pure magnificence. I was so hungry by the end of the flight that the clouds underneath us started to resemble croissants. We arrived in Paris at 9AM and I hadnt slept at all since the previous night. Neither had Camille, and we had even taken mild sleeping pills in an attempt to get some sleep in. The airport wasnt hard to navigate and the entirety of customs was just a French man stamping my passport. Seriously. No questionnaires asking me about my purpose there or whether or not I brought in any food or had any inclinations to commit acts of terror. Just a quick glance and a stamp. Then Camille and I followed the signs to baggage claim that took us all around the airport, through two escalator tunnels, up a floor, and finally to one area solely reserved for all of the different baggage claim roundabouts. The pilot had told us we were baggage claim number 2, and immediately upon arriving at number 2 I saw and grabbed my baggage and pretty soon after Camille had hers too. Easy peasy. After we had our baggage we followed the signs to the shuttle to terminal 2, where the train station is. We got our train tickets from a helpful woman who convinced us to buy first class tickets and then we waited around until 1:16 for our train.

We got on the right train and found ourself in Nantes. Then I went to Perrine's house and the rest is for another blog....

Pictures:

In the sacramento airport

Me in the airport with the sloth

on the airplane to Paris

the view of France from the plane

The machine that would not accept my visa card, so  I had to buy my train tickets from a real french person

You cant see it, but in the upper right corner there is a green package with a waffle inside... hah...

When one travels by train, one knows where the train will arrive only fifteen minutes prior to its arrival. Camille and I stood in front of this sign thing for forty five minutes waiting for the train information.

here we are riding first class in the train. Yup, thats France in the background.

Sam, in France?

So here I am, sitting in a room at the Embassy Suites and I am about to go on the biggest adventure of my short lifetime. The bundle of emotions inside of me is tangled and complex... in a nutshell, I'm over the moon! (Yeah, no one says that except for pregnant celebrities but I have a blog now, I can do anything)

The most important thing for me to do right now is to switch mental states from "leaving my home", which is very sad and sob-inducing, to "adventuring in France", which is whimsical. Hopefully once I step foot on the airplane that will take me to Paris the mental change will be made.
So far, there shouldn't be any delays for my flights and my main baggage is under 50 pounds. My backpack is stuffed with books, skirts, a camera, french-english dictionaries and a very adorable sloth doll. Why a sloth, you might ask? Because sloths are underrated and deserve as much love as puppies. That's why.
So, here is my first blog post. It's short and not very interesting, but I haven't left yet. That's when things will pick up!!!!! Next installment will be on "INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL LIMBOOOOOOO".

Our hotel room has a literal "living room". Ashley, this place is bigger than your apartment!:P

The 'brave' adventurer

Interesting bed, amirite?

 Well friends, here we go!!!!!!