Je n'ai pas de titre = I dont have a title

Thursday night Marie-Pierre and Eliane took me to the area of town called Croix-Rousse and to a restaurant called La Famille (The Family).

Friday night Laura and Claire came home from Groix, and Saturday afternoon Michel came back from Greenland.

Victor comes home this Wednesday night, I think were going to have a party for him.

Its been warm lately, in the late 70°s. We've been eating outside and the pool is now warm enough to swim in.

Not many of the houses in Lyon have windows that are made for screens, meaning when someone leaves the window open at night, no one sees what comes in or out. I woke up this morning with a very cute cat sleeping on my bed, but it wasnt Mamadou...

Tomorrow I go back to school, though we only have about 8 weeks until the year is over!

maillot de bain = swim suit

This past week in the south of France it was hot enough for Ingrid and I to wear swim suits and go swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.

We left Sunday morning for Marseille where we were going to eat lunch. We couldnt find the park, took a wrong turn, and ended up on the freeway again. So we stopped instead, in a small town called Cassis (meaning blackcurrant in English). We took a boat ride and saw three mediterranean fjords which were really pretty.

During the week, we pretty much did something everyday. We went to two other towns: Hyeres and St Tropez. Hyeres is just a neighboring town, but St Tropez is famous because of Brigette Bardot, a French actrice who grew up there.

We went on walks/hikes. Once up to a war fort from a French war of the 1870 time frame. About three fourths of the way up, we were actually able to see the fort, so Ingrid and I decided to make our own trail straight to the top...through lots of thorny bushes while we were in shorts...

We went swimming once, then next time there was an overload of jellyfish...they were literally everywhere.

We tanned (I burned in funny patterns because of the way I put my sunscrean on).

We made croque monsieurs (which, in French class in Ak, I learned is very French, though Ingrid and her mom thought that was strange), they are basically a sandwich of bread, cheese, ham, and untradionally pineapple rings. If you add an egg, its called a croque madame :)

We made a cake (actually three by mistake..). Its called a 5 4 3 2 1 1/2 cake, because it calls for 5 spoonfuls of flour, 4 spoonfuls of sugar, etc (yes, the french use spoonfuls as a guide :) ) they also use grams, and Ingrid and I thought the 5 meant 500 grams, 4 = 400 grams, which turns out to be a lot more than 4 and 5 spoonfuls!

On Tuesday, the friend of Ingrids mom showed up with her daughter and her daughters friend (they were 11 years old) and they stayed until Sunday.

On Thursday, Ingrid and I walked to the marché in Carqueiranne, even though Carqueiranne is much, much smaller than Lyon, the marché was bigger than the marché in Montchat!

We drove back to Lyon a week after we left, last Sunday. It takes about 4 hours, that night I stayed at Ingrids house.

Michel was supposed to come back last night, but because of the Iceland volcano eruption, his flight was canceled.

I made raspberry macarons last night and Im going to fill them today :)

Pictures:

1) Balcony and view from their house

2) View from the road as we drove to Ramatuelle and St. Tropez

3)Ingrid and I at the top of the hike to the war fort

4)Eating tropeziennes

5) Swimming in a natural rock pool in the mediterranean sea

Cerisier et Nuages = Cherry Trees and Clouds

Pictures:

1) The bottom of La Meije

2)The very top of La Meije

3) Cherry Tree

4) Sunrise on Rue de la Balme

5) Spring in the backyard!

The cherry trees here are gorgeous when they are just beginnging to bloom in the spring.

Lately its been rainy and cloudy, not sunny at all.

For gym, we are finished with swimming and are now on to running. We play soccer and/or basketball for half the time, and then run the other half the time in a very small playground just behind the pool building.

SVT class is officially my least favorite class because now that I can actually understand people when they talk, I take notes on my own in class. But, the SVT teacher talks really fast, doesnt articulate, and doesnt repeat, though when he does, he says it even faster. Ive never been in a foreign country before or around people that dont speak fluent english much so Ive never noticed this, but it really does make a world of difference when people speak slowly and articulate.

For Easter weekend, we went skiing in the Alps. We got up at 6:00 am on Sunday morning. Claire didnt feel well, so she stayed home. We were five in the car: Michel, Léna, Théo, Julien (host cousin). The plan was to go to the mountain/ glacier (called La Meije, the upper part is a glacier, the bottom part is a mountain) right away, ski all day, and sleep at a cabin (le refuge) in the middle of the mountain. When we got there, there was too much snow to ski, the guides were afraid of avalanches. So we went to another ski resort for the day, and slept at a hotel that night. The next day we went back and skied at La Meije. It was really hard. There was one meter of snow that had fallen, and they didnt have a machine to pack it down! We went up to 3,560 meters and skied all the way down to 1,800 meters and then Léna and I stopped, and just sat at a café and waited for the others. Michel told me some Americans come to France just to ski at La Meije, and two days before we got there (Friday) there was a competition and the fastest person to ski down the mountain got down in around 5 minutes 30 seconds!! We came back to Lyon that night with everyone else who went out of town for the three day weekend, so we got stuck in a little bit of traffic.

For Easter, they do eat chocolate here, and hide eggs when they are little, but they dont eat peeps or dye hard-boiled eggs (or so the people I asked have said).

I have realized how difficult languages can be with 'gender words'. All nouns have genders in French. I can understand the words such as 'brother' and 'sister' having genders. They are obvious, 'brother' is masculine, and 'sister' is feminine. Though words like 'wall', 'grass' and 'computer' all have genders, and they are not obvious. Its something that has to be memorized.

I going to have a brother for three months rather than 10 days as I had previously thought. Victors return date is July 1st, though he had a problem with his family and wants to come home early instead of starting all over with another host family, so he will come back the 28th of April.

Michel left Thursday morning for Greenland to ski for a week and a half with some friends.

Today was my last day of school for two weeks. Sunday I leave with Ingrid for a town called Carqueiranna, in the South of France, for a week with her Mom and one or both of her brothers.

Claire and Laura also leave Sunday for Groix. Laura leaves after a week to meet a friend in Paris and then comes back to Lyon with her.

Its been more than seven months since I arrived in Lyon.