Now I know I've been neglecting this blog... But can you blame me? Between host family changes and voyages I have barely had the time to breathe let alone update this. But I just sent off a little message to my Rotary club back home to post on their website so I figured I might as well get two birds with one stone and share what I wrote with my blog readers too. That is, if there are any left after how much I've neglected this thing... Anyway, here goes:
The 2-week bus trip over Europe that I had waited for with excitement for so long has come and gone, but not without leaving a special place in my heart. I can't begin to describe the amazing things we got to see in some of the most beautiful and incredible cities in the world: Paris, Munich, Innsbruck, Verona, Venice, Florence, Lyon... We saw things in real life I've only ever gotten to see in pictures or read about in stories. We saw the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Notre Dame, Juliet (Guilietta)'s balcony... Both my camera and my mind are full to the brim with images and sights.
But even more important than the things we saw were all the things we got to do. When else in my life would I have gotten the opportunity to take a gondola ride through the canals of Venice? Or eat gelato four times in a day? Or find the best pizza I've ever had in a side street in Florence? Or take a picture with drunken German men in lederhosen? These are moments I could never forget, no matter what.
But most important, significant, and amazing would have to be the people that I met. Exchange students are, without a doubt, some of the best people in the world. It's not just the fact that we've all gone through the same difficult time in the same difficult country (in this case), it's the fact that we've all matured infinitely more than people our age. These experiences, easy or not, have helped us grow whether everyone realizes it or not. On top of that, having met so many people from around the world and experienced things outside of our norm, we're infinitely more open-minded. In the end, it didn't feel like we were from different countries at all, we were just a group of fun-loving kids there to make the best of 12 short days together.
At the time it felt like it might go on forever--like I might spend my whole life partying until late in the night, sleeping on the bus, and sight-seeing. But like all good things, it had to end. Like my exchange, it was only temporary. It gave me a preview of what going home would be like and it looks like going back to the US is not going to be easy. It's difficult to imagine that these people that I've shared so many laughs and tears with will no longer be a part of my life. That I'll never see them again. But they've made such an incredible impact on my life. They've shaped my exchange and therefore, they've shaped who I am today. While leaving behind my life here will be hard, leaving behind my friends will be the hardest.
If someone gave me the choice to go back 10 months in time and do it all over again, I would. Through the good times and the bad, every second of this exchange was worth it. I'll never forget it.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
So yet again it has been...about a month since I last posted. Part of that was because of the holidays--which left me very very busy 27/7--and the other part was because I switched host families! That led to computer problems (that have since been solved, obviously) and the need to constantly be around my host family to try and build a good relationship. I'm being a good exchange student now :).
Plenty of things have happened since I've updated, including the holidays and a family change. When I last wrote it was about my week of discovering careers.
A couple weeks later I got invited to a movie with my rotary club. We saw Twisted (which translates to Raiponce, or Rapunzel) in French. It was really cute! I managed to understand it, even though it was entirely in French which made me very proud of myself. And I got to see some of the other exchange students whom I hadn't seen for quite a while since they were in town for their stage/internship, whom I hadn't seen for a rather long time.
.
The Thursday of that week which was, in fact, Thanksgiving, was our first snow. It didn't stick, but at the time it was still absolutely incredible. I hadn't planned on doing anything for Thanksgiving--I wanted to, but my host family really didn't say anything about it and I asked them too late for them to be able to get any groceries for it. But as it turns out they planned a surprise Thanksgiving dinner for me.
Although it wasn't exactly the same thing as our traditional Thanksgiving dinner with mashed potatoes and ham (because I don't care a ton for turkey), it was still really good. I mean really really good. The turkey was honestly the best I've ever tasted. We also had chestnuts with mushrooms. I'd gotten more used to mushrooms by then, but I still didn't like them: those were the best mushrooms I've ever tasted. It was absolutely wonderful. And they made pumpkin pie! Not the same as our normal pumpkin pie with grandma's homemade whipped cream on top, but still. It's the thought that counts, right? My host dad had gotten the recipe online and it didn't really taste like the real thing. At all. But I didn't care. It was still incredibly sweet.
That weekend two of the Australians, Zoe and Simon, stayed in town an extra day and we had an adventure-full day in Strasbourg. First we went to a fellow American's house and had some pumpkin pie. Now that was some real pumpkin pie. And a pretty delicious one at that.
We wandered around Strasbourg a little, looking at the Marché de Noël which had started that day. Translation: Christmas market. It was there, by the cathedral that we found holy water and I got the most epic Christmas hat in the world. It's Dr. Seuss-like :)
From there we went to go see Australian football! Which was actually the point of our entire expedition. One of the members of Rotex--French people who went to other countries with Rotary--plays in an Australian football league. And for all of those who are wondering, no, it's not the same as American football. It's more like a mixture between American football and soccer. Despite the fact it was absolutely freezing cold outside and incredibly muddy, we had a really great time! Australian football is a lot more interesting than American football (in my opinion). They aren't padded like pillows; they roll in the mud. And there's an odd mixture of throwing and kicking the ball. Much like American football, even in a couple hours of watching it, I still had no clue what the rules were.
