Last Day of School!

This is more of an announcement than a real post. I was going to spend all evening writing about my last day of school but I am flat-out exhausted. I spent all evening preparing for my Eurotour tomorrow and it took a whole lot more time than what I had originally thought. The only reason I'm writing this little announcement now is to let you know that I'm still alive and well. I'm glad that school itself is over, but at the same time it's bitter-sweet because this is just another wake-up call that my exchange is coming to an end. But why focus on the negative when you've still got so much to look forward to in life? For example,  I get to wake up in 3 hours so I can leave Chomérac at 3 a.m. to get to Lyon by 5:30. (Bet you're all jealous, aren't you? Lucky me!) So without further adieu, good night everyone, and I'll hopefully post soon after I get back. In the meantime, here's a picture of my class and the famous M Saint-Clair to keep you occupied:

Goodbye Sanity

                                                    Facteur Cheval

I'm falling way behind on my blog. It's not that I don't love you all, because I really do, and it's not because I hate writing, cause I really don't! I guess it's just the mentality of an end-of-the-year exchange student. Ever since April break when my family visited and I buss-tripped it all the way to Spain, I've been slacking off way too much. Too many things are piling up, and June is definitely going to top this whole year off as craziest month of them all. Just giving you a head's up:

June 1 - 12: Rotary Bus Trip!! I'll be visiting Strasbourg, Nuremberg, Prague, Vienna, Milan, Venice, Geneva, and Chamonix. I have a feeling this will be like a stereotypical Japanese tour bus. On the bus, off the bus... peace sign photos in all the fun places, back on the bus, off the bus....Anyway, I'm totally excited! Practically two weeks traveling other corners of the world with the best people ever! Life couldn't be any sweeter.

June 15: My birthday!!! 19 years and counting.

June 16 - 17: Choir concerts. Did I ever mention that I sing in a classical choir here? Honestly, I can't remember. So if you didn't know, I sing in a classical choir with a bunch of nice, old ladies and a young, flamboyant choir director. We're singing Kaiser and Bach.

June 22 or 23??: I don't think the date's set yet, but I'll be having a good-bye BBQ / pool party with friends and family. Not looking forward to saying goodbyes :(

June 24 - ??: Another unofficial date. My host mom is taking me on a tour of the Cote d'Azur for several days.

June 30: Off to Paris with the Delenne's to catch my flight on July 1st.

There you have it. This month is going to go by incredibly quickly, and I will be in America before you know it. This scares me a lot. I love America so much, but it wasn't too difficult to leave last August. I knew I would be seeing my home and family again in one year, but when I leave France in a month, I don't know when I'll be coming back to my homes and families in Privas and Chomérac. (I'm starting to sound like a polygamist, aren't I?) I don't know when I'll be able to fly on over to India and Brazil to visit my two best friends. But one thing's for sure: I will find a way to do it all. Not sure how, but who needs specifics right now? I'm pretty sure exchange students are invincible, so don't worry for me.

WOW. I just spent all my allotted blogging time writing what was supposed to be an intro. Turns out, my intro somehow turned into the whole blog. I was really going to write about my long, eventful weekend. I got a killer sunburn at my host family's huge pool ('killer' being used here in a painful, negative sense). I ate a whole pizza (and dessert) by myself for lunch, worked my second week as an official volunteer at the SPCA animal refuge in Valence, tried my first glass of milk straight from the cow, made perfect pancakes, visited the Facteur Cheval (which completely resembles a palace straight out of Southeast Asia), and went swimming in  the rain. Guess those are all different stories for a different day. I'll try to update you all soon, but if you don't hear from me in a little while, I'll be trying to get my life in order before it all falls out of hand.

Kitties at the SPA in Valence

Kitten at the SPA in Valence

Helene's Dog :)

 Helene and I

My host family's pool!

