House and family

So I probably should have done this for one of the the first posts, but here is a little bit about my host house and family:

This is the entrance.  You can see the coats on the rack and part of the door, as well as some of the kitchen. The floor is beautiful clean white tile.  Dirt just can't hide at all.  I will never have this floor, because even if I put white tile on my floor, I'll never have the initiative to sweep or vacuum it every couple of days.  There are also a lot of plants throughout the house (another beautiful home item I would never be able to maintain.  At least a floor can't die).  This is another sneaky part of French culture that isn't at all obvious.  When the French invite guests over for an aperetif, meal, or other such visit, the conventional gift is a bouquet of flowers or a small plant.  For a larger gift, perhaps for family you don't see often or a special occasion, you would give a house plant that can be maintained.  In France the weather is generally quite mild, so temperature is not a limiting factor.  It is common to receive small cacti and palm trees.  Over time, and if you're good at repotting and maintaining plants, your house may have plants all over the place, in every room.  Like this one.  There are flower shops everywhere selling all kinds of flowers and plants all year round.  Sophie even commented that they couldn't find a flower shop in Canada when they went to visit her cousin in Quebec.  I think it's a temperature thing, It's hard to generate a culture around flowers when you can only have them outside 3 months a year.

This is the dining table, a cupboard and the start of the living room:

A view of outside, in the summertime the family eats on the deck seen here.

Here is the living room, there is a fireplace and sofas:

Here is the veranda, on warm days in October and September we sometimes ate dinner here:

My Host Family  :)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: I do hope I get a chance to take a picture for you, but Olivier has a mustang. He bought it here from someone who imported it from the States.  He's rather proud of it and likes to drive it on weekends and holidays when it's nice outside.

Quelle neuf?

So now I know why Churros/Chi-chi is unheardof in Ontario:  It's illegal to make them!  If you have a food cart or truck you can only sell prepackaged goods that have been reheated.  Chichi just doesn't work that way.  Kinda sucks for anyone who wants to sell any kind of food on the street.  There is one exception:  If you have a food truck you can make "french fried potatoes" if ou want to, but everything esle must be prepackaged and precooked in a "regulated facility".  Sometimes the government just sucks.

Presently there are 2 cats in the house.  Ghizmo and Harry (pronounced "Ari").  Harry is extremely rambunctious and gets up to all kinds of mischeif.  On dit qu'il fait des betises.  Today he knocked over a glass bowl and a glass vase with a plant in it.  They both broke so, being the only one in the house at the time, I cleaned them up.  The cat is currently in a small room with his bed and the litterbox where he will be staying for a while.  He's so cute, but he's so bad.  He reminds me of my dog.

Since I last posted I've been to 3 or 4 different cities, Sophie's mother's house, painted a painting and read a book in French.  (plus some more stuff I don't remember right now).  So basically I've been doing everything but write on this blog.  I guess I'll try to catch up maybe.  I probably have over 1000 pictures of France by now.  But that just means more to sort through.  I'll post again... in the future.

Dance

Here I am taking several dance classes.  I have contemporary for 2 hours in school on Mondays, 1 hour ballet followed by 1 hour and a half of modern on Tuesdays, and an hour-ish of jazz on Thursday, which makes for 5 and a half hours of dance a week.  It's great being able to dance here, especially since I won't be able to in SSS- It won't fit into my timetable.  I still get to choreograph though, which is exciting.

Over all the arts here seem more liberal than Canada.  In art and dance class in school there is no real structure and I'm not really sure how marking works.  It is very contemporary   In the studio that I go to outside of school it's basically exactly the same as Canada, so I think it's just the school.

The dance studios at school are beautiful.  Here are some pictures:

They are brand new and slightly bigger than our new studios at SSS.  They also have a completely enclosed porch on one side of the studio shown at the top.  Yoga on the porch would be awesome in the summertime.  

The school rents out their studios to the conservatory dance course, which is 8 hours a week in the evenings and weekends.  Why don't we rent out our studios?  They aren't used at all on weekends.  We could use the funds for the dance program.

I'm sure there is a reason we don't rent out our dance studios.  It's probably a fire hazard.

