Toulouse, Paris and all the Spaces in Between

Sorry I haven't written in a long time, its almost been 2 months now and a lot has happened.

Life here has become more routine now, I've almost mastered the public transportation system, learned that Tiger isn't a nickname, wasted a lot of Euros on ridiculously bad movies, got in a fight with the pepper shakers in the canteen with a guy who looks like a Jonas brother, found out that Parisans aren't french they are Parisains, witnessed some crazy union stirkes and the initiation of first year university studnets, been in a minor bus accident, eaten really stinky cheese, started to have anxiety if there isnt' a baugette in the house, memorized all the european countries and their capitales in french, met the South african rugby team and watched them lose to france, dreamt in french and made horrible errors while speaking in English, met Mickey Mouse and saw the Eiffel Tower. Also spent 3 days in a haunted mansion in the country and insulted Australian rugby team by mistaking them for a soccer team and come to realize that my english teacher cannot speak english.

At the begginning of October my host dad ran a 100 km marathon, which was being held in Millau, where there is a bridge I believe its or is one of the biggest bridges in the World, unfortunatly I only had the chance to see it at night so I have no pictures but it was huge!

Earlier that day my host mom took me to see the caves in Roquefort where as many as 1, 400, 000 loaves of cheese are moulded to perfection in one season. None of the cheese that I saw was real becuase the sheep don't produce milk again until february but the genourous people at the Societie cheese company still had samples at the end of the tour, from mild to strong. The cheese sampling went kinda like this...

I also gave my first Rotary Presentation about Canada all in French, after just 5 weeks of being here. It was a lot of stress expecially after my entire slideshow was deleted at 10 o'clock the night before my presentation so my host parents stayed up with my until after midnight re writing it all. It was stressful enough trying to make a good first impression on my Rotary Club while still understanding practically nothing and then having to speak about my country in a language I didn't know, I was horrified that the stress of public speaking would make me mis-prounounce ''host'' infront of everyone, it would be the ultimate embarrassment, but I couldn't not thank my ''host club and ''host family'' at the end of my presentation. I realized there was no way that I could avoid saying ''D'accueil".....On the way to my presentation I quickly erased ''d'accueil'' off of my speech and re-wrote, Fabrice and Regine Achotegui and the Rotary club of Balma. Little did I know that my third host family was also going to be present for my slideshow. And it was only when standing infront of my entire club and my families that I realized what I had done....I hadn't even mentioned my other families I had specifically thanked my first family and none of the others, and I had only met my 3rd host family once and couldn't remember thier last name. So after already mangaling the french language for about 10 minutes I got to the thank yous and improvised with what little french I knew, and tried to make 'my host families' into the plural tense. After I asked my host mom if I had said 'host' or 'testicles', she only said that I spoke very well! It wasn't until the next day that I realized I had used the informal 'tu' instead of the polite and formal 'vous' with every single person at my rotary that night....awesome.

The next weekend my host dad and sister took me to Carcassonne. Carcassonne castle and the city is built inside the walls of the castle, it is really really old, the romans began to fortifize it in 100 B.C.The day we were there, there was a celebration that I still don't really understand but they were celebrating a donkey, so everyone was dressed up in medevil costumes and marched around through the streets and parade the donkey with them, while they fed it packages of white sugar, and a marching band following the whole time, then they would at every bar in the city and drink. We also ran into the Australian exchange student who was visiting the same day with her Rotary Counseller. Her counseller told my host dad that she was staying with them all weekend and they were making her try escargot, beef toungue and frogs legs. After that conversation its all my family wanted to do, make weird food. This is the parade behind me.

This is Carcassone.

That same week was class picture day at school, which anyone could have walked by and mistaken for halloween. Infact I saw more people dressed in wacky costumes for picutre day then on Halloween. But picture day was when one of the Science teachers took his job to a new level by standing outside the church all day arranging each class of students, all with a theme and some even with their own song, into rows.

I was expecting to be a little bit homesick on Thanksgiving but I wasn't at all, I got to do my favourite thing that day! Grocery shopping!!!! It is so much fun I get to build up my vocabulary, try really interesting cheese samples, and get freaked out by the pigs in the meat department. And on the thanksgiving shopping trip, which actually isn't celebrated in France and I'm sure my host parents had no idea it was a canadian holiday, they asked if I would like to eat escargot for dinner. Ever since we were in Carcassonne, my host family has been trying to find really wierd stuff for my to eat. Becuase the Australians host counseller had told my host dad that they were making her try, escargot, frog legs and beef toungue....mmm...so with no polite way to say no, I agreed to escargot. At dinner everyone was waiting for me to try and see my reaction, I didn't think it would be that bad, but once you realize that you have a snail on the end of your fork and you start thinking about it, its juuuust not that appetizing. My host dad kept mimicing the snails antennas and we all just kept laughing becuase I could not put it in my mouth. And everytime I came close he would start mimicing the snail again. But after maybe 5 mintues I gained the courage, and it was surprisingly good. It just tasted like a lot of garlic, after though I realized that something was stuck in my tooth and I was sure it was an antenna but my host family tried to convince me that they always remove those.

