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.
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