Kiss Kiss

So, when you think about France, a lot of things comes to mind.

Cheese, wine, food. Pretty nice country, very food-y. There are, of course, the stereotypes: generally unclean, the unfortunate side effects of owning pets all over the sidewalks, snobby, American-haters. (Remind me to go over stereotypes in another post.)

It's also pretty likely that within minutes of hearing the word "French," an image pops into your mind of a skinny twenty-something fashionista dressed mostly in black, wearing a beautiful scarf, kissing all of her friends on the cheeks. (Warning: Subject of blog post.)

So, living in France for two plus months, I've had to do a lot of greetings, and therefore have kissed a great many people of both sexes and varying ages.

At first, this seemed like the height of elegance to me. Let's face it, when an American is pressed to come up with the most chic and elegant country they know, a fair few of them will mention France at some point. The European-cheek-kissing-thing has always impressed that dark little part of our souls that tells us living in Europe automatically makes you more awesome as a person. When I was suddenly allowed--nay, expected to take part in the most elegant of elegant greetings, that same tiny part of my soul automatically readjusted my self-worth a notch or two in the good direction. (I'm a shallow, shallow person. So sue me.)

The only problem is, after two months of trying to deal with it, France has hands-down the most annoying greeting system in the entire world.

I want you all to just stop for a second and imagine yourself, as an American, with our perfectly sculpted little space bubble, trying to kiss someone else casually. Or touch their face with yours. The thought kind of made you cringe for a second, didn't it? Admit it, it did. To us, the thought of touching someone else's face with ours is very intimate, saved for interactions between family or very close friends.

But even that can be gotten over. I mean, the whole French space bubble (read: non-existant) thing kind of gave me the creeps for a week or two, but then I sucked it up and told myself that people bumping into me and standing a little too close on the bus was just the price I had to pay for living in France (read: coolest thing ever).

Then you get to the mathematical problems associated with kissing.

Right now, as you're reading this, you've probably read the above sentence a few times. But no: I mean mathematical.

In Paris, you kiss the people you meet twice; once on each cheek. In some parts of France, the number changes to four. In Provence (where I live), the number is three.

But even though that seems pretty easy (if you're in Paris, kiss twice, if you're in Marseille, kiss three times, right?) it turns out all those rules are really just to confuse the heck out of us poor foreigners. The thing is, that's just a guideline. As in, if you live in Provence, most people will expect the usual three-kiss deal. But then they're just not telling you about all the unspoken cultural rules that, as the French, they've been learning since birth.

For instance, when you're greeting a large group of friends, like your classmates at high school, you can abbreviate the greeting to just one kiss on the cheek, and others, realizing that you've just arrived into a big group of people, will expect the shortened greeting and just kiss your cheek once.

(Actually, you really just kiss the air while your cheek is touching theirs. It's complicated, don't expect to get it right the first few times.)

Of course, in every group of friends, there's always the person that wasn't paying attention, or isn't very good at seeing things from the perspective of others, and they'll go in for the two or three kiss thing. This is where things start to get awkward.

You've gone in for the first kiss, everything went fine. Except now you're pulling back, thinking the greeting to be finished, and your friend is leaning in again, going for the second kiss. At this point, you realize that they wanted a full greeting, and go in again (a little late) to try and salvage it, but at the same exact moment, they've realized you wanted to end the greeting there, and begin to pull back.

When was the last time you ran into someone in the hall going the opposite direction as you, and had an awkward little shuffling side-step war trying to get around them? It's like that, but with your face. And instead of that awkward running into each other thing that happens when the two of you in the hallway try side-stepping the same direction and confidently moving forward, the ultimate risk in this situation is accidentally kissing someone straight on the lips, which would be horrifying for all parties involved. Thankfully, I haven't yet seen this happen, but there have been more than a few close calls.

Granted, once you get good at knowing the cultural norms and expectations, it's relatively efficient. I'm not giving it a complete thumbs down, it still makes you look like a movie star. No matter what you're wearing or how your hair looks, when you kiss someone on the cheeks you'll look like one of those hoitey-toitey "I'm-so-fashionable-I-go-to-sleep-wearing-Prada" girls, the ones that everyone pretends are so annoying and everyone secretly wants (to have the resources) to be just like.

