Tag Archives: passion

La Fin

For my last post, I guess I’ll talk about the end of my exchange year and the benefits I feel like I’ve gained from this experience.

The end of my year in France was by far the best part. By this time, I was extremely comfortable with the language so I could easily converse and joke around with my French peers and host family. There were also a lot of events during the end of my year that contributed to its greatness. My European bus tour ended on April 22, and on the following week, a musical festival called le Printemps de Bourges (“the spring of Bourges”) was held in my town. People from all over France came for the week to listen to bands, sell merchandise in the stands, and enjoy the overall atmosphere that a music festival usually fosters. My friends and I went to see C2C and Mika; Mika turned out to be a great performer, and you can listen to one of his major hit French songs that he performed at his concert, “Elle me dit”, here.

In May, I took a 4 day trip with my host sister Léna to Paris; her brother Johan lives there with his girlfriend, so we showed us around and took us to all his favorite spots including le Parc Chaumont;

Montmartre, the artsy neighborhood home to the church le Sacré Coeur, where we also got to see this guy perform (skip to 6:17 if you want to see some really crazy stuff!); the Eiffel Tower, and much more.
At the end of May and the beginning of June, my family came to visit me! We spent a few days at Bourges where my host families met my real family, then we traveled to Nice in the South of France for 3 days, and flew back to Paris. This was the first time I saw my parents in 9 months, and it was the first time my parents went to Europe, so it was a really special moment in all our lives.
June brought the end of school (finally, done with high school!), lovely weather, and hanging out with friends each and every day. I felt closer to my exchange friends more than I ever had before; since the bus trip, our bonds only continued to increase, and when my first friend left at the end of June, it was extremely hard for all of us to say goodbye. These were the first friends I made on my exchange year; they supported me in the beginning went things were hard and I missed my family; they were the ones I looked forward to hanging out with after a long day at school where I was that quiet foreigner. With my exchange friends, I was just like them, away from their family, away from their “life”, always eager to taste something interesting or go somewhere new. These people understood me the most during my year, and they understand me the most now when I talk about the experiences we shared. Now, it was time to say goodbye, and it wasn’t easy.
By July, there weren’t a lot of us left. During the first week of the month, I spent a week in Noirmoutier, a cute town on the west coast of France, with my boyfriend at the time, an exchange student from Paraguay, and his host family.
I spent France’s independence day, July 14, in Paris, where I saw the fireworks show next to the Eiffel tower. I left on July 16.
It’s the weirdest thing going back home after not being there for over 11 months. I was so ecstatic to see my dog, and of course my family, but once I was back in my house, I felt like I had never left. I felt like the entire year was some sort of dream that never actually happened because all those relationships I built during that year were now so far away from me that they hardly seemed real. To this day I sometimes feel like the entire experience was a dream, and I tend not to talk about my time there. It might sound snotty when I say no one here will really understand me or my experiences in France, but it’s true. An exchange year is a lot deeper than a vacation or a year of traveling; I became much more confident, more comfortable in my skin, and more independent. I guess you could say I grew up a lot in this year.
I’ll leave you with this video I made during the last few weeks of my time in France, and hopefully you’ll understand more of what I’m talking about.
(music: 4,000 Iles by Fauve)
FIN

Bus Trippin’ Across Europe

One of the major perks of participating in the Rotary exchange program compared to other programs is that Rotarians plan weekends and trips in which exchange students meet up and see a new city and cause general chaos in said city. Usually these get-togethers last no more than 2 days and you meet with only the students in your District (group of Rotary clubs in a general area), and you become really close with this group of international people.

Sometimes, however, the Rotary plans a major travel event for exchange students to participate in, and for students in France, we were invited to take part in the Bus Trip. While this trip wasn’t cheap, it was totally worth it. This is the Bus Trip in a nutshell: Twelve days traveling via bus, stopping in on major European cities for a day, sleeping in hostels, waking up early to get back on the bus again, all the while getting to know 50 other exchange students and their countries. Needless to say, it was a blast.

