3 Days Before Christmas??

Pictures:

1) Snow!!

2) Macaroons (with holes:( , they will be better next time!)

3) Three of the Seven Dwarfs at the Marché de Noel

4) Marché de Noel

5) Temple of Cheese (!!!) at the Marché de Noel

It is now the 22nd of December. It really doesnt feel like it. We havent been doing many Christmas-y things yet. Today I am planning on making sugar cookies for Christmas Eve at Champagny, because they are the most traditional thing I can think of other than gingerbread.

Sophia came got to Lyon on Saturday and stayed up until Last night (Monday night). It was fun, we watched a lot of movies, in French and in English. We watched The Da Vinci Code, National Treasure Book of Secrets, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Happy Feet, and then we went to the theater and saw Avatar:) We also played a lot of card games and went to the Marché de Noel.

Last night Ingrid invited me to dinner at her house. Chloé and Claire also came, and we ate dinner with her mom and two brothers. She made 'mustard noodles' (translated into English) because we had already eaten it one at Chloés house, but it wasnt very good because we were missing some ingredients and were pressed for time, so Ingrid wanted to make it for us to show us that it can be good. And it was! We played fooseball ('babyfoot' in French) and a card game called Cums, I got home around midnight.

Tomorrow we leave for Champagny to get there one day before Christmas Eve to help set up. There will supposedly be 28 people this year, all staying for three days in one house. Then we come back to Lyon on Saturday. Stay here for a day or so and then head up to Groix (small Island in Bretagne) for New Years.

Merry Christmas and Happy News Years everyone!!!

Vacances!

Christmas vacation is here!! I have 16 days to eat and not do homework :) So after Tuesday, I was pretty excited about the blocus...and the fact that we maybe wouldnt have school for the rest of the week. Too bad that didnt happen. There were some kids standing in front of the school on Wednesday, but not doing anything. Then Thursday there were more kids, but they werent keeping kids from going into the school...they just booed when people entered!! Then Friday the big gate was open (it was previously not open because the school authorities were afraid the kids would go in and set trash cans on fire, etc. like they did last year!) which meant blocus was officially over. Now, the reason for the blocus. Every year (this is what I understand, which may not make it completely true!) right before Christmas vacation, the French school authorities decide they need to change something about how the school is run. They dont vote, so if they kids decide they dont like what the authorities want to change, they strike, stand in front of the school and sometimes become very violent. Last year the whole school was shut down the week before vacation because a bunch of kids (some even came from other schools) stood infront on my school (Lycée Lacassagne) to protest, and they were so violent there were 10 police cars there. It was from this story that I got excited, thinking we might get an extra week of vacation. This year, the kids were striking because the authorities want to cut out the class of History/Geography in the Terminale year (senior year). They were also going to fire teachers who were getting ready to retire, and not hire new ones. I am not sure yet if this has passed, or if the blocus worked. So thats the blocus story.
On Wednesday I took a math test which I later got back and received a 1/20...oh well, I already have all my math credits I need to graduate from West:) Then we had gym, though the teacher decided we could do whatever we wanted, so I played soccer with a bunch of other kids for the first time in a very long while!
On Thursday, I read my paper on why I decided to come to France in French class infront of the class, and my French teacher read the one about my life in Alaska. It started snowing when we got out of school. Then Justine texted me later that night saying 'its amazing, everythings white, it never snows like this here!' so I excitedly ran outside to find there wasnt even 1/8th of an inch of snow on the ground!! Haha, I guess our definition of 'everythings white' is a little different!!
Friday we didnt do much in any class except Chemistry/Physics. We watched a movie for two hours in English class called Mississippi Burning. It was about the racism in Mississippi in the middle of the 1960s. Then we had two and a half hours of Chemistry/Physics which we took a quiz and I got 2.5/4!! Which is actually not bad at all, most of my friends got 3/4. Then in TPE we disected a mouse :( to look at the symmetry of the organs. In History/Geography we watched a play made up of a bunch of smaller plays for the first hour that kids from Terminale year did. Then for the second hour we watched a very old movie I didnt understand for about 10 minutes, then played hangman. Last night (Friday night) Laura, Michel, and I watched Ratatouille in French and then I slept in until 10:30 this morning!! It was wonderful! This afternoon I am going to Place Bellecours to pick up Sophia (another US exchange student with AFS) so she can spend a couple of days here in Lyon (she lives in a small town near Grenoble) with me.

