My First Week Back!

After two weeks of solitude, I must say that this monday I was yearning to get back to school, and boy was my anticipation rewarded! My first week back was a wonderful week, and despite some *ahem* unfortunate occurences, I had a fabulous time! The first lovely event to take place was a shopping day in Rennes! Since Wednesdays are half days at our school, I invited my friends Alisa and Daniela to come with me into Rennes to visit our friend Renca who just moved to Rennes! Alisa, Daniela and Renca are also exchange students (that's how we met!) we don't have any classes together, so we thought we might like to get to know eachother better through a little shopping trip! Alisa is from Finland, Daniela from Mexico, and Renca from Slovakia and though they all speak English (I know, I feel like such a language failure compared to them!) we prefered to speak in French, though they did help me with some tricky vocabulary!

From the Right: Renca, Daniela and Alisa

We had a blast! While in Rennes, we got lunch at a local Kebab diner and then we took to the streets, ambling about into all of the stores and malls we could find! I personally scored a super cute high waisted skirt, earrings and a headband! Fun fact: Kebab's are quite different in France than in the USA. They are not in fact various food items impaled and grilled on a stick, they are toasted sandwhiches filled with tomatoes, lettuce and pork scraped off a giant cylinder of meat and served with fries. Yummmm...

Thank you for the pics, internet!

 

Another awesome thing that happened was a surprise outing with my friends! On Tuesday, Chloé, Margaux, Morganne, Pauline and I hopped off to the nearby Super U (grocery store) and bought a giant bag of chocolate chip madeleines and two giant packages of Twix and KitKats! We then settled down in an ajacent green area and played some candy-based games! Well, they weren't exactly games, we just quizzed eachother on our personalities, and rewarded ourselves with sweets... Whatever, it was delicious! One thing I found really funny was that we could just go buy madeleines at the grocery store! Madeleines are a type of fluffy, moist french pastry a kind of cross between a muffin and a cookie. They are beyond delicious, but in America if you want some madeleines, you have to bake them yourself! At Super U, not only were there bags of them for sale, but there were over 6 varieties! Plain, chocolate chip, jumbo, mini, jumbo chocolate chip etc. It was fabuous.

Something that really made my week was our new unit in math: limits. You may recall that in an earlier post I compared myself to Lindsay Lohann's character in Mean Girls (only obviously there are no mean girls in my friend group!) I'm a foreigner, quite adorably innocent (if I do say so myself), and comparatively very good at math (I'm about 2-3 years ahead of my classmates, since the cirriculum is different, they are learning concepts that I learned 3 years ago, but also some concepts that I am unfamiliar with). Well, the final piece of the puzzle just fell into place. Limits. I just can't wait to find my KDJFD and yell "the Limit does not exist!" at a Mathletes tournament. Unfortunately, there is no Mathletes team at Châteaubriand, so this might be difficult to bring about...

 

Now we come to the not-so-fabulous part of my week, I got lice. Yes, it was awful. I have no idea how I got it, and I don't intend on going into the gory details with you, especially since I'm sure you want to skip this paragraph anyway. Luckily for me, I only had the little parasites for about 2-4 days before I successfully rid them from my poor scalp. And thought this experience pretty much sucked (no pun intende - heehee, lice suck blood... See what I did there? Again, not intended) it did have some surprisingly good outcomes. I know, it's pretty hard to believe that a case of lice has any good outcomes at all, but it's true. Since it is nearly impossible to check your own head for lice, Odile helped me out by picking through my hair every night to check on my progression on Mission: Kill those Nasty Buggers. Though it was not a pleasant business, I have to say it really brought us together. Nothing can create a motherly bond like a nice case of bloodsucking parasites!

This was essentially me for 4 days.

 

"I will kill you, lice, and your entire family too!"

Wow, that got very dark, very quick... I swear, I am a sane lice-hater!