Last weekend, I went to a discotheque with Mary-Lou and a friend of hers.  There weren't many people, which I found strange since it was Friday, but apparently Thursday is the big party day in France.  Saturday is pretty big too, but not as much as Thursday.  It was fun, the music was really loud.  Even Mary-Lou said afterwards that it was too loud.  The DJ wasn't wearing his earphones, they were just hanging around his neck.  I think he'll probably be deaf at 30.  It was good music though!  I had lots of fun, and I think I want to go to clubs in Canada when I'm old enough (and when my friends are old enough) I got sprayed with champagne at some point, so one of my dresses smells a little alcoholic, and we were knocked into by some really drunk people on more than one occasion.  It was a fun night, we got home at about 4 am.  The next day we had waffles after lunch, which were awesome.  I will own a waffle maker at some point in my life.  On Saturday night we went to a hip hop battle, which was also pretty amazing.  There were these little kids that were maybe 6 or 7 that could do all of these flips and tricks that I could never hope to do.  It was another fun (if very late) night.  On Sunday we went to a museum, which was educational.  I didn't get sprayed with champagne, but I did learn about the war of Vendee, which many people died in, including women and children which were massacred in their homes.  All in all a very good end to the week.  I'll do 2 more posts this weekend to make up for not posting last week.  I'm only really writing that there to guilt my future self into writing more.  Just so you know.

School Food

The last post on the subjects of both school and food:  The Self at school.

At lunch, students do not have the option of bringing a lunch.  They can go home, or eat at the Self which is what they call the cafeteria at my school.  You get a card that you pay for at the end of each trimester based on how many days you are at school.  They deduct field trips and days you are sick, an unpardoned absence is not deducted.

As you enter the self, you scan your card for a tray and collect utensils from bins.  You can then go get one side dish, one entree and a dessert.  You can also get two side dishes instead of an entree if it's something you don't like, say, for instance, potato puree and sausage that tastes like DEATH.  The side dish place is a salad bar, and is self serve.  The entree section is a counter where cooks serve you whatever is on the menu for that day.   There is usually more than one choice, although on Wednesdays not a lot of students eat at the self because school is over at 11 or 12, so there is usually not a lot of options.  At the dessert section there is also fresh fruit and sometimes cheese.  On the way out you can get napkins, a glass and bread.  You can also get condiments, more bread, and lettuce on the other side of the rotary door which separates the eating area from the food gathering area.  (Side note: the rotary door is not backpack friendly)  When you are done eating, you put your tray with your plates and utensils on a conveyor belt that goes back to the kitchen.  All of the dishes are ceramic, there is very little that goes in the garbage.

I'll post a picture on Monday or Tuesday.  The self is usually crowded and with all of the things you have to hold on to it's hard to take pictures.  Not that I ever remember to, I'm usually pretty hungry, they don't eat until noon or 1pm, which is normal I guess but not what I'm used to.

That's it for today.  Picture on Monday (I wrote this yesterday, I just forgot to send it)

School. Yeah!!

In this post I'm going to talk about one of the things that bothers me about Ontario.  That is Liability And Insurance Rawr.  See! it's a cool acronym that spells something  :) .  I'm mostly just saying that whenever some student decides to do something of questionable wisdom and hurts themselves doing it, it means that there is automatically one more rule put in place to prevent whatever they did.  This phenomenon is not present here.  These are some pictures of what French kids get to do in labs.

 





I think it's also because schools are underfunded, but honestly, I'm beginning to question that.  Do you know how many smartboards I've seen here?  Zero.  How many cool lab experiments have I done?  Five.  At least.  How is it that a school can be too poor to afford <insert complaint here> if it can afford to replace perfectly functional projectors with 4500$ touchscreen smartboards?  (the price is random, I don't know what model is in our school)

