I'm coming!!

Hello everyone.

So this is it. The last post from France, dun dun dun.

I'm coming home tomorrow!!!! I knew that I would have to leave one day, but I never really believed it. I am so excited to see everyone, but it hurts my heart enormously to leave this beautiful place called the France. I've just realized how much I've grown to love everyone here.

As my friend Camille would say, "Things are only beautiful because they have an end" That is so true. If I weren't leaving, this would have been a much easier weekend emotionally, but I wouldn't choose that. Because I only had a year, I took advantage of the amazing world I was lucky enough to be in, and that made it sad to leave, happily.

I had a great weekend, starting with a circus show I went to see on thursday, and then a guitar, bonfire camping party on saturday for Kristy and her friends, then last night my own go away party, along with the 2 other exchange students in my club and my first host families daughter, named maud, who just came home from finland. I have slept a total of 6 hours in two days. I am looking forward to my 10 hours on the plane, with nothing to do.

Because it was a party for the four of us it was pretty huge. They made a slide show with our pictures throughout the year, and sang us each individually a song, and we had a huge "piece montée" cake. I danced till my legs fell off, talked to everyone and said my good byiieees....*tear*

I'm not really going to try and sum up the year. I can't. Other than to say it was an incredibly rich experience, thanks to the people first off in Canada, then everyone in France.

I hope you have all enjoyed the blog, however irregular the posts were. Just to see, can everyone who has been reading this blog, once or everyday, waiting for a new post ( sorry about that!) leave me a comment, with your name, and how you know me. With the exception of a few faithful comment-ers (thankyou!) this has always been a more or less one way thing, and I'd love to see who all has been reading!!

And now ladies and gents, it is time to organize my bags, sleep a little tonight, and then say, au revoir.

For those of you in Canada. See you tommorow!!

A tiny french annecdote

Yesterday, I went to the goat farmers farm and he taugh me how to make cheese!!! I really made cheese. Then I milked the goats, then I took home some goat milk to try.

When I was a baby, I couldn't drink normal milk, so all I drank was goats milk. When the farmer asked me if I wanted to take some home, I was like " Its been nion 18 years sinces I' ve tasted goat milk" I felt so old...

The goat milk was really good. I enjoyed it heaps.

Thats all for the tiny anecdote of the day.

God... Theres so much sand on the beach....

So taking a bit of a break from the bus trip, I though I would update you on what I've been up to in real life. (ok more like exchange student life)

This last weekend, was a long one. One of my canadian friends named Kristy, from Ontario, invited me to go alone with her and her host parents to the south for a first and last beach holiday.

We were super lucky with the weather and didn't really see any clouds at all. Well maybe like the two wispy ones in the photo there. But really it was wonderful weather. Thank you weather god, as my mom would say.

So after the bus trip we were feeling so VERY worn out from seeing guided tours and momuments, that we told her host parents that we didn't want to see any towns, or statues or buildings or know any history. We just wanted to see the beach.

And thats what we did.....

Well sort of. We went to a super cool town called St. Tropez for one evening, because the people there are just so rich and excentric. All the yachts that are featured on like yacht shows and magazines, live here. And victoria BC apparently, but there were lots there. I've never seen such big expensive boats before.
One night, when the sun was no longer good for tanning, we went to the nearest town for ice cream, found a bar playing jazz and we totally danced a bit. It was good fun.

This picture is me and kristy playing in the sand. We made some pretty small drip castles and we even made moats and stuff to go around them, so the water wouldn't get it. We had so much fun. We laughed till we had abs as hard as a counter, then had at least two ice creams a day to make up for the mucscle gain.

The islandy thing in the back ground, has a HUGE castle / house on it, and its the summer residence of Jacques Chirac, (the president of France- its ok I didn't know before I came here either!!)

It was kinda funny because on the first day, we were totally out there in our 15 spf, all day trying to get tan, then the second day it was like, "ok a little bit of 25 on the burns" and by the last day I had 60 spf on, a tee shirt, and a hat, sitting under the umbrella.
It was so fun. I did get pretty tan. I've never put so much lotion on my body in a four day period in my entire life. Its was nuts.

Thank you kristy.

'Twas the first day of the bus trip...

The bus trip started in paris. We got up all at 4 30 am to catch the early train. When we got to the station at about 9 am we had to wait till about noon for the others to get there. Nothing more fun than waiting in the Gare de Lyon for 3 and a bit hours!! Then we did a guided tour of Paris, to which no one listened because we were all so excited to meet and talk to each other.
It was only on the bus, we got off at the garden of Luxembourg and at the eiffel tower and thats it. It wasn't top, as the french would say,but it was paris. These are all the Canadains on the bus trip in front of the tower. Including Paloma, a girl from Kelowna, that I knew back home.

This picture is for ben. There really are gaps ALL over the world. You were right. Note the Champs Elyees sign right beside it.
We stayed in a hostel in Reims, and I put this picture up because it shows that we were tired, even on the first night, from getting up so early.

After that we slept, and that was the end of the first day, in Paris.

And today, Germany

Germany was the first country we visited outside of France.

It was pretty nifty. The buildings looked very german, meaning a little more stark and the brick was darker I found.

It was pouring rain and really not very pleasant weather wise, unless your a fan of cold biting weather.

We stayed in Munich in a hostel, called the "Easy Palace" I'm going to let you all make up your minds about this one.

We had a guided tour with a guy who was really funny and cool. He took us to the beer hall in munich, across from the hard rock café and a few other cool sights.

