Retour aux États-Unis

It's been over 2 weeks since I've returned from France and it passed very fast!

Just a recap (I've lost the photos from these events) I spent my last days either with other exchange students, then I went to Paris to Isabelle's sister house and hung out with Timoté, Luca, and their cousins. We went Golfing, went to Gent, Belgium, and had a lot of fun watching Wimbelon and chilling in the pool, playing frisbee, BBQing, it was great!

When I got back my closest friends and Marion, who's my french correspondant, I stayed with her family and she stayed with my were at the airport with my favorite homemade cookies, and an awesome sign! We went to Five Guys, and it was really weird being back and first, but yet we laughed at the same jokes and had a good time. I wasn't super jetlagged but it lasted for like a week.

With Marion we did so many things, went to the country fair, rafting, frisbee, California, Spencer's Butte, too many things to count! It was so fun an was a continuation of my exchange.

She left yesterday, and things just aren't the same anymore, I think a lot of people including me are sad she's gone. I really hope to see her and her family again another day, they're are some amazing people!

Well, thank you to everyone who followed my blog to the end, even though sometimes it would take me ridiculously long to update it.

My exchange is over :( Hope to start some new ones soon!

I woud like to just give a big big thank you to Rotary, and my District here in Oregon 5110, for all the people that put in so much work to help us do this, so go check out your local Rotary club if you want to help some people. Thanks as well to my club in Eugene for all the meetings they invited me to and all the eggs they bought from me, I'm making a video for you guys!

Signing out,

-Clay

9 Jours

Lycée (highschool) finished on the 12th I believe, and after that I was afraid of not having much to do, but I was actually pretty busy. Went camping a few times, and apparently this year in Provence (my region) was really cold and didn't hav good weather, but in comparison to Eugene for me it was great! Now it's just sunny and warm (like 80-90 degrees.) Camping we went to a big beautiful lake, and went canoeing, and I met some wonderful bilingual people.

I'm slowly seeing my exchange life crumble away, as I say adieu to people, first school friends, then exchange students, now host families. My day left are in the single digits, I have 9 days left.

At my host family Isabelle's house, there's a beautiful pool, ping pong table, and a trampoline, so I've been doing a lot of that. Also I taught my host brothers Timoté and Lucas how to throw a frisbee, and Timoté and I go running through these really pretty routes near the house (we're in the country).

By the way, in the beginning of June we had the District Conference, and during that we eat saw all the inbounds and outbounds of the district again, and even got to sing some songs, and all the national anthem in front of hundreds of Rotariens!

Pascale (my 2nd host mom's) friend Christof who's german does this thing called glider, which is basically flying like a giant eagle, in a small plane with no motor. In my little town of 5000, there was actually one of the best air fields for gliding in the world.

Christof has been flying for over 35 years and we flew on one of the best gliders there is, made in Germany ofcourse! It was amazing we were at 2000m, and had a patch put on me not to get nautious. The views were incredible, seeing as we were in the French Alps, the key to keep flying was to find "lifts" which was hot air moving up, then to ride the lift and keep going. Defintely one of the craziest things I did during my exchange.

I also went to this shop with a Rotarien from my club, where her daughter, who went on exchange with my club like in 1980 made these little figurines that are provençal! And she was really nice and gave me a Rotary one.

Quatre Semaines!

I'm finally getting caught up to today in what I've been doing, this time it's after my Mom left in May. Martin drove me back to Isabelle's from Paris then I just got back into the habit of school just as normal. I've always found it funny that I will just dissapear for like a week or two and literally no one notice, and they'll just act like I've been there the whole time.

Anyways my Mom had put my in just a great aura/state so I was juts having a great time, the weeks where passing really fast, I was playing volleyball, badmitton, rock climbing, we even had an outing with the volleyball/rock climbing people to a super beautiful place near these big gorges and just basically eat spagetti with olive oil and played volleyball and rock climbing. I prefer volleyball because I suck at rock climbing and this time it scared the bejesus out of me because it was super windy in the gorges.

