No Blues November

The lovely people reading this-

   

   This is the longest time I’ve been away from home (every day I can say that, but it will still be true).  A lot of exchange students say that November is the hardest time for them, adjusting for three months took a lot of energy and they just crack. But on the contrary, I remember a saying that my best friend told me about a break up, and it applies to exchange too. “Everyday, things get a little bit easier”. Whether you are talking about the language, school, making friends, or anything that has getting you down, its only up from here! Shoutout to all the other exchange students that are going through a little bit of homesickness, stay rad <3

   Okay back to my past month, a lot of things have happened! Lets start with the most important thing in any exchange, the language. I can now understand 95% of everything my teachers say, even my history teacher that was the hardest from me to understand on the first day of school! I normally take notes with the rest of my peers, and my spelling and vocabulary have gotten a lot better because I’ve been hanging in there. All that is great, but probably the most self-gratifying thing you can do is listen to a song in another language that you didn’t understand a month ago and sing along! Thanks to everyone who has had the patience to correct me and listen to my accent ;P I also started french lessons with Claudette from the Rotary club of Sablé, which will help me with my horrible grammar.

   

I realized why school is so long, because after 7 weeks you get a 2 week break! So this is the start of my break. The first couple of days I stayed in Sablé, went to the cutest flower shop with my second host mom and Andrea. I also went to dinner at my Aunt Chantal’s house. This is when me and my host mom started laughing because my host brother “faisait les bêtises”. I just chilled out and then got ready to visit my friend Dominica in Angers <3

The waitress forgot her coffee, but we still had fun chatting.

At the Chateau d’Angers! Dominica and I wandered around the castle, trying to understand the french of what happened in each room. But if we didn’t understand, we just made it up :P

Shopping :P

With Dominica’s host family! Such nice people, and great cooks!

The top of the world (castle of Angers)

Kisses from my winter home ;)

Leah and me on my way to a Halloween party in la Baule! For a country that doesn’t celebrate Halloween, it was  a pretty cool party!

Shopping with Leah on “Little Florida Street"

At the beach (St. Nazaire) with Charlie and Leah! I had such a fun weekend with these two crazy girls, but Charlie had to go home to Paris and I went with Andrea and my host family to La Baule.

At the beach with my beautiful amiga. 

We took way too many pictures in Le Croisic, but made a lot of memories!

After spending a week at the beach, we headed home with sand in our shoes :P

Halloween with my host family! I then went to a Halloween party with some friends from school. 

Selling apples with Rotary to raise money to fight polio! 

On veterans day (11 de Novembre), I had no school so I hung out with my friend Frédérique! We made some tex-mex tacos and biked around Sablé. 

I hope you guys all had an amazing month, try something new today! 

XX,

Hannah 

   

It’s October!!!

