Easter and...other stuff

May.
Maymaymaymay!!!!May ?

I should say, c’est mai! Je me sens comme je dois écrire tout en français maintenant ! C’est vrai que, quand j’essaye d’écrire et penser en anglais, tout devient bizarre. (J’ai besoin de penser soigneusement d’abord, et après écrire)

But I won’t continue in french…because then (almost) no one at home will understand me! (exceptions: Mama, Allie, and Sarah?) I feel restless. Not here, but because I keep thinking I’ll be home in 2 months, and how weeirrdd that’ll be. I have changed a lot. I can no longer think back when I was in LA, and remember the conversations I had or how I really spent the days, because my types of conversations and how I spend my days here are so much different. I am home here. I also feel like, once you really settle in, you have to think about going home. (2 months will go a whole heck of a lot faster than I want)

What will I do without the hours after school is done, when we hang out and wait for the car? What will I do without the chateau? Without all the forest to take long walks in? Without the snow in winter? Without all my friends here? Without Louis and Gauthier and Lucie and Marion to talk with? Without fromage?
I am at a loss. NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT.

So, we had another 2 week vacation at the end of April (that finishes next Monday), and I stayed with a temporary host family in Paris for the 2 weeks. (They couldn’t find a family in Marseille). But it was AMAZING! The family consisted of Laure, and Michel her husband, and their 3 daughters: Anne, Claire and Louise. They weren’t at home all that often (at ages 13, 16, and 19), but I did a couple things with Anne, who is hilarious, in the first week. (I also went to her college one morning in the 2nd week, because she wanted me to). haha, but almost every day I woke up pretty early, left the house to go see things in Paris: le Louvre (Mona Lisa!), Montmartre, le Marais, St. Germain-des-Pres, les Champs-Elysees, and elsewhere. The first week, two friends from the lycee at Ussel (Antoine and Pauline) were in Paris too, staying at Antoine’s uncle’s house, so we hung out a bit. And the second week, Nadine from Switzerland stayed with the family too, so we went to the Tour Eiffel and saw everything again. (I saw Marton too, who was there with another host family). Pretty much, I was rarely alone in Paris!

Our last night in Paris, Nadine and I made carrot cake (did you know they make one in Switzerland too? But with a taste of lemon and lots and lots of nuts) We used the American version…but the problem was that we didn’t have flour, oil, cream cheese (for the frosting) or carrots. And all the supermarkets were closed because it was the 1er Mai (La Fete de Travail). So we decided we’d find everything we needed, somehow. haha, we went to the Gare de Lyon (the family lived just next to it), in the metro (they have little stores inside), and finally (after walking 5 blocks) we found a little grocery store that was still open. It was kind of hilarious, we ran around the store trying to find everything (and at the cheapest), and we bought flour, a GIGANTIC thing of vegetable oil, 2 carrots, and a fromage a tartiner, for only 4 euros! We high-fived and ran back to the house (and they loved the gateau en plus!)

I saw about…4 movies: 17 again (the really um…cliché one with Zac Efron), Coco avant Chanel (with Audrey Tautou, which was good), Safari (un film française, really funny but kinda dumb), and Incognito (another French movie with Benabar). There was a movie theater about a block away from my host family’s house, so it was kind of convenient! I also went to a lot of museums: le Louvre, Le musee d’Orsay (impressionists!), Le musee Carnavalet (French history), and Le Grand Palais, where I saw the Andy Warhol exposition (fantastic!) and one about graffiti. It was just fantastic. I really needed to get out a bit from Mareges to be in a big city again—just for a little bit. By the end I was homesick. I was ready to go back to lycée!

Anyways, because I didn’t update in April (sorry…I was really busy!), I’ll summarize it a little bit. Pretty much, it was comme habitude, and one weekend Miyu and Victoria came to visit me (It was soo much fun, we stayed up really late each night and talked and sang in foreign languages) and then the next weekend, I went to Yolaine’s house at Brive for her birthday party. (She’s 18!) We stayed up until 4 AM watching ‘Mon Voisin Totoro.’ (And we ate pasta in the form of flowers and hearts, hehe) And afterward, pretty much like normal: hanging out with everyone after lycee, and doing homework and yup. I got a 12/20 on a dissertation in class for French, and I am pretty proud of myself, because my prof grades severely, and I had the same grade as Marie!

There was also Easter! Here in France, they say that the cloche hides the eggs (not the enormous bunny). Actually, the cloche doesn’t chime (I can’t remember what word I would use in English to describe the noise of a large bell?) at the church for the week or two before Easter, and on Easter, it rings and rings, (right word?) and they say that the cloche came back, with chocolate for everyone. Aude and Lucie went to go hide the eggs in the garden, and afterward, we all went to try and find them. It was a good day; not Easter in the US, but Easter in France! haha, and that’s about it.

Yup… I have to do my devoirs, so, à plus tard!