The Good Way To Celebrate Christmas

If there is one thing the French truly know how to do, it is eating.  Christmas Eve dinner consisted of:
Appetizers: Shrimp, oysters, pringles, SNAILS!!!!
2nd Appetizer: Shrimp soup- Yumm!!
Dinner: Quail, carrot, and something else
Dessert: Beignets, fruit salad, nougat ice cream
All over the course of about 3 hours.


After dinner, we played a dance game on the PS3. Valerie's family was there; her parents, and her sister with her sister's family.





Dinner was so much fun and it finally finished around 1 AM Christmas morning. We all went to bed and Gabriel woke us all up for presents at 9 AM. Valerie gave me a scarf and a matching hat and mittens. It was a lovely Christmas morning which I celebrated further by going back to sleep. I woke up around 11 and got ready to go to lunch. We went to a family friends house and thus began the longest lunch I have ever had, it was a lunch to envy those of the Shire.

Appetizers: Crab cakes, mini sandwiches, other assorted appetizers
2nd Appetizer: Foie gras (duck patée) sort of cat foodish, served with bread
3rd Appetizer: A fish thingamabob with gravy
In between courses: Strawberry sorbet with some kind of alcohol
Entree: Quail, beans, the equivalent of funeral potatoes
Cheese!
Fruit and beignets
Dessert: option of strawberry ice cream, chocolate, or chocolate nougat.
 Finished off with more fruit!

The meal lasted a total of 5 hours, yes, I said 5 HOURS, and afterwards I felt as though I wouldn't need to eat for the next century! The feeling only lasted until lunch the next day.

Jump forward to today, the 27th of December, one month before my departure.  I went and visited my friend Fathima for her sister's 10th birthday party. It was very fun! We ate lunch with our hands, played cards, had cake and opened presents. It was an overall perfect day!

Merry Christmas!

For Christmas this year, I will be in France (if you didn't already know.) I will be celebrating in Besancon with my host family. Tonight, Christmas eve, we are having a small party with the rest of my host family's family. I have purchased gifts for everyone and I am very excited to open presents tomorrow morning. I am pretty sure I will not receive any presents except for maybe my host mom but I love watching everyone open theirs! I plan on having a second Christmas with my family when I get back to Salt Lake, which is only 34 days away! I cannot believe how long I have been here, yesterday might as well have been my first day of school in France. The best thing about being on vacation at the same time as my friends in the United States is that I can now Skype more often! I have now Skyped my parents and two of my three best friends. Skyping is the best present ever! Anyways, happy holidays!

It's Christmas Vacation!

This week should have been stressful but I never really felt it. I had a take home test due Monday, 10 hour long school day on Tuesday, pop quiz on Wednesday, big history test on Thursday, and to top it all off, I just finished my french test this afternoon. Somehow, even with all of that, the week flew by. Probably because now, I am on vacation! Two weeks of pure fun which I plan to thoroughly enjoy. I am hoping to go to Strasbourg for a day but that isn't set in stone. I will spend Christmas here, in Besancon with my host family, and I am hoping to celebrate new years with some girls on my soccer team.
After the vacation, I only have three weeks left in France. Three weeks! I am finding it hard to describe how I feel about that; happy, excited, sad, scared, nervous, relieved, I guess it is a mix of all of them.

There are only four days until Christmas but I am not quite feeling the spirit. No snow, no Christmas carols, no setting up the tree with my brother and sister, no delicious packages from my dad's work. It will be a new experience for me to not have Christmas with my family but that will just be postponed to January 27th. I have many things to be grateful for this holiday season; France, friends, a nice home with a nice family, delicious French food :) Also, until google just informed me otherwise, I thought grateful was spelled "greatfull" but turns out I was wrong, even in France I am learning English!

School is going absolutely amazing, I totally understand math, French is getting easier and I have successfully memorized all of the figures of style. History is really interesting because I just learned about WWII from Europe's perspective.  German class has just taken a turn for the better! I wrote an entire page about myself in German during class today. I showed it to the teacher and she was very impressed, my friend Ardi told me that most of the students in the class probably couldn't write as well as I had. I'm not sure I believe him but it was a nice compliment all the same. Overall, my teachers are very nice! They are always really helpful and they are all very impressed by how hard I am working.