The beer hall was definatly the coolest I've ever seen in my limited, (not being legal age in my home country) experience. For starters it was HUGE, and there were all sorts of people and a band playing good beer drinking songs and they served beers to go along with the size of the room. A normal beer was 1 litre. In a mug. Definatly a meal sized beer. Not too shabby. The ambience was fantastic.
*rotary side note, I did not drink this beer, this is picture was taken simply to show everyone the immense size. *

Later on in the evening when we had a chance to go back, I just sat there with my bustrip buddy Dina Marie and laughed and laughed. It was a good time. We all had to come home at 11, unfortunatly, but it was fun trying to figure out the metro in a non english or french speaking country. I've never felt more like a tourist in my entire life. It was bitter sweet.

We got back to our room, had indepth political dicussions until at least 2 or 3 am then went to sleep. the next day we left for Austria.

And that was Germany.

Venice to start.

Because it has been ages and ages since I've written I will start off with a general greeting,

Hello everybody I hope you are all well and prospering.

I have been home from my european bus trip for about three days now and have come to my first families home again to recount the stories to you via their FUNCTIONING computer.

So gereralities: The euro tour was great. We were 54 in the bus and we drove from Paris, to germany, Austria, Italie, the south of France, Switzerland and before finishing, once again in paris.

I made some AMAZING friends, that I will never forget and had lots of laughs and dreams come true with them during the past 12 days.

I have so many pictures and memories, I think I'm going to do this Kelly style and let the trip last me for the next few weeks as well. Today I will do Venice, because I happen to have the pictures here. In the following posts I will do a city each time.

Venice was cool, really touristic and completely void of any locals, but beautiful all the same.


This is where we started. This is the gondola parking lot and the yellow building is a best western hotel. There really is no escaping them.

The things I remember about Venice are the following:
- I was sick. After 4 days of not getting to sleep before 2 or 3 am I was totally sick. I coughed so much during my illness on the bus trip, that when I came back I had abs like steel. (Ha!) Everytime I coughed it was like a little situp. I actually fell asleep on the boat going to Venice. Who does that?

-The pigeons. Stacks and stacks of them in the main square. People would buy bags of corn and put it on their hats or arms and have pigeons covering them.
Yumm what an excellent way to catch dinner and the bird flu in one clean act.
One could say, hittong two birds with one stone.....? ok enough with the puns.

-We took a gondala ride, which was an absolute must do, and it was so romantic. It really was like in the movies, with the exception of the chunks of garbage floating in the water and occasional funky odour.

- the prada bags. In the bag in this picture lies ONE THOUSAND AND FIFTY euros. In other words 2 bags and one wallet.
The legs on the right belong to Dina Marie, my new best bustrip bubby (just had to add in the alliteration) an american who knows how to shop.
The good 45 minutes to an hour we spent in that Prada store making the sales man run all around looking for the perfect purse is my new personal all time high shopping memory. Wow, such class. Bravo Dina Marie.


So thats all I'm going to say today about the bus trip, but next time I write (I promise it won't be soo long) I will take you somewhere else far away and european.

Marche du Pâque

Heeelllllooooo everybody,

Sorry this has taken me so long. I have been crazy busy lately, and not had hours and hours to sit and wait for the computer to work.

Things are still going well. Last night I did an easter walk. It was a thing that was organized by youth groups in Savoie. Even though I'm not in a youth group I really wanted to do the walk, so I did. Its just such a cool idea. We walked all night.

We started out at 6pm. Had a little welcome and all that, then walked a bit and went to a mass. We ate dinner and at about midnight and then we started to walk. We did so till 6 am, stopping every hour or so for tea and hot chocolate. We walked from town to town, crossing a valley, throughout the course of the night.

It was a really cool experience. We walked through lots of really little old towns and tonnes of old buildings, all 150 of us, carring torches. It was so pretty to watch the procession curving ahead of me, 150 little flames lighting up the road and buildings. I met some really really cool people and had lots of good talks along the way.

And then it rained. At 2am it started to rain, and it rained soo hard. We were all soaked. completely. After that it was FREEZING cold. Not really pleasant, but, well, er.... not very pleasant. There really is no "but" to that one.

Four hours later, we finally got to the ending town and had breaky. I peeled off all of my soaked clothing, with the exception of my tee shirt, rung out what water I could, and tried to soak all the heat from my bowl of tea. And then we took the bus home.

When I got home, I struggled to keep awake in the hot shower just long enough to warm myself up without drowning, then slept until 4 pm. A clear sleeping record for me.

It was a pretty cool thing. It was kind of like running a marathon. People are like, "Why would anyone want to put themselves through that?" But walking all night in the pouring, freezing rain, fighting off sleep is just my idea of a good time. Its an experience that doesn't come up very often.

It makes your bed feel better than it has ever felt before, it builds caracter and after you can say you finished. Doing stuff like this forces me to have time to let my thoughts wander to things they normally wouldn't, to break out of the routine, and to meet really cool people along the way.

In other news, on thursday I'm heading off for my european tour, so if you call or email me during the next two weeks, I won't be there.

Lastly, I can't send email from this comp. I have yahoo and it doesn't recognize the "send" and "delete" etc buttons. I can read my emails but not sent them, so just a side note to Darren, (I hope you read this, or someone *please and thank you* from rotary lets you know the info is here) the "hotel du bon coin" was bought out and turned into condos, according to the tourism office in Chamonix, so you'll have to find a different hotel when you go there. Its no longer open.

Well ladies and gen , thats all I have to say,
talk to you all soon, or maybe not so soon, with the internet connection like it is, but in any case miss you all
A plus!!