This past week has been quite interesting! For the second half of Monday, all of Tuesday, and the first half of Wednesday, the high schoolers had to the Epreures communes. Which is their big standardize test, or at least something like that. Me, not being fluent in the language, had to sit in the library with three other exchange students during that time. Monday we took some sort of test about child soldiers and how these organizations are trying to help free them and then we had to write a 150 word essay on a good and bad thing that has happened in our country sometime in the past 30 years. I’m just going to say that my test overall probably was not great and leave it at that! Tuesday, we had to create presentations about the differences and similarities between our high schools in our home countries and the high school here. It was pretty cool because the other exchange students are from Ireland, Canada and Australia so all of our presentations are at least a little different. We all had to make our presentations with zero guidelines besides what I previously stated. They all made powerpoints with all of their speech on that but I made a powerpoint just of pictures (Mountain Vista has some great pictures on google images of our student section at sports games). We were all finished and had nothing to do for about two and a half hours so we left to go sit in the sun and take pictures of the school, we were told just to not leave the campus. The colors all over my school are so crazy. One classroom is purple and a neon-ish yellow. I didn’t get any pictures of the classrooms because they were either locked or had a class going on inside, but I got pictures of the hallways and I’ll try to put them on my shutterfly (which I’ve been having trouble with lately so be patient with my lack of tech skills) and you’ll get the gist of what I’m talking about when you see those! Then Wednesday we just hung out and talked and then went to downtown to get some sushi and candy to eat in a really pretty park that I had gone to a few weeks back. Wednesdays are only half days for most all students so we just had to wait three hours before we could leave. Thursday and Friday went by pretty fast! Nothing too special happened. My host brother did leave for London this morning and he will be there for a week with his school so thats really exciting for him! He really wants to learn English and so even though he has a long way to go, his accent is more understandable than a lot of other students even in my grade. After Wednesday though, the temperature has been decreasing and the amount of clouds have been increasing. Saturday, I did go on a forty minute run because I got lost, but thankfully it was pretty sunny most for most of it! Then today I went on about an hour and a half walk with my host mom and we just talked and she showed me around town which, besides the little square of the bank, post office, a few restaurants and a grocery store, is just houses. We did get to the edge of Thoriné-Fouillard and it was a lot of, very pretty, open fields and old stone houses. I’ll get more pictures in the weeks to come. I’m so scared I’ll forget a lot of what I’m experiencing, but at the same time what I’m experiencing is so cool I don’t think I could ever forget this even if I wanted to.
Fun things that happened to me today! I signed up for a 5K Color Me Rad Run Rennes for the weekend after my birthday! I’m so excited about it! Probably more excited about it than I should be but I don’t even care! I love that I have something to look forward to. Also, I’m in the process of finding a place I can volunteer at but it’s proving a little more difficult than I thought it would be but hopefully in the weeks to come I’ll get it all sorted out!