I've gotton used to a lot of the food here now. Including eating practically raw meat. One night for dinner before I had visited Roquefort my host mom made what looks like a normal hamburger pattie but a little thicker. But when I cut into it it was bright red and I really didn't want to be rude so I just started eating. Then they started putting melted cheese on the steak so I thought, oh thank god now I won't notice that I'm eating raw meat, it tasted really good with the cheese, when I had finished my host dad got up and got the dictionary out and started looking something up, then he got something out of the fridge and explained to me through bursts of laughter that the cheese I had just eaten was mouldy blue roquefort cheese. Another time they bought some goats cheese covered in pieces of fruit, and everyone killed themselves laughing when I drank the entire pitcher of water trying to get the taste out of my mouth.

Strikes in France are not an uncommon thing. And when the french strike everyone pays. There was one strike that I didn't totally understand, something about the price of milk and the government not paying the farmers enough, so the farmers seriously drove their tractors everywhere. There was one scene on the news from Paris where the entire highwas was blocked with tractors driving like 5 km and everyone trying to get to work was stuck behind them. Then they rolled out massive round bails of hay in the streets and dumped truckloads of apples on sidewalks and started throwing them at government buildings.

These was the farmers driving thier tractors through Toulouse...

about a week after the farmers strike the city cleaning people went on strike. I don't know what their reason was maybe the wage, once they went on strike becuase they wanted new brooms. Their job is to go throught the city and clean up the dog poo on the sidewalks and the all of the garbage and they wash the sidewalks and gutters and stuff. When they went on strike they dumped every garbage bin in the city out and the streets were filled with garbage for days. This maybe wouldn't be such a problem if it had been in any other city, becuase in France there are people on practically every corner handing out advertisment flyers that no one wants. So pretty much all the garbage was these papers and a lot of wine bottles. I still dont' know how I went 3 days without stepping in dog poo.
The Garbage Man Strike

In October we had the vacations for a week and a half. On the first weekend the I went with my host Aunt, Grandma, Sister and Brother to Paris for 3 days. We rented a little house really close to Euro disney and spent one day in the Disney Parc and the other in Disney studios and the first day we visited Versailles. It was a really amazing trip, I went on my first roller coster which had 360 degree turns and the tower of terror which drops like 13 stories. I was so excited to meet mickey mouse! I had to wait in line for like 45 minutes everyone else was under 7. All the little kids were like running to Mickey when it was there turn and giving him a big hug, so I was joking that I was going to do the same thing when it was my turn and they just started making fun of me. They got out the video camera and everything for when it was my turn and filmed it all. I think my host brother was kinda embarressed I actually did it. Versailles was sooo pretty, it was amazing to see it everything was so old and some of the stairs were almost impossible to walk up because the marble had been worn down so much that they weren't even flat any more they were curved from the erosion of so many people walking up and down them. And I saw the door that Marie Antoinette escaped out of during the revolution, the history is so amazing. The second night after a full day at walt disney parc we drove through Paris and saw the eiffel tower. It was the best part of the trip for me. We didn't go up becuase it was after midnight and I think it was closed. but they had a huge light show on the tower with music and stuff. I still can't believe that I was actually there. You see the Effiel tower in so many movies and pictures but it really doesn't compare to actually seeing it in person.

Versailles Hall of Mirrors.

I spent the rest of my holidays hanging out in Toulouse with my South African friends. And as hard as it was we had to say goodbye to Mbali on the last weekend of the holidays. After that I spent 3 days in the country with Amber the other South African. The house was super super creepy and super big and old, Amber and I had the entire upstairs to ourselves. And the walls were so thick that we had to use our laptops downstairs becuase the internet connection couldn't even get through them, and as much as I enjoyed my time there I was relieved to come home to Castelmaurou were I could actually feel safe sleeping at night. I just never shook the feeling that there was something inside the early 19th centuary baby carriage outside my room.

The Country House.

The best things happen when on exchange. The other day after school I met almost the entire South African Rugby team, the team that won the World cup here in France in 2007. The next night I went with my host fam to see the game between France and South Africa, I was really scared for the french team because the players I had met the night before were absolutley massive! But France won 17-14 in the end! I also got to hear the South AFrican national anthem which is sung in 9 different languages, and I heard the french anthem for the first time!