To kick off the trip, we all met in Paris in mid April. We were introduced to our four chaperones, two of which were older Rotarians while the other two were young volunteers. We toured Paris on the bus, stopping at some major sites like Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower of course.

One of my best friends from exchange, Camila (from Mexico City), and I

One of my best friends from exchange, Camila (from Mexico City), and I

Day 2 of the bus trip was spent in Strasbourg, France, right on the border of France and Germany. This city has a gorgeous Gothic cathedral, along with a river that flows throughout it, which somewhat reminded me of Venice.

Strasbourg

Strasbourg

The next stop was Nuremberg, Germany, where we visited a carnival during the first half of the day, eating schnitzel and enormous pretzels to our heart’s content. Later, we visited the stadium where the Nuremberg trials took place, and even stood where Hitler stood when he gave his speeches. It would have been a more chilling place if it weren’t for the high class sports cars zooming around the arena. I found it interesting how the Germans transformed this historical site into a modern-day race track of sorts.

The rooftops of Nuremberg

The rooftops of Nuremberg

During the next day, my 19th birthday, I woke up Germany and fell asleep in Prague. I felt so lucky to have the chance to celebrate my birthday in such a beautiful place in the company of some amazing people. Of all the cities we visited during this trip, Prague was definitely my favorite. The city is simply gorgeous, and the Czech people are friendly and liberal. It has a good mix of historical beauty and a lively culture, making it a city with the best of both worlds.

The next day was mostly spent traveling/sleeping on the bus as we crossed into Austria to visit Vienna. By this time, we were all getting tired and a little bit cranky, but no one could really complain since we were having the time of our lives. Again, another beautiful day filled with much site-seeing and tired feet.

Vienna has a pretty sick cathedral too.

Vienna has a pretty sick cathedral too.

Venice was next on the journey. Again another wonderful city full of outrageously gorgeous buildings, even better food, and way too many tourists, but the canals make this city extra magical. Plus, our group of 50 formed a slightly-successful flash mob in Saint Mark’s Square!

Of course we didn't miss out on a gondola ride! We're professional tourists!

Of course we didn’t miss out on a gondola ride! We’re professional tourists!

Following Venice were day trips to Milan, Chamonix (where the tallest mountain in France, Mont Blanc, is located), Geneva (where we ate really good fondue and visited the UN building), and then headed back to Paris. Parting ways was not entirely difficult for me; I was exhausted and slightly sick from a cold (as well as slightly sick of some of the people on the trip). A part from that, it really was an incredible trip that I got to share with my best friends in Bourges, and I also became closer with some other exchange students in my District. I’ll definitely never forget this trip and the people I shared it with!

The ridiculously superb cathedral in Milan

The ridiculously superb cathedral in Milan

The group!

The group!

 

 

Argentina 1980 vs. France 2012

As I mentioned before, my inspiration for participating in the Rotary exchange program was initially my mom. My mom decided to participate in this program in 1980 during her senior year of high school. She wanted to take a year off between high school and college to travel, so this was the perfect fit for her.

Back then, the program was a little bit different than what it has become today, so by comparing my mom’s experiences going abroad with my own, I’ll explore how different our years were but also how they were essentially very similar.

The first major difference was the country. My mom had learned German in high school, so naturally she wanted to visit Germany during her year abroad, or somewhere in Europe at least. She had to list her top 20 or so countries in order of preference, and she tells me that at least the top 10 countries were all in Europe. She ended up getting her 13th choice — Argentina.

At first she was really nervous to take on a South American country. She even considered dropping out of the program, but decided that she was ready to take on the challenge of learning an entirely different language in a very different place.

I, on the other hand, had it much easier. My first choice out of the 5 top countries I listed was France, and I got my first choice. I definitely felt lucky to get my first choice, but at the same time I was like my mom; I was looking for an adventure and knew I could find that in any country. Being familiar with the language right off the bat was definitely a plus however. I got to become closer with my host families quicker, and I had less trouble in school making friends since I could get by in French even during my first month there.