So, coming to the end of the review, I figure I should give you all the how-to. (Trust me. It looks simple, until you accidentally go for the wrong side first.)

First step: Get closer to the person than you would normally be comfortable with. I actually had the experience of greeting another American exchange student here very early on into our stays, and we, being both American, automatically opted to try the greeting from the usual American space bubble distance. It was a disaster. Realizing after the first very difficult kiss that it wasn't going to work from a distance, we both tried stepping closer at the same time, which led to us nearly bumping into each other. You're going to have to step out of your comfort zone (literally) and just get close to the person initially. Console yourself that after just a few kisses, it'll be over and you can step back. (Generally, if a French person sees you step back into what they feel is too large of a space bubble, an they know you're American, they'll repect it. I can't say the same thing for the lunch line or the bus, though.)

Second step: DON'T LET YOUR MIND WANDER. I don't care if it's your best friend, that cute guy in your class that you really like, or the President of France, concentrate more on what you're doing than who you're kissing. If you freak, you'll blush, which can either make you look cutely American or just plain stupid, depending on the situation. Remember that the French have been greeting people this way since they were toddlers. It's no big deal to them, like a handshake would be to an American. (Side note: Generally boys don't kiss other boys unless they're family. So, if you're a man, don't freak the French out by going in for the traditional French greeting with another man. A handshake will suffice. You should, however, still use the kisses with women, who won't find it creepy at all.)

Third step: Start from the right. YOUR right. Not much to say about this, it's just the side that some Frenchman long ago decided would be THE side to start on. Your left cheeks will be touching.

Fourth step: Pull back just a little and change sides. This is actually a little trickier than it looks. You have to pull back enough that no part of your face touches when you both move to change sides, but not enough that they think you only wanted one kiss, and the awkward shuffle of accomodation starts (see above). It really just takes practice.

Fifth step: It's basically the same as the first step, but with the other cheek. I figure now would be a good time, however, to bring up technique. First of all, don't slam. I've greeted a lot of people over here, and the people I tend to avoid greeting are the ones that slam their cheeks against mine so hard I think they're going to break my cheekbones. It actually kind of hurts, and it's usually Americans and other foreigners who do this, since the French were probably scolded out of it when they did it as children. You don't need to attempt to merge the molecules that make up your face with theirs, just lightly touch your cheek to theirs and kiss the air by their ear. Which brings me to the next rule: lightly kiss. Don't make this gigantic sucking noise that close to their ear, it's startling. No huge smacking of the lips to demonstrate your affection, or something. Just a very light kissing noise is all it takes. I've met some people who skip the kiss entirely, and just press their cheeks to yours noiselessly. Generally, everyone will have their own special technique, but try to keep yours down to a dull roar.

If you're in a region that requires more than two kisses (PLEASE, research this before you come), repeat steps 4 and 5 until it's done.

Wearing high heels, a scarf, and all black clothing is optional. (For both genders.)

~Josie Harris

Ça Tourne!

Naturally, French school is, to me, ten different shades of awesome. This opinion was justified this last weekend, when I went on the most amazing of all field trips.

Montpellier Film Festival.

As an American, the idea of cinema as an art form is dodgy at best. Film to me, at least two months ago, meant entertainment and possibly a fun trip to the movies with my friends. There were good movies and bad movies, but their worth was mainly assigned based on their plots. If a plot was well done, it was a good movie. I understood that movies took a long time to make, and that things like camera angles existed, but they didn't mean anything to me, the viewer, watching the film. If a film was well done, I thought, I wouldn't notice the camera angles, because they would look natural to me.

The French would have been horrified.

Their idea of film is much more tasteful and artistic. A film is a work of art: no less. It shouldn't have to stoop to the low expectations of pleasing an audience, and its sole purpose is not entertainment. It's an expression of living art. Through the camera, the artist can make his work live, breathe, and flourish. The film tells a story, yes, but much in the same way that a painting does.

The only downside to this: imagine looking at a really boring classical painting. It takes a few minutes to appreciate it, and unless you're an art fanatic, you're very quickly bored. It's nice at first glance, but you don't really understand the message the artist was trying to convey, so you give up pretty quickly.

Films are two hours of art.