Unita; my host dog :)

RCF Vivarais

I know I promised you all yesterday that I would write a longer post today, but it's practically 11 p.m. and I still have to take a shower and finish my action movie from last night. I chose "Eagle Eye" if you were wondering. And, like yesterday, you're all in for a short post. Probably even shorter than yesterday. There are two basic purposes of this entry:

1. An apology. Yesterday, I sent out a message to my family asking them to listen to the station RCF Vivarais to hear me speak in French for an interview on the radio. My poor family spent all day listening to a French Christian radio station (Yeah, again, I'm really sorry about that) just to hear me have my 10 minutes of fame. As it turns out, I made a mistake and I'm passing tomorrow. Whoops :) Love you Mom!

2. An advertisement. For all of you who are out there reading this, CONGRATULATIONS! It is not too late to hear me butcher my French on the radio tomorrow. I pass at 12:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. (6:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. respectively for all those New Yorkers out there.)

If you've got a chance to listen for 10 minutes, you will make me a very happy camper! My goal is that none of you will understand what I'm saying. If I've done that, then I can say that I successfully spoke real French. However, if you do understand, I'm probably still speaking English with a French accent. On verra bientôt!

**http://www.rcf.fr/radio/rcf07**

Gum Curtesy

This is going to be a short post. I'm planning on writing a longer post either tomorrow or Thursday, but I don't have the time now because it is almost time for Tuesday action movie night at 11 and I am therefore preoccupied with picking my film. Right now, it's between "Awake" and "Eagle Eye."

So you might be wondering, with so much on her plate, why is Travelbug taking all this time out of her busy schedule to write in her blog today? I'll tell you why: I sat in gum today. It was absolutely disgusting and I basically just want to go off on a quick little rant about annoying people who go around sticking their gum to the TOPS of chairs. I don't know why it is so difficult for people to throw their gum in the garbage or for that matter, to the bottom of a chair and or table, but who in their right mind sticks their gum to the top of a chair!? REALLY?? I will tell you now: It is super inconvenient and dégueulasse for the poor, innocent foreign exchange student to sit down her tired little legs in history class and stick to a wet piece of chewing gum.

So dear fellow lycéen and all the rest of you who are out there reading this, please just take the 3 second walk to the garbage can when disposing your gum. It's not like I'm asking you to save the world or end hunger. I'm just demanding this one tiny little request that will make the world a slightly better and more sanitary place. Anyway, now I'm stuck spending my potentially beautiful evening picking gum out of my pants with a tweezer. Thanks a lot.

Lunch at Flunch

As usual, there has been a whole lot of things that have happened since my last post. (I really need to come up with a new beginning sentence.) Since my fantastical trip in Espana, I've taken little day trips all over to Montélimar, the little town where my host sister lives in the Vercors, Die (I kid you not, that really is the name of a town here, Valence, Balazuc, and the happy little town of Joyeuse. I've experienced the presidential elections, met the mayor of Chomérac, taken hikes in the mountains, gone horseback riding, eaten my first meal at the oh-so-famous Flunch, spent a day meeting the cute little doggies at the SPA, and I practically perfected my Chopin Impromtu. It's been slightly busy here.

The first thing I remember doing since coming back from Spain was taking a little day trip to Montélimar with my new host mom, Christine. It was a gorgeous day, and I was surprised how cute of a city Montélimar is. I've been there several times to buy nougat, but I never really saw the actual city. Who can concentrate on the pretty buildings and scenery and such when there's nougat to be bought? Bet you didn't think of that.

The most exciting thing I visited in Montélimar (besides the nougat) was the Museum of Miniatures. It was so cool! They were amazing miniatures and each one was unbelievably impressive. They had a Monet repainted on a grain of rice (!) that had all the details viewable only with a microscope. Can you imagine? With my luck and lack of responsibility, I probably would finish this amazing painting on a piece of rice and proceed to lose the grain. NNNOOOOO!!!!!! ( Imagine me sobbing in the corner and pulling my hair out because I can't find it.) Since that's the first thing that popped into my mind, I've decided not to go into a career of miniatures. Other than that, they had tons of other crazy pieces of art like 5 camels passing through the eye of a needle and the world's smallest Eiffel Tower measured at 2mm. I can now say that I have been to the largest and smallest Eiffel Tower in the world.