From there we took the tram back to Nelson (the American)'s house to get our stuff (since Zoe and Simon had bags for the whole week and I had mine for the night which I spent at Ana (from Ecuador)'s house). The tram took forever because of grève, or strikes, a very very common thing in this country. The girls dropped off our stuff at Ana's house while Simon and Nelson went to go see the GIANT Christmas tree in Place Kleber, the central place of Strasbourg, lit up. We met up with them at a McDonald's in the mall.
From there we had planned on going to see Harry Potter, but ended up being way too late. Not to mention we would have had to take the tram to get to the movie theatre which would have only ensued more problems. We tried finding a different theatre to see it but it had just started and they wouldn't let us in. Instead we decided to do more wandering throughout Strasbourg, looking at all the magnificently beautiful Christmas lights. We ended up wandering into a tiny cafe for hot chocolate.
Getting home was... an adventure. We thought there might be a bus. But there wasn't. And some Spanish guy offered to give us a ride in the bus they were going to take in the same general direction but since he wasn't sure that the bus driver would let us off where we wanted, we politely declined. Eventually we managed to get a taxi in front of the train station. That in itself took quite a bit of time. There were few people working since it was a day of grève. (That reminds me of the reason it was so difficult to get home in the first place... Grève. We had strikes for about a month without stop. I can't remember if that was towards the end of the strikes or if they just picked it up again for a day, but it was very long, I'll just say that. So the trams weren't running after 10 at night. And we couldn't walk to Ana's house since it would involve very dangerous highway roads.) The taxi drivers also didn't want to take anyone who wasn't going very far so one driver denied all the people waiting.
We finally made it home safe and sound.
The next day I took my train home and had a very very nice meal with my host family. They made choucroute, a traditional Alsatian meal. I thought at first it was more a dinner sort of meal, but after eating it I understood why we had it for lunch. To start off, it was a HUGE deal. Meaning my host mom got out the nice dishes and silverware and everything. It was almost frightening at first because I didn't know it would be such a big thing. And everyone was very nicely dressed. Except me, of course. And this lunch lasted until about... 5 or 6 o'clock in the afternoon.
You know how they say that the French eat in several courses? Well, it's true. That was why we spent so much time to eat a simple lunch that started at noon. We started with the "apero". That's where we have drinks (Coke for the kids and beer or cheap champage, known as crement, for the adults) and little snacks before the mealtime. Then the main course--pictures will follow. It was a whole lot of sausage and a whole lot of sauerkraut which is, in fact, the English word for choucroute. And then that was followed by cheese. Which was then followed by dessert. It's actually a lucky thing that we took so much time to eat, because otherwise I would be horrifically stuffed.
Between each course, the kids hung out together upstairs. Although it's hard to call us kids since the youngest was 14 and the oldest 20. But it was all good fun anyway. We stayed upstairs in my host sister's room, watching youtube videos on her laptop. I introduced them to American culture--Charlie the Unicorn. It becomes ten times funnier when you watch it with someone who enjoys that kind of humor, but has never seen the video before.
Now I realize I am very very far behind in my posts, but this is all I can do for now. Someday soon I will sit down and manage to plunk out everything I've done up until now, but today is not the day for that. Not to mention I feel like I've been ignoring my host family for long enough today. Time for me to be more social. :)
Au revoir! Until next time!
Plenty of things have happened since I've updated, including the holidays and a family change. When I last wrote it was about my week of discovering careers.
A couple weeks later I got invited to a movie with my rotary club. We saw Twisted (which translates to Raiponce, or Rapunzel) in French. It was really cute! I managed to understand it, even though it was entirely in French which made me very proud of myself. And I got to see some of the other exchange students whom I hadn't seen for quite a while since they were in town for their stage/internship, whom I hadn't seen for a rather long time.
.
The Thursday of that week which was, in fact, Thanksgiving, was our first snow. It didn't stick, but at the time it was still absolutely incredible. I hadn't planned on doing anything for Thanksgiving--I wanted to, but my host family really didn't say anything about it and I asked them too late for them to be able to get any groceries for it. But as it turns out they planned a surprise Thanksgiving dinner for me.