A picture I took during one of my last nights in France.

A picture I took during one of my last nights in France.

My mother’s experience with getting by in the language was an entirely different case. She tells me that since she knew next to no Spanish when she arrived in Argentina, and barely anyone knew English in her little town on the coast (called Pinamar), she felt very isolated during her 3 months there. Plus, it was a different time; there was no Facebook, no Skype, no cell phones for texting and snapchat. When she felt homesick, she couldn’t log on and talk to her friends and family back home instantly like I could. During her entire year there, she made about 4 phone calls to her parents, and wrote letters. I can’t even image how difficult that would have been!

Pinamar

Pinamar — vamos a la playa anyone?

While it may have taken my mom more time to become accustomed to the language and culture than it did me, she overcame the language barrier and by the end of the year was fluent in oral Spanish. She even came back with a Spanish accent! This never happened to me because I heard English at least once per day while I was in France; I either spoke English with my international friends, or I read it while surfing the internet at night. Since my mom was so isolated in a Spanish-speaking world, she had no choice but to immerse herself in the culture and embrace it. I also had to do this, but to a lesser extent.

Finally, a huge difference between my mom’s year abroad and mine was the educational setting we were placed in. My mom went to the public school there which was a miniscule building which housed grades K-12. After a few months, the teachers told my mother to stop attending classes since she wasn’t contributing anything by reading her books in the back of the class! This was completely different from my experience; I had to attend a Catholic high school Monday through Friday, and if the Rotary found out I skipped a class, I would be in deep trouble! I think I prefer my mom’s educational experience during her gap year…

Even though our experiences were completely different and occurred during very disparate times, in the end we still describe our gap years as incredible, and as if they never really happened at all. It just goes to show that it’s what you do and the effort you put into your gap year (or your travels in general) that makes it memorable, not where you go.

The Journal

One of the things I missed most while on exchange in France was having access to the painting materials I was used to using at home. I love painting on large canvases using acrylic and oil paints, and I wasn’t able to bring these with me, nor did I want to buy them in France. Instead, I decided to pour my artistic flow into a sketchbook/journal to document the details of my life in France.

My first sketches were completed before I left for France. One of my favorite sketches is the one I did of my Rotary blazer and the few pins I had before I left.

I was most inspired by one of my favorite illustrators, Qin Leng. http://qinleng.tumblr.com/

Once I got to France, I sometimes found myself with nothing to do after school but sleep. Instead of locking myself in my room the whole evening, I would pull out my sketchbook and sketch something that happened that day, or sketch a recent trip my host family and I had taken. I found that this was a much better way to pass the time, and it allowed me to be more social and integrate with my host family. I know they really enjoyed seeing my drawings develop, and they especially liked the caricatures I would do for them.

Even at school, I would work on my journal during study halls, art class, and sometimes even during other class subjects (especially English class!). My classmates became really interested in what I was doing; they’d frequently ask me to flip through the sketchbook, checking to see if I had finished any sketches since last they’d peered through it. In a way, this sketchbook helped me integrate into the class because I’d share my experiences with the French country with my class mates, and they liked to hear about what I thought about French people and life in general. It was a way to start a conversation, which is not always easy to do in a second language. Plus, I would scribble down sentences in both English and French, so before I finished the sketch with pen, I’d ask a classmate if there were any grammatical errors.

My sketchbook wasn’t only fun to look at for my host family and my classmates; I tried my best to take pictures of my work and post them on my Facebook page for my family and friends back home to see. I thought this would be a fun way for them to follow what I was up to in France, even if I only finished a sketch of an event months after it happened.

Yet, around February and March, my sketching started to slow down. As I gained stronger friendships, I spent less and less time on recording new experiences and instead started making new memories with my friends.

Even now, I feel that I remember the trips and days I documented through my sketchbook better than those I didn’t. Despite the fact that I took lots of pictures, through my sketchbook, I could more easily depict the emotions I was experiencing at certain times.