So, as I sat on the bus in a parking lot next to the school with about thirty other kids, all of them French, waiting for it to leave and take me to Montpellier and the Mediterranean Film Festival, I was understandably a little wary of the films I expected that I'd be forced to watch as part of the Baccalaureate curriculum. No later than five minutes into the bus ride, my fears were confirmed when one of the Cinéma class teachers grabbed the microphone from the front of the bus and handed out sheets of paper with all the films and their times and locations on it, detailing very rapidly in French what we were supposed to do.

Naturally, no matter how hard I tried to listen, none of what he was saying made any sense to me, so, trusting that my classmates had enough of a conscience not to let the poor stupid American girl get completely lost in a foreign city, I instead spent the bus trip deciphering the list.

(It wasn't very complicated, in the end, although the letters VOSTF continued to confuse me until day two, when I realized they must stand for "Version Originale, Sous-titres Français"...which is pretty much just "Original Version, French Subtitles", if you were having any difficulty translating that.)

We got off the bus about an hour and a half later, walked a mile or so laden down with suitcases to get to the hotel when the teachers mistakenly had the bus driver drop us all off at the wrong one, and then spent an hour or so (I may be exaggerating.) waiting for the incredibly slow elevators to cooperate and take twenty kids and their suitcases down a couple floors, because, of course, there were no stairs.

It didn't take very long after that to get our bags deposited in our rooms, however, and then we were off to the place where they were holding the festival, and the films began!

The first film was, as I feared, a film that was on our school curriculum, and was incredibly boring, though I'm not sure if that was because it was a documentary, or because I could hardly understand a word being spoken. It was all about French-speaking Africa, and if you think French is hard when actual French people are speaking it, you've never heard it with an African accent.

Later, all of the students had been invited to the opening night movie, which was held in this gigantic hall with about a million seats. Every single one of them was full by the end of the night. As a special treat before the movie, a few of the main actors and actresses (none of whom I could identify, but then, I'm not very well-versed in French films) came out and spoke to the audience for a little while. If the reactions of my classmates were anything to go by, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

And that was the first day.

The second day went much like the first, without the long boring bus ride. There was a required film in the morning, which...okay, I sort of slept through it. My roommates kept me up until three o'clock in the morning, and it was incredibly boring. I know that's no excuse, but really. I just couldn't help it. The theater was dark, the chairs were comfy, the movie had music that was kind of soothing...it was impossible to keep your eyes open. I know I saw one or two adults sleeping too.

After the movie, we were required to attend a three-hour discussion of the movie, which, if not incredibly entertaining, was at least a little bit of listening practice for me. After that, my roommates and I went outside to hunt up some lunch, found a McDonald's, and ordered something there.

The afternoon was free choice, and we were allowed to see the films we wanted. It was nice, really, having the choice. I ended up seeing three films before I and the rest of my class ended up calling it a day and going back to the hotel. Sunday morning was also free choice, and I ended up buying a pack of chips for lunch and walking around with a few of my friends, eating in the park and making general fools of ourselves trying to climb monkey bars made for four-year-olds. (What's a few funny looks when you've got monkey bars to play with?)

All in all, I was kind of sad when we got back on the bus ( and not just because the skies had opened and unleashed a torrent of rain on us just as we stepped outside with our jackets all packed in our suitcases.)...

But now, let me tell you, I'm really glad we had a week and a half of vacation after it. I was so exhausted when I stepped off the bus it's not even funny. I spent the next few days spitting out random chunks of unconjugated verbs as attempted speech, my brain just so sick and tired of having to try so hard to understand movies all weekend. I'm almost completely sure that the night I returned home, my host parents asked me about my day, I said the French equivalent of "Liked I did the festival, I to sleep soon please?"

I must have sounded like a drunk French Yoda. Probably not one of my best moments.

~Josie Harris

What Do We Want?!

So, there was a strike yesterday.

A BIG strike.

Like, as in, I had eight hours of school. And two hours of class.

Why don't we strike like this in America?

Okay, it was something called a "blockage." Now, when I hear "blockage" and "strike" in the same sentence, I get this unpleasant image of some high-schoolers stuffing the toilets full of toilet paper in some sort of awful rebellion. When the French hear it, they think of a very special type of strike done by students.

What happens is this: students gather around every single gate into the school grounds, and they close the gates. So far, so good. Then, they take every single dumpster and trash can and road block they can find and shove it up against the gate. This, my friends, is my idea of a strike. This is the theory: you can exit, but once you've exited, you can't get back in.

