Saturday, September 24, 2011

One month in France!

Hello Everyone,

I have officially been in France for one month! Can you believe it? I know I can't. It seems like yesterday I was finishing up work, saying my last goodbyes to everyone, and packing up for my exchange.
Now, I have been in school for three weeks and already well into my exchange.
Everything is going great. I lost one of my dearest friends this week. Tiki, the girl from Ecuador, went back home today. I think she had an amazing two months here. I am so happy I got to meet her, and I am going to miss her greatly.
Oh, did you know that if I want to say, "I miss you", it's not, "Je me manque", which is the direct translation, it's, "Tu me manque" which is translated to be, "You miss me". Agathe; another one of my friends, was explaining this to me a while ago and I was completely confused for a long time. It sounds so selfish in English, but here it is the correct way.
This week of school went really well, I'm getting closer and closer with my friends (I can't even think about leaving them behind after a year now!!) and school is going by pretty good. Friday in my French class (it's for two hours straight on Fridays) the teacher gave us a text that we have to read, comment and summarize, and then answer the questions given. I understood the task this time, I mostly understood the text... ok there was a huge chunk I had no idea what the author was talking about, and then the questions I had no idea what it meant. So in other words, I sat there in class for two hours feeling terrible I was doing nothing. Not that the assignment would count anyways, but I want to do something. Thankfully, the teacher gave an assignment so that the students who do bad on this assignment can get their mark boosted. So I will do that so I hand in something.
I also have Gym for two hours on Thursdays. Ohhh do I miss my grade 9 gym teacher... this teacher isn't the nicest person. One of my friends; Suzanne, got really hurt during the class and all the teacher was doing was criticizing her for not being active enough while the girl could hardly walk she was in so much pain. I wanted to tell the teacher that she should maybe be helping Suzanne to make sure she wasn't seriously injured but I wasn't sure how to say it in French without sounding mean. Right now, we're doing track. We get to the track (a five minute walk from the school; all the schools share the same track), then we run 800m, then do these 80m sprints with different approaches (example high kneels, low bends etc) then pentabon which is like triple jump but it's five jumps not three, then this week we started disk... you throw the 1 kg disk specifically and wherever it lands it's your score. For pentabon, I'm jumping almost 2m (not counting when I do the first 4 jumps which is 8m) and in disk I throw 11.80m.
In one of my english classes we've been watching the music video of Thriller by Michael Jackson and then doing work on it. It's funny cause Agathe and I are singing the song and acting out the dance from our seats. Now we have to write a Short Horror story next week.
Well, for the weekend my plans are getting my hair cut, going to see my host family's relatives on Sunday for lunch and going on a nature hike.

A bientôt!