I am so very happy it is vacation and I am very excited to experience all the new things there are for me in France during these last few weeks. I am sad that there is only about a month left until I have to leave this beautiful city and all of its very nice inhabitants. These last four months have absolutely flown by!

Soccer Surprise!

The absolute comfiest chairs

Yesterday was pretty darn awesome. My soccer coach had us all meet at the locker room at 4 o'clock after school (or during school for some of the girls). After meeting, we went walked out to the front of the school and got on a bus. Mr. Barbaux never told any of us where we were going, we only knew we wouldn't return until 10 PM. The adventure had begun! We drove for almost an hour and by that time the sun had set. We arrived in Montbeliard and soon pulled into a movie theater parking lot. As it turned out, we were going to the premier of a film; the legit premier- with all the actors and directors. The film is called "Comme un Lion" and it is a story about a 16 year old boy from Africa who is recruited for Paris' soccer team but when he arrived in Paris, he found out that Paris didn't want to let him on the team. He was alone, penniless, and homeless in Paris. Long story short; he found his way to Montbeliard where he joined a club team by walking onto the field and joining the practice. Eventually, he joined Sochaux and went on to beat Paris in a match. It was a very good film and it was fun to watch the movie and then play "spot-the-actor." After the film, there was a complementary food array as well as wine and other assorted drinks.

Taking pictures with the cast :)

 After the movie and snacks, we went to dinner. We went to the absolute nicest, classiest, oddly expensive restaurant: McDonalds. 

Most expensive McDs' menu I have ever seen

I'm lovin' it!

Finally, we got back to the high school at 11:15PM which was far too late for my preferences. Today I had a 10 hour school day and about 7 hours of sleep.

Me in all my almost 6 feet glory

Okay, maybe it is just me but I think this picture is pretty comical. These girls are all my age... and a head shorter than me. This picture is from the Strasbourg game.

My Week

          This week was pretty standard, except my history teacher was absent for the whole week which meant no history class. I had a test on Monday in math and a test on Tuesday in German. I left the math test feeling really good about myself and, if you read my last post, you will know that I did really well. In fact, I got the best score in the class!  I think I prefer the French grading system because it shows how hard a class was as well has how well you did comparatively. The lower the average for the class, the harder the class was, and if you are above the average, that demonstrates how well you performed.

          Thursday I only had courses from 8-11:30. At 11:30, I left school and headed straight to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. I managed to find a gift for my host sister, my younger host brother, and my host mom. I have yet to find a gift for Pierre, I am thinking the book, the Hobbit... 

Yesterday, I went on a mission for my dad; I visited 5 different car dealerships and asked them for the kilometers per liters for their biggest, smallest, and average size cars. It was quite a challenge to ask for the data in French but I succeeded! For one of the cars, the mileage was 61 miles to the gallon, while in the same car, sold in the U.S. was about 40 miles to the gallon. Correct me if I got those numbers wrong dad!  I left for my expedition to the dealerships after lunch and shortly after I started feeling car sick on the bus. I felt like that for the whole day until I finally figured out I had food poisoning :/. I feel a lot better now but I am still committed to my bed for the day. 

Succeeding in Math :)

Right now I really should be working on my homework for English but I just had to tell everyone the amazing news! I got a 17/20 on my math test, the best in the class. The average for the class was approximately 12/20. Although, my day was dampened by a 3/20 in German, anything better than zero is good enough for me.  Now I really have to work on my English assignment.

Side note..

Quick note, here is a link to an article that I just found. It is in French but it is about me! It is the absolute worst picture of me but that is what happens when you have your photo taken after a two hour soccer practice.  Article on me!!