Blocus!!!

So, today, blocus happened. But I will get to that in a moment.
Sunday night we baked the macaroons and they tasted good, but the shells have a lot of little tiny bubbles in them and are not perfectly smooth like those bought at a bakery.
Yesterday (Monday) we had all our normal classes including (for my group) the english assistant, where we watched the movie Elf. Then we (Ingrid, Olivia, Laurie, and I) went to Justines house where Anne-Sophie, Justine, Chloé, and Claire already were because they didnt have the english assistants class. We ate lunch there, consisting of zucchini crumble and chocolate cake. It was really, really good!!
Now for the blocus! I am currently using my cell phone for my morning alarm. Unfortunatly though, last night my phone died while I was sleeping and then, obviously, didnt go off this morning. Laura and Claire left without waking me up, and I woke up on my own at about 7:40 which was too late to arrive on time for the first hour of school, so I was planning on arriving for class at 9:00am. On my way to school, I met Chloé and Claire walking back towards the bus stop I had just come from. They had told me that there was blocus at the school, and couldnt get in. Blocus, in French, is when the students stand in front of the school and push anyone away who tries to get by them. In my opinion it was pretty stupid, because there is a huge fence around the school and if you really wanted to go to class, all you have to do in climb it. So I went back to Chloés house and talked and then ate lunch. Then at 2pm we decided to try again. Though there were still people standing in front, and it was really cold (about 25F :) ) so we decided to just go home. On the bus home, I received a mass text saying there would be blocus all week!! Though its not for certain, and I think we have to go everyday just to see, it would be exciting if we get three weeks of Christmas vacation instead of just two!! :)

*Il Neige*

On Thursday I had a full, normal day of school. Though Friday was a different story; I had just three hours of class when I normally have 7 1/2 -8 1/2! I had two hours of English class starting at 8 in the morning, and then one hour of history from 4pm-5pm. It was a wonderfully relaxing day! In between english and history class, I went over to Chloés house and hung out with her, Claire (the new exchange student) and Ingrid. We watched Little Miss Sunshine and made lunch of noodles with a mustard sauce (it was a little strange, but good) and an omlet. In France, no one thinks omlets are for breakfast, always for lunch, and maybe for dinner. It was nice to be around someone who didnt understand the conversations!:) It made me realise how far I have come since the beginning, even though people keep telling me, its hard to tell until I see someone else in the same situation...if that makes sense.
Saturday I took the Bac Blanc du Français from 8am - 12pm. For the first two hours I read and translated into English the two texts that were given to us, and then the questions. Then I read back over everything and noticed some of the questions asked for three answers from the three different texts....I searched the page and still found just the two I had seen in the first place. Then, down at the very bottom in the center of the page, was the start of the third text which then was finished on the top of the page at the right. I figured out I had been trying to understand the whole second text with the last part of the third text tacked on to the end. No wonder it hadnt been making sense. After that, I sort of lost my gung-ho attitude about doing the very best I could and writing all my thoughts down on the paper to get the best grade I possible could. So I tried to answer the questions, though I ended up only writing two small paragraphs, and left a big space inbetween incase I magically found the answer to the other questions. So, when I was all done, there was only a small paragraph on the top of the first page, and when I turned it in, the lady looked at me with gigantic eyes and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was an exchange student, and she promptly said 'oooooohhhhhhhhh', and smiled :). I have two more Bac Blancs (one in each of the next trimesters) so I will hopefully improve even more over time, and when I take my real Bac de Français, maybe I will receive an okay mark! After that, I went out to lunch with Laurie, Justine and Adam (who is also in our class) and then spent the rest of Saturday with Laura and Claire at the house. Michel is still at Groix until Tuesday night.
Today I got up semi-early again and went to the mall (again) with Claire and Laura because they needed to Christmas shop. We got there right as it opened and there was hardly anybody there! Then we went to an outdoor market for artistic objects and then the Marchée De Noel which was a lot bigger and had more interesting things, in my opinion. There was a place called the Temple of Cheese!! :) Then we came home and ate lunch, and then Claire and I tried making macaroons (French macaroons, not American) though they needed to sit for a while, so they still havent been baked. Then I made chocolate chip cookies for Claires school, because they are having some sort of bake sale to raise money for the kids to go on a field trip. Then....(this is the most exciting piece of news I have).........IT SNOWED!!!! :) Not a lot, not even so we could see it on the ground, but we could see it falling and it was pretty!
Tomorrow after my short day of classes I am going over to Justines house because she wants to make Zucchini Crumble for us....(yes, like Apple Crumble, but with zucchinni).