I’ve only finished the sketches up until March, so I still have a long way to go! Here are a few pictures of the sketches I completed while in France.

Having trouble packing

 

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Barcelona!

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The cathedral and old houses in the town in which I stayed, Bourges.

 

Le Mont Saint Michel

If I were to ask you about the attractions you know about in France, I bet you could at least name a few in Paris: The Eiffel Tower, le Louvre, l’Arc de Triomphe, les Champs-Elysées, maybe even Montmartre and le Moulin Rouge? Could you name any outside of Paris?

Le Mont Saint Michel is probably the number one attraction outside of Paris that people recognize. In fact, it’s one of the most visited sites in the world. That’s not too hard since France is the country that is most visited in the entire world (the United States is number 2).

In October of my year abroad, my Rotary district in France (districts envelop different areas of the country, and in my district there were about 22 exchange students) planned a trip for us students to travel up North to visit the Mont Saint Michel. About 5 or 6 other districts were planning to do the same, so we were all really excited to meet with tons of other students.

We set out on a Friday from Bourges (the town in which I was living) to Normandy, the uppermost area of France. We met with the rest of our exchange students at the beach, and ate sandwiches and played in the chilly water. Later, we went on a tour at a WWII museum which was right next to the artificial port that was created for the American soldiers to land on and invade Normandy. Not far from that, there’s an American cemetery which we visited. There, we met an American soldier who had actually fought in Normandy, and tears were in his eyes as he helped fold the American flag.

American cemetery in Normandy

American cemetery in Normandy

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Holding up the flag with my fellow American exchangers in my district at the cemetery.

After this emotional experience, we hopped back into our vans and drove an hour to our hotel which was right outside the Mont Saint Michel.

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A little bit of history: Le Mont Saint Michel is an island commune just a kilometer away from mainland France. In medieval times, it was used as a fortification because it could only be accessed during low tide. When enemies tried to reach it during high tide, they would drown.

Currently, the commune has a population of 42 people!! Wouldn’t it be cool to live there..? No? Just me then. The French government is also trying to figure out a solution to the island’s main problem: it’s sinking into the surrounding soil and water!

For some reason the Rotarians made all of us 200 exchange students walk around the island in the ice cold water for about 3 hours. We didn’t mind though, it was the perfect opportunity to get to know the rest of the students and take pictures with out countries’ flags.

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Treacherous French (quick) sand

On the island-- these houses date back to medieval times

On the island– these houses date back to medieval times

Looking down at the village and surrounding water.

Looking down at the village and surrounding water.

Later that night, all the students and Rotarians piled into one room to eat dinner, and once we finished our meals, the Rotarians had us go to the front of the room in groups and sing our country’s national anthem. This took roughly 2 hours to get through everyone’s anthem, but it was fun to hear the students sing in different languages. After that it was dance party time.

I still think of this weekend as one of the best weekends during my exchange. I got to see a beautiful place that I normally would never have gone to because it was too far away from my city, and I got to meet so many different people from around the world, people whom I still follow on Facebook to check out what they’re up to. But mostly, I became much closer with the exchange students in my district, especially these 4 girls, with whom I became super close with during the rest of the year. My exchange wouldn’t have been half as great as it was without the support and friendship of these girls! As much as I love my French friends I made at school, it’s the exchange students who really understood me and got to know me better. And I miss ’em to death!

msm5

Lydia from Tacoma, Washington; Victoria from Toronto, Canada; Camila from Mexico City, Mexico

 

Jo from Perth, Australia

Jo from Perth, Australia

 

Language Fails

Learning a foreign language and getting the chance to practice it in a foreign country is one of the hardest but most rewarding experiences. Even though I had about 5 years of high school French under my belt, I was nowhere near fluent by the time I stepped foot in France. Inevitably, I made a lot of mistakes while in France, and continue to make mistakes in the French classes I’m taking at PSU. Yet, some of my funniest memories from France are the times I screwed up a word or a phrase. Here are some of the funniest mistakes I remember making during my year, as well as some stories my exchange friends have told me. Be warned: these jokes are a lot more funny in French, but I’ll try and translate as best I can!

