When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then, take half the clothes and twice the money. ~ Anonymous

The gondolas of Italy, the UN building in Switzerland, snow on the Alps.  What do these three things have in common?  They were all included in EuroTour 2012!

Yes, the second and final bus trip of the year has come and gone, but what a week!  It was on this exchange that I entered Europe for the first time.  Now, less than a year later, I can say I’ve visited France, Spain, Germany, The Republic of Czech, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria.  With tour guides and free time in a different city every day and little to no sleep in between, “tiring” would be a suitable adjective for the 12-day trip.  But the words “fun”, “intriguing” and “memorable” also make it on the list.

The weather was all over the place.  Cloudy with rain; snow, even, in some parts of France!  Thankfully, the weather cooperated for my favorite part of the tour:  Venice!

My idea of Venice was formed by the descriptions present in two books; “The Thief Lord” by Cornelia Funke and “City of Masks” by Mary Hoffman.  The city I saw could have waltzed directly from the pages.  Streets and buildings divided by robin-egg blue water.   Hand-painted masks and costumed street performers at every corner.  Jet-black gondolas and live music at every café!  The city is built of white stone and in the sun that day the city shone.  A breath-taking daytrip that put Italy on my bucket list of countries I must return to one day.

Another  major part of travelling like this, when one visits a new country every day, is the food!  Every day there was a speciality: gelato and pizza in Italy, la tartiflette in the Alps, chocolate in Switzerland.  Everything was so good, and I am intrigued to look up some recipes online.  Needless to say, however, I added running into my weekly schedule upon returning to France.

I am a person who likes to see what any given situation has taught me, and how it has made me grow.  EuroTour 2012 taught me two things:

Any travel is good, because it always ends up broadening your horizons as well as teaching you more about yourself and what you want from your future.  Even the briefest stay has its benefits.  I spent a single day in any given country on the trip, but already I am looking into job opportunities with the UN, learning new recipes with which to impress my family and friends, and planning another trip to Italy for some time in my life.

I do not have to travel around the world to experience (my) life’s greatest pleasures.  Long rides on the bus, hanging out with friends, drawing, dancing, music, rides at an amusement park, sunny days, Starbucks.  All these things made up some of the highlights of my trip.  However, all these things could be found anywhere in the world, from Nuremberg, Germany, to Chilliwack, British Columbia. 

Travel will always be a vital part of my life, but this trip made me realize that adventure does not end with exchange.  It’s wherever I want it to be.

 

"Time spent with cats is never wasted." ~Colette

So in one week it seems as if France has jumped from able-to-see-your-breath-it's-so-cold winter to +20 ° celcius summer.  I unwittingly spent yesterday in three-quarter leggings and as a result have a very defined tan-line about mild-calf.  Will be spending today outside in bicycle shorts to remedy said situation.  But I digress.  On to more important issues!!

The biggest recent event in my life is that I have switched houses, and am now installed in my third (and last) family.  The date of the change wasn't confirmed until about a week ago, and so I wasn't given a whole lot of time to mentally prepare for it, let alone physically!!  (Meaning:  procrastinating until the morning of the move to pack.)  It was hard for me to "let go" of the last house; the three months I spent there were fun and they went by so so fast, I never considered the proposition of leaving until it was practically dancing naked in front of my nose.

But once I had come to grips with it, the excitement set in fast.  The thrill and challenge of moving and integrating myself into a new family never gets old!  My family consists of Frederic and Anne-Katherine, who are my dad- and mom-figures.  I also have a host-sister, Hortense, who is in the same niveau at school as me.  And then there's Pilou, the cat, and Lazzie, the pony.  In the almost-24-hours I've been here I've attended my host-parents' cocktail party and I've been to the stables my host-mom and sisters ride at to meet their pony and eat lunch with the other riders.

Can I even begin to express how pumped I am about living with a cat in the house again?  Let me just say that I miss my cat Rocco to DEATH, just seeing Pilou walk around the house makes me want to explode in joy, and if this exchange has taught me anything it is that, if I live to be old, I am destined to be The Cat-Lady.

Other than that: Sun.  I'm going tanning.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. ~E. E. Cummings

There are robins hopping about in the garden and daffodils in the vase on the kitchen table.  Happy 1st Day of Spring, everyone!!  It's the time of year that makes me feel like I can't breath deeply enough, as well as super-guilty about being on the internet while the sun shines outside.  According to the International Astonomical Union, I have officially experienced every season of the year while in France.

To celebrate, I have documented in list-form some of the best things I have discovered in this country inside of the four seasons I have spent here:


50 Things That Are Awesome About France
(in order of which they pop into my head)


1.  Cappuccinos from the coffee machine at school
2.  The shower at the Gonzalez's house
3.  Cobblestone streets (but only when I'm not in heels)
4.  Boys who wear pants that ACTUALLY FIT
5.  The aisle at Leclair dedicated entirely to dark chocolate
6.  Le Bois Butte
7.  White cows
8.  The ocean being 1 hour away
9.  Les soldes in February
10.  The artist's square in Paris
11.  French fashion
12.  Oral comprehension tests in English class
13.  Festive baguettes still hot from the boulangerie
14.  Bakeries distributed as densely as Starbucks in Vancouver
15.  Randomly celebrating with ice creams at Le Pole Nord
16.  Discovering great foriegn music
17.  The Golden Tree in the Valley of No Return
18.  Castles by the sea
19.  Riding the Tibus on a sunny day through the countryside
20.  Talking about someone right beside me because they can't understand in English
21.  The bluntness of the French
22.  Renewed appreciation for the English Language
23.  Exchanging sketchbooks with classmates at lunchtime
24.  Chocolate and pistachio macarons
25.  Bike rides through town
26.  The castle on a hill in Lehon
27.  Receiving allowance at the beginning of the month
28.  That hot chocolate in St Malo
29.  Horse-back riding on Sunday mornings
30.  The Christmas market in Nantes
31.  The Red Light District in Paris
32.  Active druidism
33.  3-hour art class on Thursdays
34.  Access to all the coffee I want.  Anytime.  Always.
35.  Live music in the restaurants
36.  My classy, faux-diamond-studded Eiffel Tower lighter  (before anyone comments, I do not smoke.  It was just pretty.)
37.  The last 5 minutes of school on Friday
38.  Small dogs in bicycle baskets
39.  French-style high heel shoes
40.  Listening to my class speak English
41.  L'assiette gourmande with an espresso
42.  Watching the Eiffel Tower light up from over the Seine
43.  The view of the river from the English Garden
44.  Adopting trendy French expressions
45.  Pimkie, the clothing store
46.  Elle and Marie Claire magazine, french edition
47.  Sour fruit-flavored Carambars
48.  Les creperies bretonnes
49.  The display window at La Fee Cabosse

Having saved the best for last, my absolute favorite thing about being in France as an Exchange Student is:

50.  Other Exchange Students

"Boy, those French. They have a different word for everything." ~ Steve Martin

Since our arrival in France, the Exchange students in my region have been anticipating the Paris-Barcelona BusTrip 2012, an 8-day ride that would take us to the capital of France, then south until we reached Barcelona, and back again. 

Arriving by train in Paris the 17 of February at 10am, we were off:  37 teenagers from around the world stuffed into a single bus and colored seven shades of Heaven because of it.  It began in Paris.  In three days we had climbed the Eiffel Tower, crowded the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and snapped (albeit 'illegal') pictures of our country's flag in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.  After a night spent in the south of France, we were due west, for Spain.

The memories of the stay in Barcelona are a blur; I can't tell you what we did when without consulting my journal.  For three nights we stayed in the fanciest hotel I've ever been in; huge pool (though we weren't allowed to swim...) buffet for breakfast and dinner, and there was a nightclub, too!  Besides that, evenings in the hotel were spent dancing and ambushing an unassuming Exchange Student in the hall; consequently robbing him of entire macaron collection.  The days were spent in a Soccer Hall of Fame (forgot the name), two art museums (The Museum of Picasso and the Museum of Dali, both of which I ended up enjoying more than the Louvre), at a Hard Rock cafe eating my first burger in 6 months and wearing a t-shirt outside for the first time in what felt like forever.  Returning to the cold of France was about the worst part of ending the BusTrip, second only to saying goodbye to the other ESs.  But I wasn't done travelling yet.

Most students on the bus went on home after returning to the Paris train station, but Cassandra LaMarche and I had the good fortune to spend a couple extra days with a parisienne family.  That was brilliant, getting to know the city with the aid of a local, as opposed to a tour guide.  The days were packed.  We rode the metro, strolled about the Red Light district, browsed a couple shops on the street across from the Notre Dame, watched the Eiffel Tower light up from a bridge over the Seine, drank chocolat viennois at le Chat Noir and went out to a party with kids in the neighborhood.

Upon returning to Dinan, I was tired, had a LOT of laundry to do, and was generally happy to be home.  I have done so much living in this past month, though.  The voyage was great, now it's over.  But the experience...  Even as memory fails and photos fade, I will carry it with me always.  :)  Vive le Bustrip 2012!!

"Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from Hell." ~Anonymous

The bad news:  My laptop screen busted just after Christmas and the long process of getting it fixed has caused me to virtually disappear from the net for the last couple weeks.  The good news:  I'm back!  Though the laptop is still not functioning, I have braved the french keyboard to bring you Post #1 of 2012.

Two days after New Year's, I changed families.  My four months as part of the Pillittu's family was so much fun - truly a great time.  But I am loving it here at the Toublancs, as well.  My new host-mom, Carol, is an incredibly innovative home-decorater.  With the help of her globe-trotting daughters, plates from Rwanda, wooden elephants from India and decorative pasta from Italy are all fairly commonplace here.

I am a self-proclaimed movie fanatic, and so finding out Carol is a teacher at a cinema school in Rennes, where she teaches english to the future screenwriters and directors of France, was naturally very exciting for me.  Almost as exciting as the discovery of her extensive DVD collection!

By sharing my passion for film with Carol and flipping through the books she uses in her courses (I recommend The Little Black Book of Movies to anyone else interested in the subject)  I've been inspired to research a possible future career in the film industry.  In the meantime, I'm going to continue plugging away through all the DiCaprio movies in the Toublanc's possession.  The Departed is my favorite so far, even if it does have the saddest ending.

More Exciting Stuff:

Horseback riding!!  There's a stable practically down the road from where I live now; I'll be signing myself up for lessons this week.

Soldes!!  From the middle of January to the beginning of February, clothing stores throughout France host MASSIVE sales to get rid of last year's line to make room for the new one.  This means prices slashed by 50% -75%, everywhere!  Having recently developed a taste for french style, I cannot wait to hit Rennes next weekend with Cassandra and Marina.

Hot chocolate!!  Cause we got frost this morning for the first time this winter - And when is hot chocolate not exciting, anyway?