January 20, 2005

Hey everyone,

I thought you'd be interested in knowing that I'm meeting the district governor tonight. He's coming to our Rotary meeting. I suppose I'll have to dust off my vest that's been sitting in the closet unused for a while =) Then, Saturday, we're having dinner with two other service clubs in town, the Lions club, and I don't remember the name of the other one. On the 29th, I'm taking the train to a town near Toulouse for a Rotary district overnighter. We're having a flag ceremony and things like that with another district. We have two weeks of vacation starting February 7th, really sad, huh? Two whole weeks off from school! And I'll stay at the Rotary Club President's house for a week. That's the Rotary stuff I'm doing lately.

My host sister's, Domitille, 17th birthday was on Monday, but she was sick, which must not have been fun. She goes to school in Blois, about 45 minutes away and lives there during the week, so she's only home on the weekends. I also have a host brother who's name is Pierre-Henri. He's 13. He goes to the junior high school that's next door to the house. My host parents, Marie-Agnès and Jacques, both work for enterprises outside of Romorantin. On the 12th of February we're going to the Musée d'Orsay for an exhibit on Egypt. They were going to take me with them on January 29th to Paris, while Domitille visits an art university there, but I will be going to Toulouse with Rotary.

School is going really well. One of my teachers would like to me take more French lit classes when I have open time in my schedule. I may do that, to work on my French more, but it's hard to join a class for just once or twice a week because it's hard to keep up with the work they do. But, at least it'll be more French literature to read... I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, it takes a long time to read a book in French. We're starting Animal Farm next month, though, in my actual French class, so it will be easier to understand what I'm reading because I just read the book last year for AP English. All in all, my classes are going very well. My new teachers, because I changed classes, are all very nice and helpful and ask me to participate. It's much easier to participate because the other students are also talkative and out going. I don't take science anymore because I teach an English class at an organization similar to the YMCA, that's during the science class hours and the director felt that would be more useful way for me to work on my French, helping adults learn English, than science classes where everything we’re studying, I studied in High School. That was nice, I much prefer teaching English class than science. Science has never been my favorite subject. My Spanish teacher has started cracking down on me to learn the basics of Spanish since I'm going to South American next year. It's hard in Spanish class because it's my classes fifth year of it! But I understand what goes on fairly well, since so many words are similar to French words. Plus, I learn lots of French vocabulary in class because my dictionaries are English and French and Spanish and French, no Spanish English! The new English teacher I have is wonderful. He's originally from England. His classes are more beneficial to me because the work he does with the students is much more translating and vocabulary, while the teacher in the other class focused more on reading stories with the class and seeing if they understood it, so I didn't learn many new French words there. I LOVE history and geography. They've always been my favorite subjects in school anyway, and I love them here in France because I learn so much about French history and geography and economics, and EU relations (VERY HELPFUL) and things like that, that we'd never be taught in American high schools. It will be very helpful when I start my studies at university in International Relations. Sports class is great. Students don't make fun of each other if they're not good at a sport, which I ran into a lot in the US. They just accept each other's skill levels and each play the best they can. Monday, I'll start playing tennis, which will prove to be interesting because I've never played tennis before. I've played many, many different types of sports, but never tennis. I've also never understood how scoring works in tennis and now I have to try to understand it in French. ACK! (anyone want to e-mail me and tell me the rules in English, too?) We just finished up a swimming segment Monday, although, because of my class change, I was only there for two sessions, but I did just fine because I’ve been swimming consistently at the pool after school for about three months now. Two weeks ago, the teacher timed us swimming 50 m and I did pretty decently in that, and Monday, I rescued a mannequin from the bottom of the pool (the poor rubber person was drowning). I completed the entire exercise in 1 minute and 16 seconds, the fastest time she had down was 1 min 10 seconds, and to pass that part for an actual life guarding test, it's less than 1 min 20, so I did awesomely there!!! And we swam ten lengths of the pool, which was easy since I've been doing so much swimming at the pool lately, but it's all been long, so the 50 m we did the other day was a bit of a challenge.

Saturday, I got to talk to a lot of my extended family on the Web Cam, which was really neat. My parents went to Washington State for my aunt's 50th birthday, so I got online Saturday night and got to say hi to lots of aunts and uncles and cousins who I haven't seen in a really long time. That was really cool. I also went swimming with my Norwegian friend and shopping with my host sister Saturday. Sunday, we celebrated her birthday, her Grandma came over for lunch and we sang happy birthday and stuff in French, English, and German (they all speak or are learning German in my host family) In the afternoon, I went to a concert and heard my voice teacher and a friend of his who is a professional performer from Tours sing. The concert was incredible and their singing just blew me away, it was beautiful. And the pianist played some songs using other parts of the piano other than its keys to create sound, such as the strings and things like that. It was some of the coolest music I have ever heard.

That's what I've been up to lately. I hope you're all doing well. Send some snow my way!!! I haven't gotten to see any this year! *tear I probably won't get to either I miss snow!

Hugs to everyone, Aimée