The labs I've done here remind me more of the labs I did on a field trip to Laurentian than the ones I've done in SSS.  These pictures are from biology class, and we did a very similar gizmo in SSS that actually came out with different results.  In this experiment we subjected chlorophyll to white light, which was then filtered by red, green and blue coloured filters.  We measured the O2 and CO2 in the air surrounding the chlorophyll as we changed filters.  We didn't control for temperature which I think may have been the reason for the difference in result between the two experiments.  It was really cool and very enjoyable.  The kids who take science here usually get 2 or 3 labs a week.  3 is if you take a SPE course, which is over and above normal courses.  I wish we could have one lab like this a month, that would be really cool.
-That's it for now, I'll post on the weekend :)

Food Again

The escargot were alright,  but I think they are an acquired taste.  They were made by Sophie's mother, the picture below is of her cooking the escargot.I think so far my favorite dish here is quiche.  Sophie's recipe for quiche is awesome, so I typed a copy to make at home.  I also really like the sea food and a lot of the salads Sophie makes here.

In the YES orientation in Canada, they told me to bring kraft dinner or something for comfort food, but I'm not all that emotionally attached to kraft dinner, so I didn't bring anything.  The food I've most missed actually is Baba Ganoush and corn chips.

Today we went to a farmers Market, which is called a "marché". I thought we were going for a walk.  I'm still not exactly fluent in french, although I can now carry descent conversation and understand what is going on in movies.  In the marché, there were three counters of cheese.  I got to try two different kinds which were both really good, I forgot to get the names of them, which I should really start writing down.

One of my favorite parts of travelling to France is all of the food I've had the chance to try.  It has even made me think that a possible career choice for me is to become a nutritionist.  I don't think I'm a good enough cook to be a chef for a living, but I have an avid interest in the molecular composition of food and how it relates to the production and use of energy and other vital substances in the body.  Also, I love taking about it, so it's possibly a perfect career choice.

Some pictures of the marché:

Today at lunch I tried spiral shellfish, which I liked less than the muscles and more than the escargot.  We also had prawns which are delicious but really hard to eat.  You only eat about a sixth of the fish, the rest you have to carefully remove from the part that you eat (which is in the middle).  I forgot to take a picture, but if you don't know what a prawn is it's like a big shrimp, and you only eat the inside of the tail and a small portion of the middle part of the body that is attached to the head.

I've been looking through Sophie's cookbooks and I took pictures of some of the recipes I want to try.  She has two cookbooks full of desserts.  I think they were both gifts, because this family doesn't eat a lot of desserts.  I also looked through another cookbook with entrees and appetizers (and more desserts).  I found a new truffle recipe!  I can hardly wait to bake for Christmas now.  I'll have to make a quarter of each recipe so I can make it all.  With what time I do not know, I'll have to invent a new hour - somewhere between 6 and 7pm.

That's all for now folks,  I'll post again either tomorrow or Wednesday  :)

Voila!  On mange ça ce soir:  It's escargot, and if I like it I'll definitely be making it at home :)

The Food Here, Part One

As the title suggests, I have quite a bit to say about the food here.  First of all, people here eat at different times then we do in Canada.  On school days, I'm used to eating at 6:30am, 11am, then 4 or 5pm.  Here I eat at about 7:10, 13:00 (1pm), and 20:00 (8pm).  I'm getting used to it, but it actually took a while to stop being absolutely famished as soon as I got home.  Not that it's a bad thing, actually eating late could prevent being really hungry at 3am, (if I was ever still awake at 3am).  The next thing I want to talk about is regional food.  Each little region of France has it's own special dish.  Here in Vendee, there are "haricots" (beans), cooked with various spices which is quite tasty.  There is also brioche, a soft bread usually in the form of a gigantic muffin that is really soft and delicious.  I'm going to attempt to make it for the next Canadian potluck I attend.

I really thought that I didn't like seafood, but apparently I was wrong:  I just don't like river fish.   I tried muscles and loved them.  This is my plate:

I didn't think of taking the picture until after I'd eaten all of them, but we added an uneaten one in the top right corner.  I also tried sole, which I believe is flounder in English.  It was also very tasty.

