Cathèdrales

          Last friday night I went to a friend, Tom's birthday party, and got to eat cat food, unknowingly. Wasn't too bad! Saturday got up early to go see the cathedral in Embrun near Briançon, which was amazing ! They had the preserved clothes of the priests since like the 11th century ! We saw another cathedral, this one was constructed by monks who used the golden ratio because they didn't have Arabic numerals. Pretty amazing. Sunday got to catch up a bit with Lucca and Dylan, (going to see them this weekend for golf) and  I got to see Digne-les-Bains...in a fashion that wasn't me getting lost on the bus...and I got to meet Isabelle's awesome friend Martine, who had turtles, cacti and good food :). There we also saw a nice museum with a lot of cool art, and a lot of art that I didn't understand. In school I'd like to say I'm doing good in phyiscs and SVT (biology) and even math...in fact better than in English. I got 8/20 on my first English verb quiz, my worst grade yet, go figure! On Wednesday I had my first volleyball match, and we went 2-0, we beat the Digne team and the other Sisteron one! Today I did Escalade (rock climbing) for the first time, that was very cool, and made me realize how weak my arms are. Shout out to Matteo (I think) for helping me learn the knots, he's a solid man! I'm thinking about starting up tennis, and if possible I want to take the local baker into letting me help him make bread one morning.
            Some differences about France: Almost everyone in school wears the brand "Eastpack" (EVERYONE), and it's weird because it's an American brand, but I didn't know it existed. A lot of things are a bit more expensive (80-100 euros for jeans) BUT there's always cheap bread, cheese and cookies :). Cars don't really have a trunk here, they do but it's so dang small. people drive faster here than in the US, if your j-walking, don't be an idiot. Questions? Ask 'em ! and bonné journée à tout !
P.S. Some day I will send Braden his cheese and post pictures

La Vie Française

What's up everyone! Here in France the weather has been not so good a lot of rain, but today was blue skies so I'm looking hopeful. In some classes I can kind of take good notes and follow what's going on, and then in ones like French I just try to translate the gist of the old poems we study. I'm going to start doing rock wall climbing instead of volley ball, and I want to start doing something after school, but I'm not quite sure what, maybe ping pong? I'm trying to get my mom to send me my ukelele. Couldn't go to Marsatec :( but there will be other music festivals. Instead I got to do some promenadin' and got to see "les fruits confits" which are basically fruit filled with syrup covered in pounds of sugar, it was a bit too much even for me. But they looked very cool, like Willy Wonka! Last weekend I ran a 11km race, which was like going from nothing to max, it was really hard and I'm still sore. But won a medal and some good food and drinks for trying! Bobby and I showed everyone the "american" way of handball. Some differences about France that I'm not sure if I've mentioned : Everyone does the "bises" which is 2 kisses on the cheek nearly EVERY time they meet. There are no hugs. No one chooses their classes in France and you are with the same group of kids all year all day. Everyone takes every core subject every year. Sports are not that big at all in school, there's no mascot, no rivalry. It's popular here to wear closes with english writing. I've seen multiple kids wearing straigh up american flags. Today I wore my Olympic bright red USA long sleeve. I was feeling pretty good about that. I swear everyone has better style here, I'm trying to get into the scarfs. Also in my family, we had bread and cheese EVERY lunch and dinner. How cool is that? Hope everyone's great and I'm continuing on my quest to meet up with the exchange students. Bonne journée!