Echec numéro 1 (“Fail Number 1”): After 9 hours on an airplane, and after a 3 hour car ride, I arrived at my first host parents’ house. Exhausted and confused, I tried to muddle my way through the French I knew, introducing myself to my host mom and brothers. One of the first things my host mom, Sylvie, showed me was the coat and shoes closet. I put my shoes on the rack, and she asked me if I wanted to wear slippers (most French people do in the house), but I didn’t understand. She pointed to the slippers and I realized what she was asking me.

“Oh!” I said. “Non, je peux aller les pieds à poil.”

Some back story: I had been reading up on some slang words because I knew that my French teacher had never taught them in class. One of the words I came across in my book was à poil which I had understood as naked. What I wanted to reply to her was this: “No I can go barefoot”, but the real way to say “bare foot” is “les pieds nus”. Wordreference.com gives a good translation for à poil:

Basically I ended up saying “stark naked feet” (it also has a sexual connotation). My host mom cracked up about that one. I know, a lot of explanation for a joke (told you it’d be funnier in French..) but maybe you’ll find the next one better.

Also can we talk about the expression “in your birthday suit”? Didn’t know that was a thing but I’m really excited about it.

Echec numéro 2: At school, my friends would always reference going to the lunch line. One day, I wanted to suggest that we get into the lunch line early because it always took so long. The word for lunch line is: la queue de la cafét, and since the word is “queue”, I thought it was pronounced the English way, like the letter Q (it’s actually pronounced kuh in French). When I said queue, it ended up sounding like the French word for ass, being cul. They’re very similar, okay? My friends got a kick out of that one.

Echec numéro 3: (This fail actually occurred to my friend.) French teenagers love their slang. (There’s even a made-up teen language called le verlan in which they invert their words like merci (“thank you “) which becomes cimer and femme (“woman”) which becomes meufSupposedly it was first created so that adults wouldn’t know what they were talking about, but I think they’ve caught on!) Anyway, my Mexican friend Camila had class with another student whom she would talk with, and this guy always ended his sentences with the word “nickel”. This word means great, or awesome, but she didn’t know it at the time. So she went home to her host sister and asked what the word meant, except she pronounced the word like “niquer”. Her host sister, outraged by Camila’s disgusting student, told her to never talk to him again. Cam asked why, and her host sister replied that the word meant the F word. Later, Cam understood that he wasn’t trying to seduce her, he was simply expressing his positivity!

Hopefully you guys found it funny… At least my French host parents and friends get a kick out of those stories!

Here’s a link to common French mistakes English speaks make (I even learned something new!): http://www.voulezvouloz.com/2013/10/9-common-french-language-errors-english-speakers-make/

Anyone else's middle school teachers always have cheesy posters like this? Very inspirational.

Anyone else’s middle school teachers always have cheesy posters like this? Very inspirational.

 

 

Au Lycée

I realized I haven’t made a post about going to high school (“lycée”) in France last year (maybe because I’ve tried to block it out of my memory..?). No it actually wasn’t THAT bad. I guess I’ll describe the French schooling system and you’ll see for yourself…

First of all, even though I had already graduated from high school in the US in 2012, the Rotary program still requires that students go to high school in their host country. We don’t necessarily have to pass the courses, but just do our best (which for some of us meant that staying awake in class was achievement enough).

French high school consists of our 10-12th grades. I was placed in the 12th grade which is the most difficult year (called Terminale). At the end of the year, students have to pass the Baccalauréat (or just le Bac), which is basically a week-long test consisting of everything you’ve ever learned in school (yikes is right). If you pass, you get to go on to college or a job. If not, you take the entire year of Terminale all over again. Pretty intimidating.

I was assigned to a private Catholic school called Lycée Sainte-Marie. Luckily we didn’t have to wear uniforms, but a cross hung in every classroom. I was also assigned to be in the “L” (or literary) track, so I was with the same people in all of my classes. We had classes such as French literature, History and Geography, Philosophy, and lots of Language courses. The two other tracks are “ES” (social sciences and economics), and “S” (sciences).