Another difference between French and Canadian cuisine is the structure.  Here if you're in a restaurant for lunch and dinner there is always a first course, a main course and a dessert.  You don't order a hamburger at a restaurant, that's just fast food places.  When you have guests over you can have an apéritif, where you serve wine and a small snack such as nuts or chips and converse with your guests.  What kind of alcohol you drink and the snacks you serve depends on what region you are in.  Oliviere asked me what a Canadian apéritif was.  I don't think there is one.  I'm not claiming to be an expert on Canada, but my colleagues in Nairn occasionally invited each other over for a beer on the porch, and whenever guests come over we always offer them something to drink, it's doesn't have a name though.

I haven't eaten out much, but a few of the things people eat at amusement parks and touristy areas are waffles, crêpes, and chichi (or churros in the US), which is a kind of large sweet french fry served in a paper cone with chocolate, caramel or nutella (they're very big on nutella here).  They're delicious, but the day I had some I forgot my camera, so here is a picture from the internet:

They are about one inch in diameter, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.  I actually prefer them to the one crêpe I had in Paris (It was undercooked), I'd definitely recommend these.  They may have them in Canada, although I've never seen them before.  I think they're an American thing.

So far there are very few things I've tried and not liked.  I don't like sausages here.  That's one thing that Canadians can definitely do better (in my opinion).  Don't tell the Germans I said that.  And pâte, that one is not really to my taste.  It's a kind of meat spread you eat alone or serve with bread.  And that's it, everything else is amazingly delicious (at home, mind you, the cafeteria at school is a different story for part 2).

So that's it for now, the food is so interesting there may be a part 3, and there will definitely be a part 2 as soon as I remember to take a picture of the school cafeteria.

School (continued)

So it''s been two weeks and two days since I arrived here, and I have to say my French is much improved.  I'm actually starting to understand a little bit in philosophy class, and that is all arbitrary ideas and confusing words.  It's one of the hardest classes for everyone here.  My SVT (biology) class is the second easiest next to English, because it is all stuff I've already done in Canada.  Physique et Chimie is very difficult, it is a combination of Physics and Chemistry, and since I've done Physics but not Chemistry, it rotates from being mildly confusing to EXTREMELY confusing in turns.  Homework takes three times as long to do in French because I not only have to translate the words from French, I have to figure out what the question is asking for.  Anyone who has done math or physics related questions in a textbook knows that they always word the question in the least understandable way while still being specific enough to point it out when you get the answer wrong.  Math is also very difficult, although wonderful host father Olivier has been helping me out with it.  He's an engineer and works in an usine, which is French for plant of a manufacturing nature.  Today I was able to answer a question in physics, although it was a pretty easy question.  We had to come up with a contemporary example of a progressive wave that travels on two planes.  My answer was "La Ola" which is a Spanish term commonly used in French.  You should look it up.  In Phys. ed the other students choose 4 sports to do this year.  I got to choose 2 sports because I only stay for a third of the school year.   I chose swimming and gymnastics.  I spoke to my art teacher and he says I can do anything I want in his class since I'm not preparing for the bac.

The bac is so important it needs it's own paragraph.  The French baccalauréat is the end of the year exams for the terminal class here.  It's huge, and very difficult.  The way teachers talk about it now is similar to the way people talk about exams a month ahead of time in Canada, and it's in June.  I guess it's like SATs in the US.  Because I'm not preparing for the bac, nothing I do here means anything, and because I'm an anglophone, anything I do right is applauded and anything I do wrong is perfectly understandable.  Being an exchange student is awesome, because I'm literally only there because I want to learn something, and I only do homework because I want to improve my french and keep up with the class.  Marks and tests don't matter, I'm here to learn.  How often in a lifetime does anyone ever get to say that I wonder?

In this school, there are two English teachers, and they both speak English with a British accent mixed in with the French accent.  The way they put things is slightly different, and I keep thinking it's wrong how they put things in class in comparison to the way I'm used to speaking English, but I've realized that it's just that they're learning British English instead of Canadian English.  An example is they say "he has got a prosthetic leg" rather than "he has a prosthetic leg" it's not wrong, I'd just never use it in that context.  On the topic of accents, I've had a lot of confusion trying to pronounce my name in French so that they can understand it here.  Brennan especially, here it would be pronounced "Breynnon" with a french accent, and even though I've heard my first name with a French accent all my life from the french half of my family, it is apparently with a Quebecois accent because I get blank looks every time I pronounce it.

