Sunday, 13 May 2012

When Exchange Students Come A'Calling


Last week-end 6 exchange students came to Dinan for a tour of Brittany, hosted by my friend Marie.  Having been sick at the start of the week, I only got to meeting up with them 3 days into their trip, but the 3 days we had left were PACKED!

It started with my calling up Marie Monday night, having cancelled on a party minutes before, to see if they were doing anything the following day.  Turns out I didn’t have to wait that long:  It was bowling night!

I got to Marie’s at 8pm and settled down with the other ESes; I heard about how the boat-ride had gone earlier in the day and helped with dinner.  And then we ate dinner.  And we took our time about it.  When we had finally cleared the table it was 11pm and we were a little tired.  After a quick vote however, we decided to go anyway.  It was the right decision.  I haven’t bowled in forever and as the night wore on my aim went increasingly off, but it was fun right through to 1am.  Getting home, I stumbled into bed, got a couple hours sleep and was up again at 9 the next morning.  Off to Dinard!

Dinard is a small town beside the sea, much like the more widely-known St Malo.  It was an overcast day and still way too cold to be frolicking on the beach, but Dinard does feature an indoor salt-water pool.  That’s where we were headed.

To be honest, I didn’t really see the point of a salt-water pool.  It was just like any regular swimming pool; only the water tasted bad and stung your eyes.  But the Jacuzzi was as good as any, and after swiping a couple floaties from the pool’s swim lesson stash, we had a good time finding different ways to abuse them.  (We even named some of our methods, such as the Magic Carpet and the Drowning Buddha.)

The rest of the day was relaxing; we ate, played with the dogs, watched tv, ate.  Normally, I would have had to have been looking forward to school the following day.  However, it being the last day the Eses were in town, I convinced my host-parents to let me take the day off to visit Rennes before they all caught their trains’ home.  Another mostly overcast day, and we didn’t do anything extraordinary – poked our heads into a couple shops and explored the gardens, then waited together for the trains to arrive.

And this part was interesting.  Because about half of the people I said good-bye to at the train station, I would never see again.  Some of them would be departing for their respective countries within the month!  And then I thought, well that’s not so odd, I have less than two months left now.

I still don’t know how I feel about this fact.  Only that it is a short time, and I had better make the most of it.

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