My days consisted of waking up before 7am, catching the public bus (no school buses unless you live in rural areas), and classes began at 8am almost every day (they use block scheduling so your schedule changes everyday), and finishing at 5pm almost every day with only a 45 minute lunch-break in between. This was probably the worst part of exchange, being stuck in school for 9 hours each day when all I wanted to do was explore and travel and hang out with friends. The plus side? Every 2 months we got a 2 week break. That’s when I did all my traveling!

Since the school day is so long, there are no sports or clubs associated with schools in France. The only club was the drama club, and they met well after the school day ended only once a week. Thus, there is absolutely no school spirit to be found in the typical French school. School is school in France, no assemblies and no pep rallies, and there even weren’t morning announcements. Needless to say, this was incredibly different than the American school system I was used to. I missed being on a sports team where I could hang out with friends and be active everyday after school. Instead, I’d usually walk into the downtown area and meet my exchange friends in a café for a drink after school, and then head home on the bus in time for dinner.

Yet, one of the major differences in French schools that I especially didn’t care for was the strictness of the teachers. Even if a few of the students were silently talking to one of their neighbors, often the teacher would suddenly blow up at the student and yell at them in front of the class. They would sometimes even insult the student in front of their peers. I found this to be way too severe, sometimes verging on the point of cruelty. I guess it’s their way of punishing students, but I definitely prefer the American way of simply sending someone to the office so that the rest of the class can just move on and learn. I didn’t find my school to be an encouraging learning environment, but maybe that’s just my school, not all French schools.

All in all, I’m glad I went through the French high school experience, especially because now I see how great my American high school experience was. Luckily I made some great French friends at school that got me through those long days.

A photo of my class!
A photo of my class with our philosophy teacher on the left.

 

The Passion Continues

This semester I will be continuing on with my passion blog focusing on my Rotary exchange experience in France. There’s so much to talk about, whether that be the cultural differences in France, or exchange programs in general, or how this experience has changed me. Some upcoming topics may be a post about French schools, and how going to high school for a 5th year was probably the hardest part of my exchange but maybe the most rewarding. I’d also like to get more specific, narrating personal events that changed my mind about some things and supported my opinions in others. I’m going to have to talk about my exchange friends who also lived in the same city I did at the time, because those friendships were the strongest I made while I was in France.

This experience of writing down what my gap year means to has also really helped me put into perspective how unique and how amazing being an exchange student was, and that’s another reason to why I want to continue telling my story. What I want my readers to get out of my blog is not jealousy, and I don’t want them to think I merely tell my story to brag about how great my exchange year was. Rather, I hope to inspire them to maybe study abroad in the future, or better understand exchange students or international people at Penn State. I also hope they learn a lot about French culture, the good and the bad!

Thanksgiving à la française

So since we’re all dying to get Fall Break started, and above all, eat pounds and pounds of yummy Thanksgiving food, I’d like to share what my Thanksgiving looked like last year.

In France they obviously don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but my first host family got really into the whole sharing of cultures thing, so we recreated the good old American Thanksgiving in France!

It turned out to be quite the project; I had to look up all the recipes, translate them, and convert them to grams. We also had to order some items from online since we couldn’t find them in French grocery stores. Some of these were pumpkin puree to make Pumpkin Pie, corn bread mix, Reese’s and Hershey’s (for a taste-testing type of dessert), Goldfish and Snyder’s pretzels (for the snack/appetizer before the dinner– my host mom really wanted to make this thing authentic). The task of cooking a turkey and getting the gravy right was pretty daunting for both my host mom, and I got the feeling she lost some sleep over it. Since the French don’t have ginormous turkeys in their grocery stores like we do in November, my host mom went to a local farm and picked up a fresh one. When she told me the story of going to the farm, she said the farmer gave her the choice between a white turkey and a black one. Since she didn’t know which to choose, she told me she chose the black one because “well, Obama, right?” My family back in the states thought that was pretty funny.

