2nd week of school

SALUT!!

Wow where should I start? Well as you may have imagined, from my complete lack of blogging, I have been quite busy!! Last week I had my first Rotary meeting with my club, they were quite genuinly nice and all wanted very much to meet me - so that was great! I spoke a few words about who I am, home, etc. Later on I will give a presentation on Canada!! I met my Counselor for the first time, he seemed real nice. I had alot of questions about the program here, trips and meetings, etc. So my counselor said that he would meet me sometime this week, but he is one of those people who never answers their phone, unfortunately! ha ha anyway apparently I am the first exchange student that they have ever hosted!! So I assume there, as there has been already, some problematic points and unknown areas...but I am sure it will all work itself out! The meeting was actually a diner meeting and the food was insanely good, I am not actually sure when or where their other meetings are but they said that I am not to go so whatever, more free time for me I guess! lol

I had soccer on Monday night, an english teacher who plays soccer with me picked me up to take me. She is very nice and it is great to speak good, understandable english. We had a good meaningful discussion, which was great because in french I still have trouble talking about anything deep or meaningful - which I suppose is to be expected. I have been here 4 weeks tomorrow!! I am very proud of that actually!! lol Anyway Maud, the girl who took me to soccer, has agreed to take me to soccer on monday nights, which is really nice of her!! However I've had some difficulty being allowed to go as my host mother says that I am not allowed. I haven't yet really understood why, other than she says "it's not french culture", Maud says this s ridiculous! lol and I have to admit I agree! lol but c'est la vie! et Hopefully I can speak to my couselor about this..

Anyway on Tuesday it was Julia's Birthday!! she turned 18, it was a suprise party for her, so all day she was kinda bummed out because nothing was going on for her birthday and she was feeling pretty homesick! All I could do was say, oh yeah don't worry, i'm sure it'll be ok, you have a great host family!! Tomorrow will be better, and Happy Birthday!! - it was soo hard to just lie to her, because we are together ALL day!! ha ha but when I got to her house at about 7 and surprised her in her room she screamed soo much!! It was soo great! We had soo much fun, however I forgot my camera so that was crappy! Anyway her host grandparents and aunt and uncle came over! They were all SO SO nice and funny, and wow...lol talk about openess at the diner table!! ha ha No, it was a great night, I spoke alot of french and we drank alot of wine, even the cake had alcohol in it!! ha ha It was great! During supper, her aunt and oncle learned that I am alone on the weekends for the most part and I don't do anything and so they invited me and Julia to their other house, which is right beside a lake!! They have a boat - and well that weekend is a-whole-nother story!! Anyway Julia's birthday night was great and I stayed the night, the next day was our half day of school so carrying around my over night bag plus my school bag wasn't too bad!! lol

- One of my more hilarous episodes happened this past week. So Julia and I are trying to fit in, right? of course! So I decided that one day I should wear my heels to school, as this is what alot of the girls where, however they all wear the skinny jeans and I swear I won't do it!! Julia says I'lll be wearing them by christmas..lol but I refuse! Anyway so I wore my heels, got on the bus, that was fine, climbed into one of the higher seats and was content. However I realised that I was in a group of 4 seats and I don't really have anyone to sit with so that would be pointless, so as I am about to get out of this higher up seat, to move to a single one, the bus lurches forwards, I catch my heal on the ledge of the seat platform and go flying face first into the aisle!! Thank the lord that my bus stop is the first one so there was virtually no one on the bus yet..But wow I drove into the aisle, my knee starting bleeding - I still have the bruises and scars lol - All I could do was laugh, I laughed so hard I honestly must have looked like a complete lunatic! Anyway for the rest of the 30min bus ride to school I tried to get my knee to stop bleeding. ha ha Needless to say I refused to wear my heals again for the rest of the week, however today I was feeling brave so I wore them!! I am happy to report I did no falling of any sort! However I did miss the first bus this morning - these city buses are extremely difficult to get used to!!


Thursday this week was our first official day of gym class! There are approximately 100+ kids in my gym class. On the way to gym today there was a huge brawl outside the gymnasium, I am not going to lie I felt quite afraid just walking striaght by it but thats what everybody else was doing, other than the big guys getting in on it! It was insane though, there were teachers standing like 30 yards away just having their smoke before the next class and these guys were really going at it! Finally the actual gym teachers came and some other students and broke it up. All the same I was astonished that it went on for that long anyway. Then someone explained to me that that is why the whole school is in a huge compound, because big fights start like that. There is another school which shares the cafeteria with our school and it is right next to ours but it like everything else is also in a big compound because apparently the two schools used to fight alot! anyway needless to say I feel like something straight out of a hollywood movie! However I guess it is just VERY different for me coming from small town Minnedosa where we just don't have high fences with barb wire and jagged edges! lol...and I mean I thought that Dosa was getting to be jail like, it's kinda over the top here I think. However it is for safety and so far I feel safe.