In school, there are two general differences that are apparent right away:  One, there is no such thing as a three hole punch.  Students cut and glue handouts directly into their notes.  It's a good thing I brought glue with me, because since I got here I haven't seen any hole punchers, not even in the library.  The concept is foreign to them.  Two, the standard paper size is about one inch longer then standard note paper in Canada, it is lined normally with an added grid slightly lighter and four more horizontal lines between the standard lines in a different color, also light.  It is slightly thicker and the paper it's self is super white, there are six holes on the side.  I'm not sure what the other three are for, but it's probably fancy.    It makes my paper look medevil.  Maybe you can get paper like that in Canada.  Maybe my family just always gets medevil paper.  I don't know.  What I do know is it makes notes look so much more important.  I'll keep you posted on other differences as they become apparent.

That's all for now, If you have any thoughts in response to this post you should very quickly turn them into comments before they run away   :)

Puy du fou

On Friday (yesterday), Olivier and Sophie took me to go see a play called Puy du Fou.  It is the story of the history of Vendée, the province I am currently in, and it is the largest outdoor show in the world.  It was amazing!  There were knights, cannons and fireworks, and even though it was in French, I still understood because it's mostly acting with a few poetic words in between.  It started at 10 pm and ended at 12.  The lighting was absolutely amazing.  If any of you ever go to this half of Europe I encourage you to see this show, because it is spectacular.

Beside the site of the play is the theme park, which I am going to tomorrow.  I'll take lots of pictures, but I will probably post only one.  That's all for now  :)

Here is the link to the theme park's website:  Puy du Fou.

School

Tuesday Sept 4

I went to the high school to enroll in my classes today (Tuesday).  I'm in a bunch of sciences and math classes.  I've already taken 12 U science and maths and I'm really hoping that there are some major parallels here, it would make my life so much easier.  I have two English classes a week, that much is a blessing.  After that, Sophie took me to some dance classes, a ballet class and a modern class.  It was fun, although the level wasn't as high as I'm used to.  I really want to do some classes so that I don't freeze up and stop being able to dance.  There are elective dance courses at the Lycee so I should have at least one a week.  It looks like I'll be able to take visual arts after all!  Here, l'art visuel is more like media arts.  Visual arts is actually called de l'art plastiques, and I think I'll have at least a couple of hours a week.

This is my timetable, if you have REALLY good eyes, you can see that each day is different, and that I get off school at 11 on Wednesday and 2:00 on Friday.  All other days go until 6:00pm (17:55).  The extra time is balanced out with lots of breaks.  There are two weeks off every third month, plus the summer.


First day of school:
Today (Wednesday) was the first day of high school.  I had an orientation and a civics class.  I understood little of either, and I was falling asleep in civics.  It's not like Canadian civics, let me tell you!  From what I was able to understand, there are two dissertations, an essay and an oral presentation planned for the year.  I'm glad I'm only here for 3 months, that much would be tough for somebody native to the french language, and I certainly am not.   I'm really looking forward to art.  I just found the paintbrushes that I packed.  :)
Right now I'm waiting to be picked up from school.  Wednesday is only a half day, so school ended at 11:00.  The campus here is really quite beautiful, there are trees and grass and benches, and the school is set up in five or six separate buildings.

The blue squares are buildings, the red squares are administrative buildings, and the green parts are grass.  There is a big cafeteria and a smallish library, 850 students go to this school.



Tomorrow is a full day of school, it starts with math, then physics, then biology, then an English class.  Then there is more science.  It'll be great!  I'm only here for a quarter of a year, so I'll probably be gone before any major assignments are due.

Futurescope

Monday, Sept 3

Today, myself, Marie-lou and some friends of hers went to an amusement park called Futurescope.  It has a lot of films with moving chairs, imax movies and the like.  It was very fun, although I understood only the gist of the films.  One was called "Astromouches" and it was about three flies that go to space, it was the cutest thing ever.  The whole park was really well decorated, this is my favorite picture:

It was a super fun day, although I hardly said three words the whole time.  I'm starting to get to know more french but it's still hard to understand when people talk really fast.