Safety glasses necessary? Obviously

Safety glasses necessary for butter painting? Obviously. (That’s my little host bro!)

My host mom invited all her neighbor friends for dinner, and I invited 4 of my French friends from school, so for our Thanksgiving dinner we had to cook for a total of 18 people! We spent hours in the kitchen that day, but in the end, everything turned out deliciously. One of the guests even brought wine from California (they decided to stick with their French wine though). And two of the guests brought me cookbooks as a thank you (maybe they thought we give gifts on Thanksgiving?).

Our long table decorated with fall colors and leaves!

Our long table decorated with fall colors and leaves!

Friends from school enjoying a classic American meal.

Friends from school in coordinating outfits.

Taste-testing of peanut butter after the meal! There were mixed reviews.

Taste-testing of peanut butter after the meal! There were mixed reviews.

After dinner, we had a little trivia competition in which I asked questions about the US. Whoever got the question right would get a piece of Hershey’s chocolate and a point for their team (adults vs kids). All in all, I’d say it was a very successful day, and I had a lot of fun sharing my traditions with my host family and friends.

Trivia game, adults vs kids! (Kids won obviously)

Trivia game, the kids won obviously.

Haute-Savoie

I got my first package from France last week!!!!

Look at all those cutesy stamps!

Look at all those cutesy stamps!

A little back history: I had hosted a girl from France named Priscille during my senior year of high school for a week when her class came to State College to check out the USA. To reciprocate generosity of hosting her, she invited me to come visit her in France, and since I so happened to be in France last year, I was able to stay with her and her family for a week. And it just so happens that she lives in the coolest place in the world: the French Alps.

The red dot is basically where Albertville is.

The red dot is basically where Albertville is.

The week I spent with Priscille and her family in the Alps was one of the best times I had during my entire year abroad. I went at the end of February so the Alps were in peak skiing condition (hahahha i’m so punny). I don’t pretend to be some hoity-toity skiier, but I do love it, so being able to ski in the Alps was such a dream. I had literally never seen mountains that high!

We spent the week outside basically; we skiied 3 days straight and by the end of it my legs felt like they were going to fall off. When we weren’t outside, Priscille’s mom Marie-Claire made it a point to teach me everything about the region they lived in called Haute-Savoie. France is divided into 22 regions, and each place has its own specialties including cheeses, wines, meals, dog breeds, fruits, and whatever else they can lay a claim on that originally came from that region. After learning of all the specialties originating in Haute-Savoie, I quickly decided this region was my favorite. Here’s a list of some of their specialties:

-Meals: Tartiflette, Raclette, Cheese fondu (I mentioned in past posts these were some of my favorite meals due to their thick layers of melty cheese, hearty potatoes, and savory ham!)

-Cheese: Reblochon, beaufort (two of my favorite cheeses!)

-Fruit: Blueberry

-Animals: Groundhog, St Bernard dog, Chamois

This is a Chamois!

This is a Chamois!

Plus the region’s capital is Annecy, basically France’s version of Venice minus the millions of tourists

Annecy!

Annecy!

Aren’t all of these things kind of the best (ok the groundhog is whatever, but still)? Plus I’ve always enjoyed the mountains more than anywhere (including the beach), so I pretty much felt right at home.

Anyway, long story short, the package was sent to me by Marie-Claire with a letter explaining that every year in Albertville there’s a cultural festival that shows films and documentaries. She sent me magazines, post cards, pictures, pamphlets, and even a sticker that she picked up from the festival, all having to do with Haute Savoie and the Alps. I’m currently enjoying looking through the magazines, remembering the amazing week I got to spend in Haute-Savoie with Priscille and her family. I was lucky enough to check out a lot of different regions and cities in France, and I can say confidently that I felt most amazed by and most at home in this region at the foot of the French Alps.

Me skiing my way through Haute-Savoie

Me skiing my way through Haute-Savoie