Anyway back to gym class, they told us not to bring any money, mp3 players, expensive jewelery or our phones to school because last week some guys smashed the windows in the boys locker room and broke in and stole ALL of that stuff! so yeah I guess I really am in a big city ha ha! ANYWAY for our gym class you can pick 1 our 6 choices, they all include 3 different types of sports or "subjects" I chose track & field, badminton and volleyball (i think..)- I had wanted to go in the only one with Soccer but the prof. came up to me after and asked if I wanted to switch and of course I said NO... why would I lol I love soccer... to which he responded.. Only boys go in that class and it's really competitive.. and so I changed, Wow was I sure glad I had. At the beginning of this class all the football guys got together and went insane!! They are all big and REALLY good - so it was definately a good thing that I chose another one... As I am quickly learning, sports here are really not meant for girls!! From my perspective it is ridiculous of course, but here it's just like that!! The boys play football and sports and have motorcycles and the girls go shopping and....I actually don't know what else?!! lol but Of course that is NOT all girls!! There are always alot of exceptions - like my soccer team!

In gym class I was alone for the warm up running but then these really nice girls took an "interest" in me. lol and so I did the rest of the warm up with them and after joined their team for handball! They are soo nice and really cool, they wanted to know everything about Canada lol - it was cute. I now eat lunch with them pretty much everyday, and the one girl really wants me to live with her, so we are going to look into that! But yeah my first official day of gym was great!! I made friends and even managed to kick some ass in handball, lol the other french girls were kinda mad and but I thought it was sweet! he he --- For the next gym class we did either running, jumping (triple,long,etc) or Javalon. I did running for a bit because that was what my new friends were doing but I was dieing to try javalon so I went over to try it out! The teacher is a lady and she is really nice! She showed me how to do it and everything and I ended up beating some of the guys on my first try!! muh ha ha!! lol No javalon is really sweet, it takes alot of technique but is soo cool - I really hope we get to do it again next class!



** Another crazy thing about being an exchange student in a foriegn country where you don't speak the language very well is that ALOT of the time you feel very much like an "Attraction". Whenever people hear you speaking english or sometimes they can just tell but your french ha ha.. they ask "anglais?" and your like yes I am english... immediately they think you are American and then you have to say No I am from Canada, then they try all the english they possibly know.. and after switch back to french when you say "no no je comprend francais." D'accord... After this some people say oh thats cool and thats the end of it!! No they are not your friends you are simply the "attraction" However other people want to know a little bit more.. like where in Canada your from and why you are here and so on.. But of course after this - thats it! c'est tout! lol and you part... AND then there are the real nice people,like my new friends in gym, who really genuinly want to know about you and want to heng out with you and that is soo soo nice!! At first of course you feel the "attraction" thing again and are weary of what their real intentions are - wether they actually think you are interesting or just the highlight of that minute!?.. anyway it is all just part of the exchange!! I think now I have a great deal more appreciation for ANY foriegn person I have ever met, exchange student or otherwise. I know that it is not easy being the "Different" one, the "attraction" of a person's interest for that moment but nothing else! So cheers to all the exchange students!! I know that already I have learned to be SOO much more Patient! and some of the "life lessons" I am learning have had an affect on me already! This experience so far is a GREAT one and I can only imagine it will get better!!



Going along with my last paragraph, is what peoples perception of Canada is... Can you guess? lol yeah they all think COLD!! ha ha and well for the most part I guess they are right, But as I was told before coming here... I am an unofficial ambassador for Canada and therefore it is my job to correct misconceptions to the best of my ability! So whenever people ask what it is like, I try not to specify too much and say that Canada is VERY large, the second largest country in the world and it is very diverse. Yes we have long winters and yes they can be VERY cold (down to -40) However Vancouver is much more mild than this as is the east coast. We also have very nice summers, they are short but last very long!! And No I do not and never have lived in an igloo, yes I have seen them and even made them, yet never slept in one.. I guess this is something I am going to have to come home and experience!

Well I really must go now, but I will try very hard to post more often and with some pics of course!!

gros Bisou!! miss ya'll!