Hey everyone! Now that I’m all settled into school, I can start blogging again :) Also my mom reminded me that I needed to reassure everyone that I’m not dead. A lot has happened in the past month! From a visit from my Brazilian sister, Isabela, to traveling to Nantes to visit friends, and don’t forget sitting at school playing tic-tac-toe with my classmates.
   One thing that has made school a lot more fun is having another exchange student in my class! Annick is from Holland and speaks great english (which is a death trap for me). We try to speak french, but every so often we can say something stupid in english and die laughing. But the best part is whenever I feel completly lost in the lesson, I can be reassured that it’s not just me.
   Guess who is going to Florence, Italy in March? Moi! My art-plastique class is going for 6 days to go to art galleries and stuff. Along with the Spain-Paris trip and the Europe tour, I’m going to have a very eventful spring!
   I’ve really realized how many differences there are between British and American English. I always thought that it was just little words that made the difference, along with the accent :P But it’s really how we describe things thats very vague. For example, my English teacher wrote on the board 5 ways to introduce a document. Out of the 5 there, Americans only use one, "it’s about", and the others, like “it tackles the topic of”, just made me giggle.
   Like I said earlier, I got to see Isabela for a day last month! It was so refreshing to see a familiar face. I had a rotary weekend the only weekend that she was free, so she came one wednesday when I only had an hour of school. My parents told me that they would probably wait for me outside the high school with her, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a happy brazilian smile walking towards me. Then came the hallmark moment. We spent the day going to the castle, shopping, walking around and then came home for dinner. Even in 3 months, so much had changed in her life! She warned me that when I get back, everyone will be different. More so my friends than my family, but a year can completely change someone. It was really sad to say goodbye, sadder than it was at the airport when she was leaving her exchange to go to Brazil. We knew that we would see each other in France when she left the first time, but now we aren’t so sure when our paths will cross again. But we both know that we will make a huge effort to see each other again. We also pinky promised that she will take me to Vegas on my 21st!
   That weekend with the exchange students, I went to Normandy. We went to Omaha beach and climbed up Mont St. Michel. For those of you who aren’t history gurus, Omaha beach was where the Americans landed to liberate France from Nazi Germany. The beach was so beautiful, but I just got the chills looking at the horizon and knowing that 70 years ago there would be planes full of brave people that died for our free world. It was crazy to see the 9,000 graves with the names of ordinary people, like John from New Hampshire. We always learned about all the people who died, but it was different to actually stand surrounded by their graves. After that, we went to another war museum and then drove for two hours to a city close to Mount St. Michel. I was so busy that day, that I didn’t really concentrate on drinking water. Right about then, my head started pounding and I drank about 3 peoples water bottles. At first I assumed that I was just dehydrated and all would be well soon, however I knew later that I was sick. But I still carried on like everything was okay. It was so nice to be with the crazy, lively exchange students. I love being with the spanish speakers so I can try to pick up parts of their conversations, but whats even better is going to a group of people speaking another language and just completely eavesdropping and understanding nothing. We had a good weekend, but I was very glad to go home and sleep. I woke up the next morning and I could barely talk or swallow because my throat hurt so bad. I told my host parents that its hard enough speaking baby french and if I had to go to school that day being completely dumb, I couldn’t survive. So I watched “Ghost Whisperer” in french and drank Vanilla tea.
   Last weekend I went to the beautiful city of Nantes! There are a ton of exchange students there so we had fun wandering around, shopping and going to cool places. I stayed at Florencia’s house (the Texan girl) with Daniella (from Mexico) and we had a fun time! However we didn’t go to bed that late because I had a train to catch and we were “going shopping” the next day. At about 20h we realized that tomorrow was sunday, which means that NOTHING would be open tomorrow. I bought a pink blazer as a souvenir because I didn’t really have time to shop till I dropped. The next day we went to La Tour de Bretagne and stood onto of the city. As much as I liked it there, I’m glad I got Sablé as my city. Everyone knows each other here and there are a lot less weirdos.
  Have an amazing week guys! Drink tons of pumpkin lattes and listen to pandora and watch netflix for me :D Also, if anyone has a killer pumpkin pie recipe, email it to me! I would love to show my family some American culture.

The Americans sang “God Bless the U.S.A” to honor those who fought here for the free world.

Mount St. Michel. 

RIP <3

The allies and our flags (and Mexico lol)

REUNITED <3

In the bus with Andrea! So glad to have this girl in my city. Seriously, who would I vent to, share clothes with and sleep on their laps? 

At the top of the tower!

Lunch with the best. I tried to get her to try escargot but she wasn’t brave enough.

TTYL
Hannah
 
 

2 Weeks Later

Hello Everyone!
 
   It’s Friday, Friday gotta get down on Friday! This Wednesday marked the two week point on my journey. Sorry it’s been so long, I’m not dead (looking at you mom ;). It’s been busy spending time with my host family, friends and getting used to this foreign lifestyle.  I’ve only been to France for two weeks before so the vacation phase is over, however I’m still considering it the honeymoon phase becuase I haven’t gotten very homesick. I say I’m not “very” homesick because I sometimes feel lost and I don’t know where I am, and then I see something that reminds me of home and I feel even more lost. This doesn’t make me sad, just really confused. I’m the kind of person who likes to know whats going on most of the time so It’s been a streach for me to accept that somethings I won’t be able to understand for a few months.
   But on a happier note, school is going pretty well for me! My class is super chill and I have a good schedule. In France, you don’t have a different group of people for every class (like the US) so you get to know everyone pretty well. My personal goal was to learn every name in the class, and I feel pretty accomplished at this point! Since there is no assigned seating you get to sit by everyone!
School lunches are pretty yummy and we get an hour and a half for lunch, so we get to hang out with friends for a little bit before we go to back to class.
  My favorite classes are probably French, Spanish, English and Art for different reasons. French class in the US meant “lets learn fun words and play games”. However when you are in a class with people who have been speaking this language their entire lives, you have to step up your game. We are looking at poetry right now and a lot of it is in older, formal french. This is very complicated and I try to keep up, but I’m lost lots of the time. But there is something about listening to poetry in another language that you don’t quite understand, it’s more like music. Reading French for me is easier for me to do since I can see patterns and look things up. Whoever is sitting next to me recognizes when I make a clueless face and helps me fill in the blanks. English is a chill time where I can understand everything and help my friends for all the millions of times they have helped me during the week. All these languages are great, however nothing can top the universal language of art.
  One thing that has been hard for me to get used to is the student-teacher relationship here. I miss how teachers always want the class to be engaged and don’t mind if we talk to each other along as it is somewhat relevant to the class. The teaching style here is more like a “I talk you learn”. Plus all the spirt days, dances, black rock runs, driving to school and all the other things that make being a teenager in Oregon so much fun. But I can definitely live without these things since I have many more perks in my new life here :D

