Fah-who foreze, Dah-who doreze.

Alright, can't hide it. I'm really really sad. I now understand what every international student feels when they meet new people, become incredibly close with new people, adapt their lives around new people only to either watch them leave their lives or to be the one leaving theirs. It's not easy.

My move out process has been less than ideal and almost painful. The landlady is not making things easy in the slightest and as much as I have to thank her for, she's making me happy to be moving out soon. Very soon. However, it's hard. I'm in my room right now, but it's the last night that I'll be in here forever. As soon as I publish this post, I'll probably be crying. I'm a girl and I'm emotional, it's allowed.

I don't even know what else to say. Except this sucks and I can't believe I'll have to do it all over again in May.

Last week of my first semester in France

Friends, a chapter is ending and a new one is beginning. I find myself once again reflecting on the time that I have spent here so far and I must say - it feels like it was yesterday and it feels like I've been here forever. I wish I could freeze time because the friends I have made here are so spectacular that I don't want them to leave. But all good things must come to an end, and now I just have more potential places to crash in the states if I get the travel bug at home.

I feel like I haven't learned nearly as much French as I would like to, but I've also been living on crutches, so to speak. I'm rarely forced to speak French and I have American friends. Maybe the silver lining of next semester will be that I'll finally not have a choice but to speak and learn French. After all, it's what I'm here for.
I also realized something yesterday, in abig way. The revelation hit me like a high speed supersonic TGV train. I've been throwing around names like "Italy", "Germany", and "France" like I'm going to a grocery store down the street. People spend their entire lives in one spot, never seeing the world and I'm getting the chance and have already booked tickets to some of the most amazing places in the world. I remember reading about these countries in history classes and thinking I'd never see them, never be there, and here I am about to hop on a train in a week and travel all around Europe. I feel like I haven't really appreciated the gravity of the opportunity that I have until just now.

Itinerary -
in one week I will be in Colmar, France. It's a cute little town near the border of France and Germany and it's adorable around Christmas time from what I've heard. It was a less known place that I chose because I stumbled upon it one day and it was labeled as one of the cutest, most fairytale-esque city in Europe.


Hopefully from there I will be taking a day trip to Strasbourg which I hear is somewhere that I really should visit. I'll check more into that and see what they have to offer.


From there, I'll be traveling south to spend the holidays with Melodie and I absolutely cannot wait. I'm so glad that she's letting me stay withher too because I think I would be a little homeless for a while if it weren't for her.

Sometime after that I will be coming back to Chambery and moving my stuff into a dorm and starting all over again. I'm excited about it though because this house would not be the same without Bridget or Amy to come home to.

Then on January 5th I (and my travel buddy, Michael Gunther) will be hopping on a plane and heading to Rome, Italy. I think this might be one of the things I'm most excited about because I want to go to the Vatican and Rome so bad I could just burst. Dream come true, really.


So - for the next month or so I don't know how often I'll be posting. I'll try and post at least once during or after a stay in a different place just to capture the feel and experience while it's fresh.

Monday story time though -
Today I had a lunch with the ISEP/ISEFE directors, so basically school officials. It was the Americans, the officials, and the two students who basically held our hands throughout this whole semester. We all got there and sat down and enjoyed a nice pizza and some non-alcoholic beverages. Very school appropriate, right? Ok, so then the two bottles of wine came out. No big deal, we drank them and continued eating. Then some candies with a popper inside came out, which I was afraid to pop because things like that scare me. Those came out, however, with two bottles of champagne. So, no big deal. I drank my champagne. Then I drank Amy's champagne. Then the bouche Noel came out. Then the macarons came out. And before I knew it, I was walking away from a school lunch with school officials slightly tipsy. Only in France, friends.

Only. In. France.

Deux Alps Weekend

< -- That's me. You know, looking all excited to be holding a snowboard in the Alps. If I had an after picture there would be less of a smile, more of a grimace. Not that I was necessarily attempting to grimace, just that my face froze that way after falling several times down a bunny slope. I often didn't even make it out of the starting gate. Pathetic.

My ski trip was overall...interesting. I can't really think of another word for it. It was fun for the most part. We all went ice skating one night and we had this huge ice rink to ourselves so we just goofed off in the snow for a bit. The hotel provided dinner for us each night we stayed there and the first night (brace yourselves) I tried salmon. Now for the anticipated reaction - didn't love it. Fish tastes fishy, and I understand that's often the appeal of eating fish but that's what generally turns me off it. But I at least gave it an honest shot. Our hotel room was freezing though, and Amy and I had to bundle up and steal extra blankets from the spare bed in our room just to keep from getting frost bite during the night.

