Blog Vidéo

Alicia's Blog ---> http://howhyggelig.blogspot.com/

Briançon

The Rotary meeting was very nice, my club got my an awesome book on the area with stunning pictures, it should help me find some places to visit, and there was some great food as well (got to take back my sweet french flag). School's good, hard, but do able, for some reason at this moment I actually enjoy taking spanish, even considering it's taught in french / spanish at a 5th year level. English is hilarious, everything else is ok,  and I want to drop this civics class which tells me how to be a "good french citizen". I'm taking volleyball and handball, and handball is good, strange to me, I miss frisbee, but I think it's important for me to do sports and keep busy. I was sick yesterday, so I couldn't go to volleyball, but I'm very excited, I loved playing in the United States.

This last weekend I went to this beautiful city in the mountains called Briançon, it's near Italy so north-east of me. There I met up with 13 of a group of some of the best people in the world; exchange students. I was part of 7 Americans, and as well there were 2 Canadians, 1 Brazilian, 1 Bolivian, 1 Korean, 1 Mexican, and 1 Korean. It was SO great to be able to relate with this people, and on top of that they are all nice and hilarious. We went rafting, which was thrilling, hot baths, which I have to return to because I love them so much, and a ropes course in the trees which was adventurous. I love all the people in the group, and can't wait to see them again (we plan to conquer our area, and then the world together). Shout out to Hugo for being the best helper/guide with Rotary ever. Bonne journée à tout le monde!

Aix et Digne

So now I'm about a week into school, but my second day happened to be my birthday! Unfortunately, I took the wrong bus to school, instead of going 15 minutes north to Sisteron, I went 20 minutes south to Digne-les-Bains. When we arrived, I asked the bus driver if this was Paul Arène, my school, and he laughed at me and said "Monsieur, tu n'as pas de la chance!", in other words, my luck was awful. But it was all so bad, because the bus driver had to drive himself and a few others to Sisteron for some reason so I got to go with them, and because I'm an exchange student, the teacher didn't mind that I was 50 minutes late! The classes here aren't too hard, I love math, the only classes that are truly impossible right now are french and Spanish, because I know absolutely no Spanish and the other kids have been in the class for 3-4 years, and the teacher teaches in franglish...so I will have to on that one, but no worries! Everyone has been very nice, and laughs at my bad jokes! I have people to hang out with at lunch, as well as people in my class to talk to in between classes. And for the rest of my birthday, I had a great  party with presents and cake, I got french perfume, clothes and a journal.
        Friday was great. After school, I got to go to Aix-en-Provence which is about 20 miles north of Marseille and it was very beautiful! Everything is ancient and everyone is stylish, the cathedrals are amazing! Everything's also very spendy, but I bought a bit of clothing, I'm slowly getting dans la mode. On Saturday I saw fossils which were very nice, and Sunday there was this giant event near Marseille! It was the 20th anniversary of a helicopter company called Eurocopter, and there were thousands of people there, it was cool to watch helicopters fly, and hang out with not just my current host families, but members of other ones.
       By the way; there is this awesome sport here called le planneur, and I got to watch someone do it! It involves a person flying a small light plane, with only using the war, air pockets in the sky. It sounds so awesome!

      School is a lot more like college, and I'm really enjoying it. Rotary meeting tonight where I'm going to give my presentation, and Rotary meeting with the exchange students this weekend. Hope everyone is doing great! -Clay

Vacances et Lycée

The Chocolaterie

Mmm

On the hike

Valentin and moi

lac d'allos

An old cathedrale

Andre and I

       OK time to catch up on things. I live in a fairly small house in a town of only 5000, the change is pretty different. This past week I've eat some very good food ESPECIALLY the bread and cheese. I went on a very nice hike about 2 hours away to see a lake called lac d'allos. Also all the cities near me are literally like 2 miles away, and there are like 4 situated around Chateau-Arnoux. The cities are so beautiful, I love how they are in the mountains, on hills. Apparently the weather is normally sunny here I'm excited for that! But so far I've brought the grey skies of Oregon! My camera's battery is broken so I have to buy another, but it's not a problem because now I have something that I want for my birthday, which is tomorrow! I also think I'm gonna buy a new watch. I also have some new Nike's from home that I think are the bomb, but that's just me. Anyways I've visited some nearby cities, and there are all these français little streets and everything is old, I swear everyone is better looking here and is fashionable (at least compared to me) but I am changing rapidly!
          There are a lot of things that are English here, like television shows, music, my host brother really likes New York and Miami, and listens to American music, but mostly rap, which isn't my favorite but I can jam to it. My host dad Marc is a genius and fixed my computer's internet because it was broken...something about a DNS sever...anyways it's fixed now so now I'm on my own computer. I've seen a lot family so far, some that I only saw for a few hours, and a sister that's in her twenties and stops by often because she lives near, and actually is about to work at the collège (middle school) that's attached to my lycée (high school.) My host mom (Martine) takes care of babies and kids so I get to play with a little french girl who is hilarious. The dad (Marc) is inbetween jobs, but he sells cars and car parts. My host brother (Valentin) has a girlfriend (Camille), but I'm looking forward to meeting his other friends. Valentin, Camille and I did this very pretty hike to the top of a large hill which is right next to my town. It only took about 30 minutes and was very beautiful!
         I had my first day of school today and oh man was it exciting, I drank a cup of coffee before with Pascale my 2nd host mom, (I'm moving to her house in about a month and a half) and it was my first cup of coffee. I wanted to bounce off the walls, and couldn't stop giggling when a joke was made. When we arrived at school I met up with a friend who I'd met a few days before from California named Bobby. He's very nice and with the help of our host parents, we made it to our first class. Even now I'm not sure what it was, but I think maybe it was just informational because it wasn't on the schedule. Everyone in class is in style I swear! Today was just an informational day and on Wednesdays we get out at 12 so that was awesome! I talked to some french students and told them who I was and they were very nice. Bobby and I are in the same class, Première S, (people age 15-16 who like math/science) and we will be with the same group of about 25 kids throughout the year. I'm having a great time and if anyone has questions, don't be afraid to comment and ask! À plus -Clay