I'm proud to say I know have an official metro card with my picture and everything and I can stop using the disposable paper cards! I thought I had really got the hang of the bus systems here. Like when you get off the bus you must say 'Merci, Au Revior', and I dont' forget to press the button anymore so the bus will stop at my stop, I learned the proper edicit for the escalaters, you always stay to the right unless your walking up and down. But just when I thought had started to look like I knew what I was doing I was yelled at by some crazy french bus driver. I was waiting alone at my stop and didn't wave him down. I never have to because only bus 75 stops there its not like i could be waiting for anyother bus becuase no other bus stops. Some stops have more then one bus stopping so you have to watch for your bus and wave it down. So this particular bus driver whom I've never seen before started yelling at me when I got on the bus for not watching for him and said the next time he would just drive by becuase he doesn't know to stop. Well that was three days ago, and tonight when I took the bus, I had the misfortune of again being greeted by this crazy new bus driver who clearly doesn't know that he MUST ALWAYS stop.

I'm really getting sick of the public transportation. Taking the metro was fun for a while but now I hate the somedays almost 1 hour commute to and from school. A few days ago I was 20 minutes late becuase some car hit the bus, it just nicked the back and kept going but the driver insisted on waiting 10 minutes in the middle of the road for the preson to come back and when they never did he decided to phone the bus company people to come chek out the bus.

Since being here in France I've been noticing things about languages alot. Like when someone is speaking english to me I don't have to concentrate on what they are saying and when I speak back I don't have to think about the words first in my head first what I want to say just comes out, and learning french has made me realize that this is pretty amazing. At a rotary dinner on the weekend the exchange students were talking and we all realized that the hardest thing to do is eat and understand french at the same time, even for the students from the Southern Hemisphere who have already been here 9 months. I am also now aware of how often I say Eh!? Mostly becuase the person I talk to is looking at me like, 'haha its true canadians do say Eh all the time' or they just laugh. Now my accent has become some where in between South African and canadian and I can't say sarcasm anymore without a Chicago accent! It's amazing though when some french people speak English, I met this girl who's accent was more English than the queens and she thought I was so dumb becuase I thought she was an exchange student from England, and then I asked how long shed lived in France for. Turns out she really was french but she spent 2 summers in England studying and came back with their accent. I also heard a french Rotarian speaking with a really thick Boston accent but he has lived in Toulouse his whole life.

Saturday night the Rotary district was having a international dinner, and the inbound exchange students were asked to make a dessert from their country. Which turned into a lot of fun. First Regine took me grocery shopping for the ingreidents and instead of doing it the old fashioned way we got this cool scanner at the entrance and scanned everything and packed the grocery bags as we went. We ended up finding all the ingreidents for both recipies and they insisted that I make both Nanaimo Bars and the Maple fudge stuff. So I tried. The nanaimo bars looked disgusting and my host dad couldn't stop making fun of them but everyone brave enough to try them really loved them. The Maple fudge on the other hand turned into a crumbly mess of maple flavoured powdery sugar. I don't know how it happened I thought something was maybe wrong when it kept rising out of the pan when I stopped stirring, and my host dad kept sayign 'ITs ALIVE" then they left it sit on the counter for 2 days and just made fun of it! Now the my Rotary club has asked me to bring the nanaimo bar recipe to the next meeting!

The weather here is still really good the other day it was 21 degrees but its usually about 15 or 16 during the day. Unfortunatly Toulosue is full of these special kinda of trees that were given to the city by Japanese, and from October to April is when they release there disgusting odour. It really smells like dog poo all the time. The city won't cut them down becuase they are rare and expensive. All of these trees except the one by my school are planted in the city squares, I gag everytime I get off the metro and walk through the squares but during the day they are filled up by old people sitting on the benches and they stay there all day, I don't know how they deal with it!

School has been going okay, still have to go on Saturdays, One saturday I had a four hour french literature test where the teacher made it simple for me by asking me to read 4 different texts and then write which one i liked best and why....now it only takes me about 30 minutes to read one page in Harry Potter, and she was askign me to read 4 texts, which aren't even in real french its like the kinda french that Shakespeare is to English, but the nice thing about french schools is sometimes they cut you a break like one week 5 hours of History classes over the course of 3 days was cancelled becuase the prof was absent, they don't have substitutes here! The only class I actually enjoy is English, and not becuase I understand, but because the prof is crazy and has really bad English. The other day she became really frustrated when the class wouldn't stop talking and she said, I quote, "Why did I make so long studies to become English teacher to talk to you who don't care." Definetly the best class ever!

Bisous