Now that it's already been a week since
vacation and I've had time to forget all the irrelevant details, it's
time for an update on my ski trip and the second week of vacation.
You may remember that I went skiing
over Christmas, as well, with my host siblings, my host sister's
boyfriend, and the grandparents. This time was minus the grandparents
and plus the parents, plus the family next door who are long-time
friends of my host family.
The first two days were great. I got my
ski legs back under me and the snow was perfect. We had a great time
doing races down all the perfect red slopes of Méribel.
Here's a video of all of us skiing: the
really impressive-looking one is my host dad.
Unfortunately, at the end of the second
day, my host sister Becca fell in a mogul field and broke her
collarbone. Even though we were right above the first aid station she
couldn't walk that far, so we had to call the ski patrol and she came
down in a sled.
So the ski week was finished for her,
and she was disappointed to say the least. We had been planning to do
two days of snowboarding with Becca and the two daughters from
next-door. After Becca's accident, we debated whether to continue. I
have snowboarded before, but I thought it would be more fun to do a
full week of either ski or snowboard, since you improve much more
with a full week than with a few days. The girls, who are quite
accomplished skiers, just wanted to snowboard to test out something
new and then go back to skiing, so they thought 2 days would be
perfect. So we signed up for a private lesson for the afternoon of
our first day, and took the morning to try to find our balance on our
boards. I hadn't forgotten much despite the fact that it's been a few
years since I last snowboarded, but I found myself rather at a loss
of words for how to explain it. If I learn something in French and
then reteach it in French, I do fine, but transferring my knowledge
from English to French is pretty difficult. One of the girls got it
pretty well, while the other couldn't figure out how to stay upright
long enough to get down the bunny hill. It went much better in the
afternoon with the instructor, although you can see that we had
trouble getting off the lift without running into people:
Here we are on the bunny hill, as my
host brother yells at Pierre (Becca's boyfriend) to get out of the
way of the camera, and he ends up causing an accident:
(Dad, I swear the two seconds of me in
this video are not representative of my snowboarding! I was waiting
for the others. Ditto for the first video of us skiing. ;) )
The second day, the girl who didn't
take to snowboarding very well went back to skis, while I continued
with her older sister. That day was a vast improvement over the
first, as we moved on to more challenging blue runs and went faster.
The day after, we both went back to
skis and spent the morning skiing through a white-out, where you
couldn't see the relief in the snow at all, because you couldn't tell
what was snow and what was sky. Everything was just white, and the
weird covered light made it impossible to distinguish details. The
only way to not fall was to follow someone else, so you could tell
how steep the slope was by seeing if they were above or below you,
and if there were moguls by seeing them bump up and down. It was much
less enjoyable than the perfect weather we had at the beginning of
the week, but it was an interesting experience. That afternoon it
cleared up, and I discovered that my brief return to snowboarding had
made me more fearless on skis – I am so much more in control that
it suddenly seemed ridiculous to not take a few risks and go faster.
Of course, my host mom spent the whole time telling me that if I went
a little slower, I could work on my technique and not looking like a
frog while I ski, but that would be less fun.
The last day was lovely as well, though
the temperatures had really started to rise and the snow was slushy
and wet. Pierre and I kept looking at the gorgeous view around us and
reminding ourselves that this might be the last time we see the Alps
for a good long while. The Alps are an American skier's dream, and
I'll miss it back home in my puny little Sierra Nevadas.
Here's my favorite picture of the week: Pierre and I brushing our teeth in the tiny bathroom. This was right after we had a deodorant war with each other, which is why I am completely out of deodorant right now. We know how to have fun in France!
The second week of vacation I spent
with friends, and contained both the first time I've gone over to a
friend's house and the first time I invited friends over, which is
sort of a social accomplishment bonus for the whole study abroad
experiment. I also went to spend a touristy day in Nantes with my
host family and my friend Sarah. Nantes is the birthplace of Jules
Verne, so we saw a museum full of steampunk metal and wood machines:
mostly mechanical animals or crude flying machines. It was a lot of
visual eye candy, and made me wish that I was more artistic and could
cover my room in designs like that.
Here's the giant elephant that
walked/rolled through the streets of Nantes:
And us on the steampunky merry-go-round
and us exploring the castle of Nantes,
which was a museum on the inside that was actually not very
interesting:
That weekend, I invited some friends
over for a belated birthday party, for me and for Sarah, since her
birthday was 5 days after mine:
Everyone was quite disappointed in me
for not having alcohol at my party, since 18 is the legal drinking
age in France, but it's starting to really get on my nerves how
French people can't have fun without drinking, so I refused the
presence of alcohol at all. Instead we pigged out on cake, watched
Mean Girls in English with French subtitles (for the classic
American slumber party feel), and talked about life. It would've been
nice to party it up with my friends back home, but I enjoyed this
version anyway.
Then we went back to school, where I
still am being a horrible slacker and getting good grades. This past
weekend we took Sunday to go on an outing to Saint Nazaire, an
important French port, and La Baule, which is a lovely beach town. At
St. Nazaire we took a tour of a WWII-era submarine, which was really
cool, and I was glad I took the guidebook in English because I never
would've understood that level of technical detail in French. Though
I was quite annoyed at the way it ended up happening:
The ticket lady: Here you are, 4
tickets. And your guidebooks... will they all be in French?
My host mom turned to me and asked if I
wanted it in French or English.
The ticket lady: Ah, I'd gotten the
impression she was an exchange student! (Switching to broken English)
Here's your guidebook in English.
Me, in my head: What the heck did I do
to announce my foreignness? I didn't even open my mouth!
I don't know if it's just because I'm
blonde and don't look like my host family, or if there's still
something about the way I carry myself that says “I'm not from
around here,” even though I act much more confident than I was a
few months ago. But it just rubs me the wrong way when people guess
upon first glance that I'm not French, and it irritates me even more
when French people speak to me in English. I understand French
perfectly, and my French is 98% of the time better than their
English, so I'd appreciate if they'd respect that and speak to me in
the language of this country I chose to live in. Please and thank
you. The same thing had happened to me when I bought my lift ticket
at Méribel, and I had curtly continued to address the woman in
French, but I'm honestly not sure if she understood that I was
offended.
At La Baule we went to the beach, which
made me a little homesick. I don't live right next to the beach in
California, but it's a common enough summer outing with my friends.
Smell is the sense most connected to emotion and memory, so the smell
of salt water is more than enough to get me nostalgic. But it was
windy and cold, and we didn't stay on the beach for long before
heading into the town to walk around, do a little shopping, and eat
crepes.
(You can tell it's windy cause my bangs look dumb! But otherwise, I think these are beautiful photos.)
Next up: charity, optimism, and most
importantly, COLLEGE ANGST. To give a quick preview, I got accepted
to way more colleges than I expected (haven't gotten a single
rejection yet!) which is actually less cool than it sounds because it
means I have to decide where to go...
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