I also learned a fun fact this week: French people don't all eat snails and frog legs! I have to say, I was legitimately surprised. Though I have not eaten frog's legs here (yet), it seems like a pretty logical plate to me, I mean, it's just a different kind of meat! Like chicken wings, or drumsticks. However, when my enlish teacher asked the class who had eaten frog legs, only 3 people raised their hands! My class was about 20 that day, so it was a notable minority. Next, she asked who had eaten snails, only 4 people raised their hands, and one of those 4 was me! I was especially surprised at this revelation because, not only had I just tried snails that past weekend (and enjoyed them), but my host family loves snails! In their family (and French tradition) snails or "escargot" are a Christmas treat, much as a Christmas ham is celebrated in America. So, it would turn out that another French stereotype is crushed. Bam. But hey, don't worry, there are still some famous beliefs about French culture that are true! Baguettes are a staple dietary element, black is always in style, and the food is delectable (even snails!).

Yesterday was the icing on the cake that was this magnificent week (BAM, you've just been metaphored). By the combined powers of the absence of my history teacher (she is in Louisiana with some students from my class. There are also students visiting Norway right now! Our numbers are dwindling...) and my kick-bottom school schedule, I found myself with only 3 hours of courses yesterday: Science, Science and English. While the first 2 free hours of the day I used to catch up with my favorite French magazine (Phosphore) and my current favorite band (Dawes), the last 2 hours of the day I spent on a spectacular journey with Chloé and Morganne (Margaux and Pauline left for Norway Friday morning!)

 As usual, our lovely activities were centered around food, chocolate topped biscuits and peach iced-tea to be exact. Once acquiring said snacks we progressed to enjoy a picnic by the lake that is situated 3 blocks from the school. It was a pretty simple outing (filled with talk of Harry Potter, AC DC and extreme sports - THAT'S RIGHT, WE'RE AWESOME) but for me, it represented my friendship with them.

Two weeks ago, I was fretful because I thought I didn't have any real friends here in France, but this little junket really proved to me that I do! It really is the little things that are the best because small hangouts like this are what make France feel like home for me. I'm just so happy that I have made connections like these, and I can't get over how much I enjoy being (as close as possible to) a regular student at Châteaubriand and not that strange foreign exchange student who can't talk. (Okay, that still happens sometimes, but now at least I can explain to my friends that some days I just seem to forget the language!)

During this outing, I think something clicked in my brain. Whereas usually my speech in French is slow and limited in content (not very funny, not whimsical or spontaneous) during this outing my French seemed to evolve. While talking about Harry Potter, I found myself able to speak my mind quicker and more easily. Maybe it was the liberating topic (let's be honest, most of us have more to say about Ron and Hermione's relationship than about our personal lives. Or maybe that's just me...) or maybe it was just being able to hang out in a small, comfortable group, but suddenly my French just... Stepped up? I really can't explain it. Maybe I stopped translating in my head. Maybe I finally learned how to deduce word meanings from context. I don't know what happened, but it was amazing. I hope that this revelation is permanent, and so far it has been. Ever since then, my French has come easier and my opinions have really shined through (oops, there goes the Bella filter!) I really hope that come Monday, my French will prove to have actually taken this step.

Also, I realized that the chocolate topped biscuits would be PERFECT to make s'mores!

You know what this means. S'mores party, with a Chubby Bunny contest!

Sidenote: Chloé and Margaux both love manga, especially this one series called "Drôles de Racailles" which translates loosely to "Weird Stories of Rebels". It features two groups of friends, nerds (hey, that's me!) and gangsters (also me, obviously) and the quaint little love triangles that pop up between them. I've never read manga before, but I'm thinking of trying out a few of these books, since French novels are proving a bit too difficult for me.

ALSO!
Superdy-Duperdy Fun Announcement!
I had my first dream in French this week! Now, it wasn't anything impressive (It lasted only about 10 seconds and featured someone asking me what my goal in France is) but I woke up and basically fist-pumped the whole day. But now come to think of it, I may have been fist-pumping because in my previous dream One Direction played at my birthday party... Whatever, I hold that the two dreams are about equal in magnitude.