And it would be great if it actually worked like that, but in reality they let you in and out. It's just that most students choose to remain out. All. Day. Long.

And of course why should the teachers miss the fun? They don't necessarily take part in the blockage, but they stay home all day and don't come in to teach their classes.

Thus: eight hours of school, two hours of class. I had to go to English and Cinema. I was heartbroken. (Best. Day. Ever.)

The only problem is that they closed the cafeteria too, but that's easily solved by going to a grocery store and buying nothing but junk for lunch.

When do we get to do it again? Keep messing up, please, French government, because it's like a holiday when you do...

May You Have an Interesting Life

Well played, little brother. Well played.

He's been nothing but irritating for the five weeks I've been here, but today he was showing his mother his school notebook, and she asked him about the family picture he was supposed to draw for homework. "Are you gonne draw all of us?"

"Yes. Alexia...and Mama...and Marjorie...and Sandrine...and Papa...and Josie."

And I was floored.

Besides that, there's nothing much to really say. My life has become so interesting that it's actually incredibly boring. I've settled into the closest thing to a routine France offers. Great for my life, bad for my writing, but you can't have both, and frankly I'd choose a routine over having interesting things to blog about. (Wasn't there a Chinese curse to that effect? "May you have an interesting life.")

There's nothing much I can really talk about except for school, I suppose. How boring is that, I live in another country, and my whole life still revolves around the most boring thing possible. The irony is bitter.

Well, let's jump right into it.

The funny thing is, I'm typing this, and you would never know if I didn't tell you, but my handwriting is changing pretty drastically. Teachers still use blackboards over here, and their handwriting is so inexplicably French that I was completely flabbergasted my first week of school. It's hard to describe for anyone that hasn't seen it themselves: a sort of half-cursive, half-print scrawl. It manages to look messy and perfectly sculpted all at the same time. I think the best way I can word it is that half the letters are in cursive and half of them aren't, but the half that is and the half that isn't changes with every individual person. With that sort of influence, it's all I can do to stop myself from outright writing in cursive. I would, if I thought my cursive lettering was in any way legible. So I've settled into a sort of loopy print, using all of the little loops at the ends of letters that my Kindergarten teacher always called "monkey-tails" and my third grade teacher always called "childish". Well, whatever. My handwriting has become French-y and therefore requires no explanation. (And trust me, they really can't explain it to you.)

That is, however, only when I'm using a ball-point pen or a pencil. The second I try using one of the very popular fountain pens everyone seems to have here, my handwriting resembles the chicken scratch I used to have in sixth grade. I'm so incredibly glad we never turn in assignments, we just read answers out in class, because if I ever had to turn in my handwriting, they'd deport me. Nevertheless, I continue to write my notes with the fountain pen, in the hopes that someone other than me will be able to understand them someday.

Trust me, though, we take a lot of notes, and by the end of the year, I'll likely have made some improvement.

I suppose as long as we're talking about school supplies I should mention my organizer, which is the oddest and most convenient thing I've ever seen in my life. It's sort of like a binder, only it has about twelve different plastic tabs sticking out of the sides. When you pull back the cover, there's a whole bunch of sturdy plastic dividers connected to the binding. On the front cover is a bunch of little write-in windows next to each tab, where you write the names of your classes, and then you take your class papers, pull back the tab that corresponds to the correct class, and stick the paper in. It's almost like a file folder, except that the pieces of plastic aren't connected to each other, the whole thing opens like a book, with two pieces of elastic at each open corner to bind it together. Before I go home, I'm going to buy a new one for my senior year and use it in America. It's the most handy thing I've ever seen in my life.

Keeping on track with school supplies, here are a few more things no French kid would ever be without:

-A pencil case. This isn't necessarily true in my high school, but in other American high schools I've been told that carrying around little pencil cases can make your popularity suffer. Here, people look at you kind of funny if you don't have one of your own to put your miscellaneous writing utensils in.

-Ridiculous lined paper. This stuff is like graph paper on steroids. There are lines everywhere for absolutely no reason that I can figure out.

-Planners. Some of the cool factor in your planner is revived here in France because you buy it yourself, and therefore decide what you want it to look like. Some of the more expensive planners have a whole bunch of interesting things in them. The cover of mine is Harry Potter. (I saw a scary goth boy running around with a Hello Kitty planner in his bag.)