A few days after that, my host sister, Helene, invited me to spend the weekend at her house in the Vercors. I love going to her house so much. She lives in the middle of the mountains where there aren't many neighbors whatsoever and she lives right next to a vineyard and a river and it's just really beautiful! We spent that afternoon walking in the mountains before heading back to Chomérac to see the elections.

Since my host mom works at the town hall, I watched the process a little; think long and primitive - paper ballots counted by hand. (And if you don't keep up with politics at all, Hollande won over Sarkozy.) I was surprised at how laid back the elections were here. It probably just seems that way after the last huge election where Obama ran and everyone was invested in one way or another, but the election here didn't seem like a big deal at all. Once Hollande was announced, people went right back to their lives like nothing had happened.

Since I have a terrible problem with rambling on and on I'm going to skip over several days to give you a quick summary of my lunch at Flunch before I leave you with some photos to fill in all the fuzzy spots. Basically, I've heard all this talk about Flunch (a self-service cafeteria) all year but I've never actually been there. With the Delenne's, it was always an eating option that was the first crossed out. So, after all this terrible hype, my host sister finally invited me to go there and of course I said yes. We went to the Flunch in Valence and it really was flat-out gross. The whole ambiance led to the typical Flunch experience: the salad bar had more brown and white leaves of lettuce than green, the guy at the table across from us was picking his nose and eating it afterwards, and the guy in back of us was picking his teeth with a toothpick for about 30 minutes. In addition, there was some brown sticky stuff on the table that Helene somehow managed to get on her forehead, and there was a yellow sticky substance on my water glass. I must admit though, that I feel that more French now that I've had my Flunch experience.

Sorry for leaving you all on this note, but I'm gonna say good-bye for now. Here's some pics to cap off the post and get your mind off Flunch:

Montélimar

Drôme

Drôme

Election Day!

Helene at a vegetarian restaurant in Die

Horseback riding with Helene

May 8th: WWII memorial service in Chomérac

Flunch!

Sticky substances at Flunch

SPA event in Valence

Balazuc

España

It's been 8 months folks, and I'm proud to say that I've finally changed my Blogger profile. For the past year, you've all been reading my blog and clicking on my profile page to meet this so-called Travelbug. And what did you get? Nada. No pretty picture of me, no description, no nada. (Yes, I did just use a double negative because you did get a lovely picture of a beautiful white flower that I took with my camera about 2 years ago.) This morning, I took approximately 5 minutes to upload a new picture and a brief (and I mean brief) description. You can also now see that I'm a female from the United States. I hope no creepers take advantage of this, but when I look back at all the detailed info I've written in my actual blog, I've probably lost whatever security I already had to begin with.

Moving on to Spain. If you've been following my blog lately, you already know that I went to Spain a little while ago. And if you haven't, the secret's out and we're all up to date. My week-long voyage to the land of el Greco and churros started Tuesday AFTER school. I'm just gonna emphasize AFTER one more time because I could have sworn they said "before." Like it should have been. I still believe the vacation would have been a bazillion times better without 8 hours of staring at a blank sheet of paper right before. . .

It was an overnight bus so of course everyone took that advantage to be loud and annoying and sing songs all night long. I, on the other hand, was a good, quiet little bus-goer, who got plenty of hours of repose and because of that, was cheery and spritely the next day in Zaragoza while the others were all groggy and cranky.

Zaragoza (Saragosse in French) was a pretty city, but I still prefer the cities in the south. We were only there for a day, but we visited the most important places: the Aljafería (which has many similarities to the Alhambra in Granada), La Seo Cathedral, and the Plaza del Pilar. I pretty much lone-wolfed the whole day because I still didn't know anyone, but I managed to shift in and out of groups for meal times and such.

