Weekend D’Acceuil

This weekend was my Rotary Districts welcome weekend for all the inbound exchange students this year. We drove out Friday north of Paris to this big Villa where we hung out and slept in tents in the front yard. The “villa” is this massive house in the middle of a walled-off forest where no one lives at the moment. There are two more houses in the walls, but this house was freaking huge…see picture below. Anyways, all the students were really nice and fun to be with. There are 7 from the U.S, 2 from Brazil, one from Canada (sorry Aunt Ruth, not from the Soo), one from Taiwan, and one from Germany. My nickname for the weekend was “Colorado” which was especially funny when the German would say it… “col-o-ray-do.” There were only two guys (me and a kid from Brazil) so we got a huge tent to ourselves whereas the girls got to sleep five to a tent. Chalk one up to being a guy.

Basically the weekend consisted of talking, eating and sleeping. When we arrived we just hung out, ate, had a fire, and went to bed pretty late. On Saturday we got up, ate, then went to this place called Aventureland. It is basically a really big ropes course/little theme park in Normandy. It was really fun, as me and the Brazilian guy (Leo) just went around and climbed trees like monkeys and descended them like Batman. We then went to this little meeting where we talked about the rules of our exchange (which is now the 50th time I’ve heard the rules since I applied), then went back to the villa and hung out and ate. I sat with some French kids (like 14 and 15 years old) at dinner and we talked a lot about soccer and sports. Then we played some soccer games outside (like monkey in the middle) and I learned a lot of cool soccer jargon and information about French teams and European soccer in general. They told me France is playing Italy on Wednesday in Paris for a qualifying match for the Eurocup, which should make Paris pretty crazy on Wednesday, as this is a pretty massive rivalry now after what happened in the World Cup. I plan on watching. It was fun to speak French with them…they are really nice kids. But then I just stayed up talking to all the other exchange students then went to bed.

I slept really well last night because this girl gave me a thermarest/sleeping bag/pillow (none of which I had the first night) because she was sleeping at home. I woke up in the middle of the night with half my body outside the tent, so that was kind of random and weird, especially since I got a lot colder when I pulled back inside and had to put a blanket on over me. There was a big pot-luck for all the host families this morning, so my host family came and I got to meet French exchange students who went out last year as well as my exchange student friends host brothers/sisters. I was excited because when I’d speak French the French people would tell me “tu parles bien français” (you speak French well) so that was a boost in confidence. I swear I had probably the equivalent of 5 baguettes and a 24 pack of Coca-Cola this weekend. It’s basically all I ate/drank…including this morning. Anyways, that was my weekend in a nutshell. It was really fun but now I’m very tired and I start school tomorrow (which should be Labor Day so that kind of sucks). But I only have to go for an hour or two with my host mom, and we’ll talk to my counselor and get my classes etc. I’m actually really excited to start and meet some people my age that I’ll be able to hang out with on a regular basis.

Signing off,
Colorado (Brent)