Bonjour tout les mondes! I'm in Laronde.  I've been told that I have a Canadian accent when I speak French, but I don't have one when I speak English.  Cool eh?

It's fairly cold here, but it's very beautiful and old.  I took a train ride today from Paris to Nante and from Nante to La Roche Sur la Yon where my host family picked me up.  It's 19:41 here but it'll be 13:41 for you guys in Canada.  That's all for now!  :)

Orientation in Paris

Here is a letter I wrote on the 30th:

I've arrived safely and am now in the FIAP hotel.  I haven't really slept in 30 or so hours so I'm really tired, but the hotel is having open mic night so there is a party going on here.  The Wifi is only free for 30 minutes so I don't have too much time.  We went to the Louvre today and I saw the Mona Lisa plus a lot of medevil artwork .  Unfortunately we left for the Louvre 5 minutes after we arrived in the FIAP so I didn't even have time to change before we went.  I was falling asleep on my feet but the tour and the art was still fantastic.  I miss you guys already!  Most of the people here speak some English so that's what people mostly speak, and there are an overwhelming amount of Canadians here.  There are at least 10 of us that I know of.
  Well that's what's happened today, the flight was awful.  The food was gross and I didn't sleep at all.  The people sitting next to me were interesting though, there was a lady from Toronto who is going to Moscow and a man who moved to Canada 4 years ago from Nigeria and is returning there to visit family and friends.  I watched 2 movies, "When Harry met Sally" and the french dub of "Big Fish".  We had our own little personal screens with movies and games.  It was a poor substitute for real sleep though.
  I'll be in touch again when I get to Laronde and my host family (the maple syrup arrived intact).

Day one in Paris:
So since the first day is described in the email above, I'll just fill in some blanks.  I have a roommate, she is from Germany and her name is Sarah.  There are a lot of people from Germany and Canada, but at least 10 different countries are represented here.  There are 80 exchange students at the orientation, and almost all of them speak more English than French.  I haven't had to speak much French, but I know more French than most of the exchange students here.  Some of them know none at all.  It is interesting to note that there are only 10 boys here, the rest are girls.

Day two in Paris:
Breakfast today was cereal and bread.  I couldn't find the milk at first, so I ate my cereal dry.  Then I was thirsty, so I found the milk after someone else asked where it was,  but I didn't realize that there were two different dispensers for it, so I drank a full glass of hot milk that I later realized was for hot chocolate which they served alongside the coffee.  This meal was not the greatest, but it beat shat I had this afternoon:  a "pain oriental" , which tasted alright but was full of salt and fat.  For desert I had a crepe with honey, which for some reason I thought was going to taste like baklava but ended up tasting gross because the lady undercooked it.  My dinner today was very tasty and healthy.  I think that once I understand the language a bit better I'll be able to find food I'll actually enjoy.
After breakfast, we took a boat ride down the Seine River.  We saw the Eiffel tower, and the Pont Alexandre III (a bridge), and we passed bridges that were covered in locks.  Couples travel to the Seine river to attach the locks to the bridges and throw the key into the river.  This is to say you don't need the key because you always want to be together.  It's so romantic, but I wonder how many of those lock couples stayed together.  Also, I saw a few combination locks.  How does that work? 

This picture is only one small section of the bridge rail, the rest is like this too.

After the boat ride, we saw the Notre Dame Cathedral.  It was very beautiful and intricate, with lots of candles burning.

Later tonight is the talent show.  I don't have to participate, but I'm going to watch.  It's mainly for the 40 exchange students that have been here for a week.
Tomorrow I am meeting my host family in Laronde, my home town for the next 3 months.  I will be updating this blog again in two or three days, so until then, goodnight.

My departure is a week away from tomorrow.  As I start planning to pack, I'm at once excited and panicked as I wonder if everything will go according to plan.  It looks like I'll be able to take dance, and I think there may be a visual art class (I am not yet French savvy enough to completely decipher the high school's webpage).