Second day was ski/snowboard day. I opted for snowboarding for several reasons.
1- It's way cooler.
2- I felt more hardcore holding a snowboard than skis
3- I've never skied before, but I have been on a snowboard
4- I still just wanted to be cool

So, I made it (sort of) down the bunny slope a few times. They had one of those ski lifts that you just hold on to and it lifts you up the slope which is easier for skis, but difficult for a snowboard. I had to turn sideways, balance myself, get out of the way quickly when I fell... Moving on, I made it down a few times and then my gloves, which were weather inappropriate, froze and my hands froze with them. So I sat out for a little bit while my dear friends made their way down the slope.

Amy's collision story through Ashton's eyes - I'm standing at the bottom of the hill, right? And I finally spot Amy, my roommate, about halfway down. She's on the ground and I think "oh, she fell, poor thing" it happens to the best of us. But then I see Ron try and help her up and her fall back down on the ground. So something's wrong and I know it, but I'm like this helpless little thing at the bottom of the slope. Long story short, I ended up pulling my French resources and asking (in French) to get Amy help because she was injured. The snowmobile took her down the hill and then an ambulance came and picked her up. I rode with her to the little hospital thing and went to get her things as they took a look at her. Nothing was broken, but her meniscus was messed up and the poor thing is on crutches for 2 weeks. Crutches aren't easy, especially in ice and snow.

So that night was a pretty chill night. We ate some raclette (which is basically a French version of fondue...sort of. It's hard to explain) and then went upstairs. I had my first stand up shower since I've been in France and let me say - don't ever take showers for granted. After that I went to a little pub with some friends and hung out there for a bit. It was an old man's pub.

The next day I stuck with Amy and took care of some of her outrageous expenses (future reference - buy the ski insurance or France will charge you 350 euro to take you about 50 feet in a snowmobile.) and then we played rummy the rest of the day while we (or I, rather) watched the Davis Cup Tennis Tournament on the television in the hotel lobby.

So that was my ski trip in a nutshell and now for other news -

I realize I don't discuss my classes much. Basically I just have classes 4 days a week where they teach me French grammar. It's tough and sometimes I feel like the dumbest person in there because I still can't understand basic French phrases when they're directed at me (stage fright, I think), but something I have noticed is that I AM getting better. I learned that this weekend when I had to speak French to help Amy out and I learned that today when I actually spoke French more in class. I still struggle with it, but I think it will only get better, especially when I really have no choice but to speak French next semester.

Happy holidays, friends. I'll report back. This was probably longer than anyone wanted to read.

Faux snow day

Here's a little doozy of a story for you.

France + snow + Americans = catastrophic miscommunication.

It's been snowing in Chambéry since around 5 in the afternoon yesterday. It still hasn't stopped snowing and we now have I'd say at LEAST a foot and a half of snow with no signs of stopping anytime soon. So naturally, post snowman outside (which now looks vaguely like that mountain that Jack Skellington sings his lament on) we naturally began to wonder what the status of our courses would be for today.

I woke up at around 7 and just watched the snow until about 8 this morning. I'd first like to say that I have never seen snow fall like this in my life. I feel like TN gets max 4 inches and it melts away around noon anyway. This is an incredible sight and I am mesmerized by all it's fluffy white goodness. Way to bring in December, for sure. Once the girls woke up we started to actually find out whether or not we had school today. There was an email in our Savoie mailbox saying that the LL(insert two more letters here I can't remember) department was closed today. We are in the ISEFE program though, so we still weren't sure if that meant that we didn't have class or didn't have class. So Madame, our landlady, helped us out and she called the ISEFE building and no one picked up. She called several times and we still had no answer. All of our classes started at 9 and it's not exactly convenient for us to walk to school in a foot and a half of snow, across town, up a hill, for 30 minutes if we're just going to have to turn back around. So when no one answered, we all more or less took that to mean that no one was there and there would be no class.

So at around 10 something, she finally gets an answer and it turns out that mine and Bridget's professors trekked through the snow storm to teach the classes and give the tests that we were not there for.

I'm a little irritated. A lot irritated, actually. There should have been more communication, I think. Call out the every class, close the entire school, save the ISEFE building? They could have mentioned that in the email.

"Annulation des cours aujourd'hui ... except you Americans...you guys still need to show up."

Now I have that sinking feeling of being a terrible student, skipping class, missing a test, and concerned over the fact that I'm going to have to find a way to explain why I didn't show up to the professor I'm most afraid of. I'm hoping that a lot of people didn't show up and I won't be the only one. But they have to understand, right? I live 30 minutes away on a good, sunny, bright morning. Sans snow shoes, it would have taken me a lot longer to scale that mountain that is the hill to school and who wants to do that when odds are (so I thought) that it would be cancelled anyway?

Communication for the foreigners during snow storms. Really not too much to ask. Now I need to find a way to banish this feeling i have of missing class and actually enjoy my faux snow day. At least a foot and a half!

The lesson in all of this is: when in doubt, school's not out. Noted for tomorrow if this snow keeps up.

Told you all I'd be writing more ; )