On the 25th of May there was our first Rotary meeting since December I think with all the exchange students. We just got to eat things and see each other, plus coach a bit the outbounds, the french people who are going all over the world to be us next year. They were all pretty chill, and there were a lot of people going to the US even one to Iowa.

On the 30th there was an outing of SVT or Biology to these big colored rocks of red, yellow and white that were used to make things like pigment. We were studying rocks to that was good, we even collected old fossils and such, they were just on the ground, actualy shell fossils! (Because the area was part of an ocean couple years back) We had pigment battles.

In school all the kids were getting ready for the Bac (the test at the end of 11th and 12th grand on everything they've done) which every studies a lot for. Honestly in school I would just always try to learn everything I could each class I went to, (I was in classes of 10th 11th and 12th grade which in France is super bizarre). I would never do the homework, so I'm curious to see how much I've learned and can apply to my senior year at Sheldon.

Will post soon about what I've been up to un June, and today officially marks 4 weeks left! I swear just yesterday it was 6, then 5, it's just counting down! I'm really excited to go back, but I feel there's a lot I'm going to miss that I don't realize in France, all my host families, exchange students, bread, sun, views, bread, all that stuff!

Stay classy San Diego,

-Clay

Momma Whipp

Just to clarify I'm talking about stuff that happened inbetween April 26th - May 13th.

Literally just after EuroTour, my mom came at met me at the train station in Paris with Camille! It was a double shock with the end of EuroTour, but yet it was so normal so quickly, just there were times the first couple days where it was just not real, and I felt like it must be the year before in the US. Camille was really nice and we got to stay at her appartement which was lik in the straigh up center of Paris! We could easily take the metro to go anywhere, so I gave my mom my tour of Paris, and we didn't do too shabby, in two days we saw pretty much every major attraction!

After that we descended to my hometown of Chateau-Arnoux/Montford, Quentin drove us back. My mom and Pascale got along really well and liked to just talk for hours alone. I showed my mom my life, I didn't really care about showing her the attractions, just my school, a few classes, and my host families and I think she had a good time seeing all that.

After chilling at Rebecca's house, my mom and I took a train back up to Brusselles in Belgium! There we hadn't really planned anything, but had a great time taking a tour or the centre ville, buying chocolate, beer all that good stuff. We even found ourself in the plain middle of a bustling gay district, with a lot of men with shaved heads. Everyone Belgium spoke so many languages, English was a necessary, that there were Dutch and French speakers. Our hotel happened to be in an Arab neighbourhood, so we had Arab cuisine which was delish. We also had the some classic Belgium dishes which all included fries, I'm kind of just sick of them now, too greasy.

Next was Bruges which was a chique small Venice, where one can rent a bike eat a waffle then just bike around chilling with nature and geese. Very sweet town. We trained back to Brussells, saw the Atomium a huge building, and little whizzer!

From there was London where we stayed in a straight up prison, with a huge wave of young energy, people just always going in and out, it was like an international University. We got hooked up with a great tour, saw the classics, the Churchil War rooms, and had some classics, most of which we had heard the name but didn't actually know what it was. Also we went to Buckingham Palace just randomly to see the Queen, Royal Family and hundreds of horses! The red guard did hours of ceremonies as well. The hat is actually made of bear fur if I heard right.

I really liked organizing just was we were going to do, eat or where we were going to stay, we really hadn't planned a thing! We stayed the night on the coast in the far south to take an early ferry to Normandy to see Pascale's (my host mom) sister and parents. We stayed in her sister Marie-Claire's beautiful house and saw le-Mont-St-Michel. That was an interesting sight, however the weather wasn't with is as always in Normandie. Martin was nice and drove my mom to Paris, then took my home to he south, a long ride! It wasn't too hard to say goodbye to my mom because I knew I'd see her soon, know it's only one month it's crazy! All in all I think the trip was just superb.