-Glue stick. I can't see that many people in America using this. It's more of a second grade thing for us, but for teenagers here, they're incredibly convenient for when you want to paste a handout into your notebook.

-About a million notebooks. Every single one of your classes must have its own notebook. It doesn't matter how incredibly insignificant the notes or how little you have that particular class: if you know you don't have that class a lot, you use a smaller notebook. Using loose paper is branding yourself a loser for eternity. Or something.

There are other classes that require more specific things, like a calculator in math, or your gym clothes for sport. And you have to bring your own gym clothes, there's no uniform. This sounds totally radical until you realize that there are no lockers in the whole school, and you're stuck lugging around a plastic bag filled with gym clothes every Tuesday.

Speaking of gym, though, you'll never guess what sport we're working on now. (I'm actually so convinced you'll never guess that I'm just going to tell you.) Rock climbing. The entire end wall of the school is littered with those stupid colored rocks. Last week was the tutorial for how not to kill yourself with your own harness and how not to kill your partner with the rope, and this week we actually got to try it.

My partner and I each got about three feet off the ground before agreeing that we were both incorrigibly terrified of heights. We snuck off to watch the jocks instead of actually doing anything. It was pretty fascinating, although my neck kind of hurt from looking up so much.

Turns out I really don't need to worry much about sport, though. I weighed myself this morning out of morbid curiosity (and also because I could swear none of my clothes were fitting anymore) and after doing some really tedious conversions, found out that I've lost twenty or twenty-five pound here. Jeans that were fitting perfectly a month ago now are too big by like five inches. I went and bought another pair yesterday, though I'm not sure if I like French jeans more than American ones. There's not much variety, it's either skinny jeans, or skinnier jeans. Ouch. Tight much?

Oh, and the toe situation is fantastic, as usual. He burned it again today. Ouch. All I can say is, if that man ever comes near me with a caustic chemical and says the word "Brûlée" (burn) again, I'm heading for the hills. France is not worth this, seriously. I'll go back to the land of painkillers and anesthetics in a heartbeat, don't think I won't. Back where chemicals are more theoretical than medical.

I'm torn between wishing I had more to write about and being incredibly thankful I don't. Coolest part of the day so far? I checked out the seventh Harry Potter book from the school library's English books section, because I knew I had to go to the doctor again today. The thought of holing up in my room reading it is making me way more excited than it should. Finally I can hold a book in my hands and not want to throw it against the wall for lack of comprehension! I almost did, with the first Harry Potter book. This morning I was reading it and every single name is different, it seems like. It's driving me up the walls trying to remember the difference between Filch (Rusard) and Snape (Rogue)...

~Josie Harris

Honestly, Now

Cue startling revelation: (why did God invent denial?)

I made it through the first month.

I made it through the first month.

Read it again.

Read it again. You're not thrilled enough.

In celebration, I've had a rotten day and the heavens have opened to pour water down upon the earth in what I can only surmise is nature's way of laughing at me.

Well, you can't have everything.

In a tangent completely unrelated to happiness of any kind, I could begin mentioning school now. Mind you, this is going to sound a lot more interesting than in actually is. I wish my life was as cool and neatly compressed as my blogs are. You read through them and I sound like some sort of French-American superhero. Battling culture shock, one villainous emotion at a time!

(Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Oh. Um. Yeah, it's a plane. Nevermind.)

Anyway, school.

I suppose the first thing I should mention is that no matter how much sense it doesn't make to you, it's even worse for me. The exchange students here sort of have a motto: "Just go with it." You're not going to understand it right now, if at all, but you'll probably have a blast doing whatever it is. If it's not illegal, that is.

So the first event that springs to mind is how my entire class, boys included, ended up in the girls' bathroom. There's a story to go along with this, I promise.

So what happened was this: yesterday there was a strike. A big, fat, whole-country kind of strike. Naturally, everyone in my high school loves it whe this happens. About half my class was "on strike" themselves, but the half and I attended most of our classes that morning, with the exception of French class, which, as luck would have it, combined with our free periods at 1 to give us a three hour lunch. (I went down to the bakery with some friends and bought cheese pizza. So doing that again soon.)