After Lunch with these crazies.

The bakery with my Host Dad! 

Sablé is famous for it’s Sablé cookies, and my wonderful councilor got some for me!

At the Castle with the Church behind us with school friends.

The beautiful view on my walk with Anndrea.

This is why I haven’t heard any country songs about french trucks lol.

 
 

I MADE IT!!!

Hello Everyone!

   Today is August 27th, which means that two days ago I embarked on the biggest journey of my life (or so far). I have caught up on my sleep and had the french equivalent of coco puffs. Its really been the first time in awhile that I have been able to actually sit down and really realize where I am. My stuff is all unpacked so my room looks kind of like my room at home, except its a different room on the other side of the planet. The good thing about Sablé and Tigard is that they are on the same latitude so I am not dying of heat or the cold. I guess I should start from the beginning of the flight so that you can understand the pain of flying across the world.

Lundi le 25 d’Aout
   I woke up super early to say goodbye to my Dad (p.s super early for a  I’ve always been a daddy’s girl so it was sad to know that was the last time I would see him for a year. I was already up so I curled my hair and got on my nice clothes and blazer for the airport. I gave my doggie a big kiss on her fuzzy head and then went out to the car. We met up at the airport with my favorite rotarians, Emily Akamian (the rebound from France), Andrew Cousineau (rebound from Austria and my neighbor) with his mother, and my mom and brother. Not to leave out Alexa and Nathan, who are also outbounds, and their families. Steve gave his famous last words, “Oh you know how I said exchange was going to be hard, it’s going to be harder”. Sam and my Mom went through security with me and we sat at the gate for a little bit until it was time to say goodbye. At the water fountain I met a nice lady who recognized my blazer and briefly told me about her studying abroad in Paris! People are right when they say the blazers get special treatment. Since I was late to board already, we made our goodbyes short and sweet. It hasn’t really hit me that I won’t see them for a year but it still feels kind of weird being in a place I call home without them.
   The plane ride was a horrible experience that I dont ever want to remember. The only part that doesn’t make me want to die of claustrophobia was the take off and landing. You know the second where the plane leaves the ground, touches for a brief second and then takes off? I will always remember my last touch to home as that. Landing was exhilarating as I had finally made it! Everything in-between was annoying, from crying babies to closing half of the bathrooms on the plane. Okay I guess it wasn’t that bad, I sat next to a nice Brazilian girl from Montana who was fun to talk to. But I was more than happy to get off.

Mardi le 26 d'Aout
   When we got to the airport we met up with a mob of exchange students who I then lead through customs. I got in the wrong line but I then explained to an employee our situation and she let the whole group of exchange students cut into the right line. I never thought I would say this, but thank you piles of french homework! And mom for getting me Rosetta Stone. Customs was easy enough. They thought I was in college and then I explained to them I was going to high school and I was on the other side. After we arrived to the pick up area, it was crazy. Imagine playing Where’s Waldo at the Charles De Gaulle Paris Airport, while Waldo is actually one of the 200 rotarians looking for you. After a little bit of asking around, we met the people of district 1510 and waited for the Brazilians to arrive. Then we went to the Hotel where we met with other students to eat lunch and mingle. I got to finally meet some people I had talked to and become friends with online, Rudrani, Sanni and Andrea, along with new exotic people who were all super sweet! I got a ton of cool pins and cards and made a ton of new friends. I found it strange how everyone had pretty much agreed to speak English, but believe me I had to problems with that. We then got on the bus and waited a little more and then took off for another 3 hour bus ride to our city bus stations. I jammed out with Sanni to “American Music” and then talked to my chairman when all the students fell asleep. I was very happy that I didn’t fall asleep or get cranky. I slept for 4 hours on the plane and chugged coffee.
   When we finally arrived in Sablé, I saw all the people that I had talked to and seen pictures of in person. It was like meeting the people you had met in your favorite book. They presented me with flowers and a puff painted shirt and a cute drawing from my little brother in the second family. I was so glad to meet them that I almost left my suitcases on the bus which was about to take off to Angers! I then went in the car with GiGi and Nelly to drive around the downtown and then go home. This city is so adorable I already love it! When I came to France before, I loved the cities but I had always preferred the charm of the smaller towns. We then came home and had dinner. I tried to ask the first night questions, but they said that they were things I could learn or we would discuss at the “rendez-vous” with the chairman today. We had some yummy crockpot sausage and zucchini with bread and rice. It tasted so good after eating airplane food and granola bars for the past day and a half. The house is so pretty and looks over the river! The house itself reminds me of the Cullin house from Twilight with tons of light and balconies.
   That pretty much describes my first day in France! It still seems like a vacation because I havent been here for long, but I’m starting to transition involuntarily into french mode. Last night I was thinking and I kept trailing off into french, and when I thought about going back into English it just felt like such a hassle to switch back. Even typing this, I keep trail off in French and have to backspace a few sentences. I will keep you guys posted!
XO,
Hannah