My Weekend And A Glance At My Week

I had a great weekend. Saturday I went and saw the new Twilight movie. I have no problem admitting that I have read and enjoyed the books, and have seen and tolerated all of the movies. I use the word "tolerated" for the movies because something about Kristen Stewart's acting just bugs me, the good news is, Twilight was dubbed over in French and I definitely prefer the dubbed voice of Isabella Swan. Enough about the movie, let's talk about the popcorn. When my friend Sophie asked me if I wanted popcorn, I was like YES. The French have an uncanny ability to take American things such as KFC and turn it French. They did the same thing with popcorn. Instead of butter (Sophie looked at me like I was insane when I suggested it) they use sugar. They must cook it in sugar because the sugar is melted into the popcorn. It is really tasty, although it was a bit weird to not be eating classic buttery theater popcorn in a movie theater. 

That was my Saturday, and my Sunday was even more fun! I went snowboarding! Well, Pierre snowboarded and I mostly went down the mountain on my butt. J'ai mal au fesse! We went to Metabief, which is right on the French-Swiss border. There is truly something amazing about dismounting a chairlift (without falling down,) looking left and seeing Switzerland, looking right and seeing France. I had so much fun today and I am very thankful to my host family for taking me with them! 

Switzerland!

This school week promises to be just as good as last week. I don't have my first period tomorrow morning so my day starts at 9 instead of 8. Then, Wednesday, I have school from 9:30-12. My short Wednesday is followed by another short Thursday (from 8-11:30.) Another super short week! I only have 5 weeks of school left and I can tell they are going to pass by in a blur. 

Snow!

The French have an amazing system. Working is not their first priority. Whenever there is an excuse to not work, the French use it. Right now it is snowing outside, there is about 2 inches of snow-fort, snowball ready snow. Two inches and everything seems to stop. In fact, things actually stop. I went to school this morning, had one hour of math then I went to history; the teacher was absent, then German; the teacher was absent, went to the bus stop; no buses showed up. On my walk home I found the buses. They were stopped mid-drive in the road. It looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, all the vehicles stopped and deserted by their drivers. The only thing I have to do today is one hour of French class from 3-4 PM. No school Wednesday, total of two and a half hours of class yesterday, two hours of class today, BEST WEEK EVER.

Lycee Pergaud vs. Strasbourg

Well, we lost. 

The half time score was 1-0 and the final score was 5-0. I was in goal the entire time but I had no chance of saving any of them. My team never even had a shot on goal. The game was mostly played in front of my goal. Even when my drop kicks would clear the heads of the other team's defense, it only stayed at the other end of the field for about 15 seconds. I played really well and my coach singled me out a couple times in his end of the game speech saying how well I played and how I stayed positive. The other team was clearly better than us, they clearly wanted the win more than us, but my team fought hard and that is why I love them. The three hour bus ride home was somber for about the first 10 minutes then all chaos seemed to break loose. My friend, Camille, tackled me but then fell onto the floor where she was promptly stuck between the seats. After that there was an episode of stealing each others' socks... And then Juliette and Julie got into a water fight with my water bottle. The water fight led to a more interesting episode of stealing each others' shirts. Juliette's shirt was soaked so she enlisted the help the girls around her to steal Julie's nice, warm, dry shirt. Meanwhile, I was stuck under the seat having my right sock stolen and my left foot tickled. Oh man, let's just say it was an interesting bus ride. 

All in all, a fun day with a disappointing loss. I was hoping to be the champion of France! 

It is Tuesday and it might as well be Friday

Oh man, amazing week! Monday was a blur, Tuesday went by oddly fast for a ten hour school day, and tomorrow, no school! Tomorrow I have a soccer game in Strasbourg in the region of Alsace. We will be leaving at 8 in the morning and returning a full 12 hours later. The game is kind of like state cup except for it is for the whole country. If *ahem* when we win, we will proceed to the next round and play against the top team from a different region. I will be playing goalkeeper even though there are 3 other non-injured goalkeepers. I am very nervous for this game! 
After my no-school-Wednesday, I have my most-of-my-teachers-are-absent-Thursday. My morning will start at 9 AM because my English teacher will be absent, then I will have two and a half hours of courses, finishing at 11:30 AM. Friday is normal except my day will be cut one hour short because my French teacher will be- wait for it- absent. This week already feels like it is over and it is still Tuesday!
After this week, I only have 5 more weeks of school, five! That is all! This is absolutely flying by! 
Wish me luck for tomorrow and hope I decide not to write a play by play!