Although it wasn't exactly the same thing as our traditional Thanksgiving dinner with mashed potatoes and ham (because I don't care a ton for turkey), it was still really good. I mean really really good. The turkey was honestly the best I've ever tasted. We also had chestnuts with mushrooms. I'd gotten more used to mushrooms by then, but I still didn't like them: those were the best mushrooms I've ever tasted. It was absolutely wonderful. And they made pumpkin pie! Not the same as our normal pumpkin pie with grandma's homemade whipped cream on top, but still. It's the thought that counts, right? My host dad had gotten the recipe online and it didn't really taste like the real thing. At all. But I didn't care. It was still incredibly sweet.
That weekend two of the Australians, Zoe and Simon, stayed in town an extra day and we had an adventure-full day in Strasbourg. First we went to a fellow American's house and had some pumpkin pie. Now that was some real pumpkin pie. And a pretty delicious one at that.
We wandered around Strasbourg a little, looking at the Marché de Noël which had started that day. Translation: Christmas market. It was there, by the cathedral that we found holy water and I got the most epic Christmas hat in the world. It's Dr. Seuss-like :)
From there we went to go see Australian football! Which was actually the point of our entire expedition. One of the members of Rotex--French people who went to other countries with Rotary--plays in an Australian football league. And for all of those who are wondering, no, it's not the same as American football. It's more like a mixture between American football and soccer. Despite the fact it was absolutely freezing cold outside and incredibly muddy, we had a really great time! Australian football is a lot more interesting than American football (in my opinion). They aren't padded like pillows; they roll in the mud. And there's an odd mixture of throwing and kicking the ball. Much like American football, even in a couple hours of watching it, I still had no clue what the rules were.
From there we took the tram back to Nelson (the American)'s house to get our stuff (since Zoe and Simon had bags for the whole week and I had mine for the night which I spent at Ana (from Ecuador)'s house). The tram took forever because of grève, or strikes, a very very common thing in this country. The girls dropped off our stuff at Ana's house while Simon and Nelson went to go see the GIANT Christmas tree in Place Kleber, the central place of Strasbourg, lit up. We met up with them at a McDonald's in the mall.
From there we had planned on going to see Harry Potter, but ended up being way too late. Not to mention we would have had to take the tram to get to the movie theatre which would have only ensued more problems. We tried finding a different theatre to see it but it had just started and they wouldn't let us in. Instead we decided to do more wandering throughout Strasbourg, looking at all the magnificently beautiful Christmas lights. We ended up wandering into a tiny cafe for hot chocolate.
Getting home was... an adventure. We thought there might be a bus. But there wasn't. And some Spanish guy offered to give us a ride in the bus they were going to take in the same general direction but since he wasn't sure that the bus driver would let us off where we wanted, we politely declined. Eventually we managed to get a taxi in front of the train station. That in itself took quite a bit of time. There were few people working since it was a day of grève. (That reminds me of the reason it was so difficult to get home in the first place... Grève. We had strikes for about a month without stop. I can't remember if that was towards the end of the strikes or if they just picked it up again for a day, but it was very long, I'll just say that. So the trams weren't running after 10 at night. And we couldn't walk to Ana's house since it would involve very dangerous highway roads.) The taxi drivers also didn't want to take anyone who wasn't going very far so one driver denied all the people waiting.
We finally made it home safe and sound.
The next day I took my train home and had a very very nice meal with my host family. They made choucroute, a traditional Alsatian meal. I thought at first it was more a dinner sort of meal, but after eating it I understood why we had it for lunch. To start off, it was a HUGE deal. Meaning my host mom got out the nice dishes and silverware and everything. It was almost frightening at first because I didn't know it would be such a big thing. And everyone was very nicely dressed. Except me, of course. And this lunch lasted until about... 5 or 6 o'clock in the afternoon.
You know how they say that the French eat in several courses? Well, it's true. That was why we spent so much time to eat a simple lunch that started at noon. We started with the "apero". That's where we have drinks (Coke for the kids and beer or cheap champage, known as crement, for the adults) and little snacks before the mealtime. Then the main course--pictures will follow. It was a whole lot of sausage and a whole lot of sauerkraut which is, in fact, the English word for choucroute. And then that was followed by cheese. Which was then followed by dessert. It's actually a lucky thing that we took so much time to eat, because otherwise I would be horrifically stuffed.
Between each course, the kids hung out together upstairs. Although it's hard to call us kids since the youngest was 14 and the oldest 20. But it was all good fun anyway. We stayed upstairs in my host sister's room, watching youtube videos on her laptop. I introduced them to American culture--Charlie the Unicorn. It becomes ten times funnier when you watch it with someone who enjoys that kind of humor, but has never seen the video before.
Now I realize I am very very far behind in my posts, but this is all I can do for now. Someday soon I will sit down and manage to plunk out everything I've done up until now, but today is not the day for that. Not to mention I feel like I've been ignoring my host family for long enough today. Time for me to be more social. :)
Au revoir! Until next time!
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