After another 5 hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Toledo, where we would be staying in home stays. I stayed with an older couple and they were very open and welcoming. The Señora spent all week trying to get me to roll my r's, without success of course, and she seemed amazed that there are people out there who are unable to do it. For me, saying my r's normally is impressive enough; it took me about 7 years and speech therapy to get to where I am now!

We spent the week visiting museums, small towns, big cities, chocolateries, the works. There were day trips to Madrid (el Prado, Reine Sofia - Guernica, Plaza Mayor, Cortes Ingles...), Saragossa (freezing and rainy), Consuegra (old windmills and a castle), and Chinchon (a charming little town of 3000).

Being in Spain again (first time in 2009 for 2 weeks) made me realize that the whole country is built around a lie. Every time you head on over to Spain, everyone's all like, "Ooh - it's so hot and sunny there!" Let me just give you one advice: DON'T BUY IT. It is neither hot nor sunny. Spain's always complaining about all these problems of drought, but I'm not seeing it. Torrential downpours continually for 3 weeks is not exactly what I'd call a drought. If you want the sun, take another piece of advice and head on over to Yuma, Arizona.

Since this post has gotten pretty long, I'll end it with some photos. There's always more to say, but that's it for the day. Cause a refrain about torrential rain in Spain has me drained and I'm practically turning into Mark Twain or Lil Wayne. Boom.

South America in Zaragoza

Aljafería

 Toledo

Consuegra

Segovia

Chinchon

Me and my señora

Bedroom Decoration :/

Impressive

10 Days in 39 minutes

Since it feels like I've taken a decade long vacation from blogging, I figured it was probably about time to get the ball rolling again. I've given up on trying to fill you in on all the plentiful details of my life from the past 2 - 3 weeks, so I'm going to condense this as much as I can. Right now it's 8:21 and I want to go to bed as early as possible. I might be turning into a grandma, but getting up at 6:25 every morning to catch the bus at 7:10 has been killing me. (Luckily I've only got 17 more days of that. ) All in all, I'm going to try my best to finish this post by 9 p.m. and get myself some z's.

To catch you all up super quick on what you missed before I went to Spain, here's basically what happened:

Saturday, April 14th: Mom and Gigi leave for America. I am squished in between 2 other Rotarians headed to Chamonix (~4 hours) in a mini car at approximately 6 a.m. The weather is terrible and we do not see Mount Blanc or any other mountains for that fact. Instead of mountain watching, I enjoy a relaxed day in Chamonix eating macaroons with Pruthvi.

Sunday, April 15th: Moving Day! New home in Chomérac for the rest of my stay in France. Nice family. Two big dogs. One fluffy cat. One amazing jet bathtub with underwater lights.

Tuesday, April 17th: First painting class. Acrylic painting to be more exact. Almost as relaxing as the bathtub.

Wednesday, April 18th: Day excursion to my new host sister's house in the Vercors. Visits to Pont en Royans, a cave, and Crest Dungeon.

Saturday, April 21st: Big day for me. Got invited to go to Valence by some girls in my class and it was the first time I actually hung out with people other than my host families or other exchange students. Also a big day because I saw Titanic in 3D. And I have been a super-fan of Titanic since the age of 5.

Monday, April 23rd: Vacation over. Return to school :(

Tuesday, April 24th: Leave for Spain. More vacation :)

Now that I just burned through 10 days, I have 11 more minutes to write about my vacation in Spain. Oh wait - now it's 10 minutes.

You know what, by the time I actually upload a picture it'll be 9 p.m. so I think I'm gonna cut it short tonight. (And before you start judging, the reason for me taking 10 minutes to upload a picture is that Blogger just had to change it's perfectly fine website so now everything's annoying and different. )

Anyway, I'll try to write again soon about Spain and everything else in my life, but I'm not guaranteeing anything for the moment because this weekend will be pretty busy. Tomorrow after school, I'm going over to a teacher's house for dinner, and this weekend I'm going to be staying at my host sister's house. Sunday is the final presidential election and since my host mom works at the town hall, I'm going into work with her. We'll see how it all works out, and I'll keep you updated. Ciao!

Oh yeah...8:58