Enjoying time with my family before we went through security.

Me and the gorgeous rebound who has helped me prepare for my journey this year! 

About to leave PDX (can you tell by the beautiful carpet?)

My first time in Minnesota and probably one of the coolest airports ever. 

Almost there!

Me and Andrea meeting for the first time! She is the other exchange student who is going to my city.

They have pink toilet paper here.

Selfie with all the inbounds!

The Sarthe river! My city’s name is Sablé-sur-Sarthe, translated as Sandy on the Sarthe River

The view from the balcony

With my three host families!

Introduction to my Journey!

   Greetings from (still) Oregon! I can’t believe it’s August already. Normally, I would not be counting down the days until the end of August but I guess this year is an exception. The reason being is on August 25th I am departing to spend a year of my life in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, France! This exciting opportunity was possible by the Rotary Clubs of Tigard and East Salem. Without them I would not have met the amazing people I have in district 5100 and the people I will meet overseas!
   Packing for your trip is just one of the things you need to do before you go on a big trip. Putting your life on hold here requires quitting your job, giving away old clothes and saying goodbye to the people who have been your everything since you can remember. I have already packed up my winter clothes into suitcase 1, thought about which clothes to donate to the younger sister and not even attempted to think about goodbyes yet. I will also need to go to a few more rotary meetings to say goodbye to the influential people who have prepared me for my journey. This week I went with Ervanny to her last Tigard Rotary meeting before she left for Busan, Korea. This girl has been with me though the whole selection process and has been an amazing support so it was sad and surreal to see her go. It also made me realize how close it will be until my departure day comes! I’m just enjoying my last 19 days in Oregon by taking them one day at a time, which has been working pretty well so far.
   Another necessity for my trip has been getting my student visa. This required a day trip to San Francisco to go to the French Consulate with the group of west coast outbounds! I got to meet some of the others who will be representing the United States in France next year. We all went to a French restaurant and ate escargot along with our lunch. After that, we went to the consulate and turned in documents and had our personal interview. Everyone survived and then we walked around San Francisco for a bit. I stopped by the birthplace of the most amazing mascara on the planet and then went with Alexa to this high end store that I don’t remember the name of. After that we wandered around in Chinatown before taking the BART back to the airport. I was so tired after waking up at 4 in the morning so I passed out, face flat on the floor, in the middle of the gate. Thank god my amazing travel buddies woke me up to get back on the plane. While we took off it occurred to me the next time a plane takes off with me on it, my adventure begins and I will be officially and inbound!

“Doing something weird” in Chinatown. The Northwest baes were so fun to travel with I can’t wait for the long flight to France!

Everyone looked so cute and I was wearing my airport clothes with a blazer to make it a little more classy.

Sorry Nathan I had to! I could not stop laughing when he was getting his VISA picture I can’t wait to see how it turns out :P

Posing with the benefit mannequin just before we left San Fran. Sorry not sorry to the group for going there so many times!

Action shot singing on the BART

One of the prettiest sunsets and my entertainment for the first part of the flight.

Last week’s Rotary meeting with our beautiful flag, ps I turned blonde. 

Throwback to the first rotary meeting ever. I was a little intimidated short term exchange wanna be with my Tigard girls Courtney and Ervanny. Good luck to you Ervanny in Korea! Sounds like you are already having a blast. Courtney will be leaving soon. 

A+ (À la prochaine)

Hannah