Naturally, none of us wanted to stay for the afternoon, but our math teacher wasn't on strike, and we were obliged to stay. After math, a few kids went down to the office to ask if we had our next class, TPE, after the free period we were on at the moment, and they told us yes. Cue collective groan. (That class starts at 4 and goes until 6. Yuck.)

So, being the good kids that we are, we dutifully stuck around until the class was supposed to start. Then we waited in the hallway. And waited. And waited. Finally we all decided that enough was enough, and everybody was just going to go home. This worked out splendidly until we got outside, stopped to say goodbye and talk for a little bit, and saw our teacher walk out the front doors. Before he could see us, the twelve or so members of my class that were still there crammed ourselves into a stairwell that has a door leading to the outside. We booked it up the stairs and ran out onto the second floor, then quickly hid ourselves in the first bathroom we saw, and closed the door. After about five minutes of waiting, we decided it was safe, and snuck our way down the stairs, checking around every corner and looking through every window. The second we got outside, everyone broke out into a run to their bus stop.

And nobody thought it was at all strange.

-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-

It's tomorrow, and I've had an even rotten-er day. (Proper spelling and grammar have no place in my mind today.)

So, it's medical. And if you're squeamish, go away. Seriously. Go away.

I had this bump on my toe, which turned out to be a wart (which takes its place as number three on my list of totally gross words). It hurt like crazy, to the point where I was starting to develop a limp so I wouldn't have to walk on it. So, I finally pulled up the courage to tell my host family about it, and we went to the doctor this morning. He took care of it, and can I just say OW. I can safely tell you it will take a broken bone to force me back into that room.

The ending to it all is that I'm lying in bed cursing my misfortune and my body's inability to stay whole and healthy. My toe is throbbing, and I have a newfound respect for chemistry and why my teacher always told us not to let the chemicals touch our skin. Unless, apparently, you've got a PhD. But seriously, not doing that again without either anesthetic or alcohol (which I'm assuming from books and movies preform the same general function.)...

Oh, and I'm not walking anywhere any time soon. Hopefully this will get in the way of my school plans? (Not likely. Irony hates me.)

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

It's been a whole month since I left home.

In honor of this terrifying event, I've decided to answer a question every single one of you (Yes, you're all guilty.) has asked me at least a few times.

"How do you feel?"

There is, of course, a reason for my requiring an entire blog post to explain the simple matter of feelings. (Other than my melodramatic side being perfected by my current location.) There's no possible word in either of the two languages I'm able to manage that describes even half of my current feelings.

I'm afraid you're just going to have to settle for a lot of little words that describe pieces of it. Sorry. ("Aw, we have to read a whole blog post from a kid in France! Gosh darn it.")

Buckle your seatbelt. Most of these emotions are not at all pleasant.

The first feeling that I have here in France is (obviously) curiosity. Believe it or not, I didn't come here for nothing, or to get away from Washington for a year. I came here because I was curious about the language, the people, and the culture. I came here because I wanted to learn things, I wanted to learn the language. There's a reason I'm here.

The second feeling directly contradicts the first (of course, because what's life without a little conflict?): homesickness. I want to go home more than I can possibly say. I want to go back to where people speak my language and understand me when I speak. I want to go back to the place my friends and family are. I want my mom and dad worse than a fourth grader faced with summer camp. Every single thing here reminds me of home, because it's not home.

The third feeling ties in: guilt. I am here for a reason. I'm wasting my time whining when I could be spending it having an excellent time. This is a new country, a new experience. Hundreds of kids would die to be able to be in my place. What am I doing being such a baby when I'm so lucky?

The fourth feeling is uncertainty. I'm not sure of myself here. Every basic assumption I've ever had needs to be rethought and redefined. Am I a part of the family, or am I a guest? Am I reacting well in a situation, or am I showing my ignorance? Did the teacher just ask me a question? What did that girl just say to me? What is the teacher talking about? I don't know how to move or act in any given situation.

Next. Exhaustion. Speaking a different language for a good portion of your day is tiring. Having to rethink everything is tiring. Having to act like someone you're not for a whole day is tiring. Having to be around dozens of people at school and then six other people at home when you're an introvert is tiring. Doing all those things at once while battling chronic homesickness and culture shock is absolutely exhausting, and it's really no surprise that I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow nowadays.