Merci Marie

Saurday night it ended up being just Ingrid and I going to the Fete des Lumières. Chloé, Justine, and Olivia couldnt make it/ had seen it too many times before for it to be exciting. So, we took the metro to Place Bellecour and walked around. The holiday is really on the 8th of December, but it has become a more commercial holiday in past years, so people generally start celebrating the weekend before the 8th. There were a lot of stands a Place Bellecour selling small glow in the dark objects. Also a lot of stands selling kebabs, hot dogs, tacos, crepes, waffles, cotton candy, and warm wine. I ate a sugar crepe, my first in France!:) We walked down Rue République and into some smallar side streets to see the abstract lights people had put up for display. Some were just spiraled colored lights hanging from trees, and others were lights in the shapes of trees all in a bunch, etc. Some of the streets were so packed with people it took us half an hour to walk one block! We got out of the crowd and walked down the Saone river to Vieux Lyon where we watched a movie that was being projected on to the Church of Saint-Jean. The movie was about the construction of the church, and showed someone drawing the plan for the church, then people constucting it, sort of the history behind it. Then we watched a man drink alcohol and blow on a stick of fire which then flared up, which was not very impressive, but the heat from the fire was nice:) Then he started swinging fire balls around which was more interesting. We finally caught the metro home with a boy from our class, Alexys, at about 11:30pm.
Sunday I went to the mall with Laurie and her friend Elise. And then Sunday night I went to see the fireworks with Claire which were set off behind the Fourvière Basilica. They were pretty, and I tried to capture in on camera, but the really bright ones just show up as white blobs on the screen. For dinner that night we ate snails that were left over from a party Michel and Claire had hosted the night before.
Monday was pretty normal. Though for dinner I ate calf tongue..
Tuesday morning Michel left for Groix. Groix is a small island (5.72 square miles!) in N-W France. Michel and Claire have a small house there, and will be going there after Chrismas to celebrate the New Year. I guess there is a little bit of house work that needs to be done before they go up for New Years. Tuesday was also the actual Fete des Lumières. On the way home from school, we could already see people putting up candles in their windows. The history behind this celebration started in 1643 when the plague hit France, though Marie (mother of Jesus) saved the town from becoming infected and to thank her, all the residents put up luminons (candles) in their windows. One church is also illuminated in different colors with a big neon sign that says 'Merci Marie' next to it. Tuesday night, Aliane (I am still not sure how to spell her name, though she is the godmother of Victor, I think) came over for dinner and we lit about 50 candles and put them up in windows all over the house.
Wednesday I had school, then dance. Pretty normal, though I did study 8 pages of notes for a biology test I had today. It went pretty well I thought, though I didnt write more than a page during the entire hour.
Today I met an Australian exchange student who is going to stay with Chloé for 6 weeks named Claire.
Tomorrow (Friday) is usually my bussiest day of the week, starting from 8 until 6 with only a half an hour break for lunch. However this particular Friday I am only going to have 3 hours of school!!! From 8-10 am and then from 4-5 pm. This is happening because my chemistry/physics teaching is going to be absent, and we dont have TPE (prep class for the bac). However, on Saturday I have a four hour 'Bac Blanc' which is a practice test for the Bac de Francais I will take at the end of the year.

Pictures and Pigs Blood

The first two photos are of pigs blood and apple compote:)

The third is of my friends and Laura at Thanksgiving dinner

top left-right: Laura (host sister), Justine, Anne-Sophie

bottom: Me, Ingrid, Chloé

The fourth picture is of everybody at Thanksgiving dinner

going around from left-right: Chloé, Ingrid, Claire, Marie-Pierre, Aliane (sp?), Michel, Justine, Laura.

The fifth picture is of the table before we ate dinner:)

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Thursday night I ate pig blood for dinner. Though it wasnt just blood, it was a little bit of meat with a lot of blood wrapped in pig skin. Thankfully Claire cooked it, and didnt make us eat it raw! We ate it with apple compote which made it taste a lot better.

Friday not much happened at school. Théo came over for dinner, we had a cheese quiche, spinich in a white sauce, and poivron (a special French vegetable which I dont know the name of in English). Tonight I am going to go to the Fete de Lumières with Ingrid, and maybe Chloé, Justine, Alexys, and Antoine.

Tomorrow I am going to Part-Dieu with Laurie (its a big mall) to buy a scarf for winter and a bag for school, because we dont have lockers and have to carry everything around with us and my current bag is slowly falling apart:( Tomorrow night I am going to the Fete de Lumières again with Claire, Michel, and Laura to see the feux d'artifice (fireworks). They normally dont have fireworks for the Fete de Lumières, but this past year it rained on the 14 of July (sort of the equivilent of the US' 4 of July) when they normally set off firworks, so they couldnt set them off. So, they kept them for tomorrow night!:)

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

So, the first trimester of the school year is over. I do not know what my grades are, because I lost the little paper with my password to look them up on the computer...but maybe that isnt such a bad thing!:)
Tuesday another bus strike started, so now the buses come at strange times and when there is an electric moniter telling you how long it will be until the next bus, sometime the number of minutes goes upwards instead of down! However, I got to school on time and had to do an oral presentation in English class. Everyone had to do it at one point or another, and we were supposed to choose something current, though by the end, people were just choosing things that interested them. So I chose the Alaska Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. I had recently recieved a post card from Joe and Lena in Nome, and on the front was a picture of a musher and his team finnishing the race in Nome! It was perfect, so I brought it in to class to show the other students what it looks like, since I wasnt sure if they would understand my description. It went fairly well, but Chloé told me afterwards that I had talked too fast, and she hadnt been able to understand everything..oops:)
On Wednesday, I took a two hour math test on barycenters, which I didnt really study for at all. Then two hours of badmitton, and then took the bus home. I ate lunch with everyone and then tried to study for a physics test I have tomorrow, but I didnt understand. So then I started texting with Ingrid and she told me there was no dance that day for her(she has the same teacher but not the same class), but she wasnt sure about me. So I walked to the studio and the door was locked. So I walked back on the street where all the shops are in Montchat just to look at everything, and I noticed the popular stores here are not exactly the same as in Anchorage. On this one street (which I walked on for about 5 blocks) there are at least 7 bakeries, 6 banks, 4 furnitures/ decoration stores, 3 little grocery stores, 3 washers/drycleaner places, 3 eccentric clothes stores, and a smattering of other types of stores (flower shop, butcher shop, tabaco shop, etc.)
Today I had two hours in the morning free (8-10) because the SVT teacher was absent (though I found out later not for the whole day) so I went to Lauries house with her. Then we had one hour of French class where the teacher handed out the small essays we wrote (well mine was small, everyone elses was about four + pages:) ) (another note: all students handwrite all their essays here, no one types anything, that I have seen so far) and talked about Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, or Little Red Riding Hood. Then I had 1.5 hours of SVT T.P. which is when we do experiments. Today we smashed two different types of leaves on to one piece of paper; leaves from plants that had been grown in the dark, and leaves from plants that had been grown in artificial light. Then we put the tip of the paper in water for 20 minutes and when it was done, the color from the leaves had been sucked up by the water further up the paper. Then we had 1.5 hours for lunch, today it was meatballs which tasted sort of funny, and mashed potatoes which werent bad. Then I also ate bread, cheese, and a piece of fake apple pie. After lunch I had two hours of chemistry T.P. where we did an experiment with acid and bases and I have no clue what else. The Chemistry and Physics teacher is a nice person, but a strict teacher, so I dont really have much fun in that class because no one has time to explain things to me and I dont understand what she is talking about. Then I had an hour break where I went to the CDI (library) and did pretty much nothing. Finally, I had one hour of History and Geography and then I finished and came home. This weekend and a little bit of next week (the 5th - the 9th) is the Fete de Lumieres in Lyon. I have asked people a bunch of time what exactly it is, but they mostly respond with 'oh its this thing where everyone walks around and looks and the lights of the city'... I guess I will find out. I am going with Ingrid, and maybe Justine and Chloé Saturday night.
I have a Bac Blanc soon (the 12 of Dec.) which is where we get up early on a Saturday and take a practice test (that actually counts in our final grade) for four hours. It is in French about the French subject (that is the only bac I will be taking this year because I am in Premier Sciences). So, I guess I will see how that goes as well. After that though, Julie (host cousin) invited Laura and I to a 'crepe party' at her house. I think she said that only us and Lola and Sinon (other host cousins) will be there this time. So I cant wait to eat some crepes:)