After that comes denial. The catch-all, denial is, and it's hard to squash. You never know what you're going to not believe next. Nothing has really sunk in yet. In Europe? Nah. Not going to see my parents or friends for a year? Yeah right. Nine months to go? Pull the other one. There's absolutely no limits to what your brain with block from your consciousness.

There are probably more I'm not thinking of. There probably always will be. It's very hard to put this feeling into words. But I suppose you can fit it into at least two:

"Exchange Student"

~Josie

The Photos You've All Been Waiting For.

Pay close attention, people, because I'm not going to say this again:

Pictures taken of me will never ever look good. Never. I am UNphotogenic.

This was at the orientation. The end of it, more precisely. The morning after the last sleep I got for a very long time.

The first meal I ate in France. Okay, well, to be fair, the first meal I ate out of America. We were somewhere around Spain at the time.

The REAL first meal I ate in France. I can see how utterly shocked you all are.

Some pictures of my room that I took only a few days after arriving.

A good example of what the houses look like here. This is the view from our porch.

The beach. I told you it was cliché. I want to go back...

Yeah. Really are no words for this one.

Okay, so I'm being yelled at to go to bed, and these pictures take years to upload, so we'll save the rest for another time. I've put up all the good ones anyway.

~Josie

The Art of Eating

I'm updating this way too often, but something tells me that none of you really care. So, my bad habit will continue. Onward.

This won't be a very long post, but I have to tell about one of the most essential parts of French culture before it becomes habit and I forget how strange it all is:

Food.

Now, the American definition of food is radically complicated. You can be a vegan, a vegetarian, allergic to milk or peanuts, a meat-lover, someone who doesn't eat sugar, someone who doesn't eat fat, someone who doesn't eat any number of things. First real difference in French culture: if they have cooked it, you will eat it. 

This isn't to say that the French aren't sensitive to other peoples' diets; they are, incredibly so. When I got here, my host parents both bugged me endlessly for a list of things I liked and didn't like food-wise. When no list was forthcoming, my host mother began making French Fries four times a week, reverting back to her (slightly stereotypical) assumed knowledge of American cuisine. They do, however, bring an image to mind (with startling clarity) of some black and white television program from when my parents were children, the father vehemently stating that little Johnny was going to eat at least a little bit of everything and "you're going to like it." If your mother has been so incredibly kind as to cook something for the family, you will at least try a bit of everything on the table, even if you don't like it.

The second culture divide concerning food came about when my host mother expressed some concern over the quantity of food I was eating (or not eating) at meals. (It's a travel thing, and also a bit of a culture shock thing that I'm still trying to get over: my appetite is about half of what it was in the United States, and that's better than last week.) Worriedly heaping what I considered to be way too much food onto my plate, insisting she was giving me a "smaller serving", she then proceeded to serve my host sister, by piling enough pasta on her plate that it looked like the serving dish for the whole dinner. Keep in mind, this was just the first course. My host sister is twelve. She ate it all, and went on to have two steaks. Suddenly my "smaller portion" was a godsend.

Since then, I have managed to convince my host mother that even if my appetite were back to normal, I would never be able to eat the monstrous amounts they consider normal here, and that I would like an even smaller portion that what she was giving me. She's now reverted to giving me portions so "small" she's worrying that she's starving me, and I still leave the table feeling uncomfortably full.

The third cultural difference is both wonderful and annoying. Lunch and Dinner are always eaten with the family, with the exception of school lunches on any day but Wednesday, when you get out at noon anyway and should promptly make your way home for lunch. Last Saturday, I was feeling exhausted from having such a busy week, and made the mistake of asking my host mother if I could stay at home and sleep instead of going to a late-night fair with the family. She blinked, confused, and told me that the family was going to have dinner at the fair. For her, this settled the matter. Being tired and unable to think clearly, I asked her why I couldn't just stay at home and eat a bowl of cereal, something that would definitely have been an option in America. She looked scandalized. (I went to the fair.)

However, having lunch and dinner with the family is a definite way to improve my language skills. It's also helping me feel more like part of the family, even more so now that I can understand more of their jokes and I'm not feeling quite so incredibly stressed out from all the traveling I did to get here. Also, French food is usually something you don't want to miss. Which brings me to my next cultural difference...

The food here is like nothing you've ever seen before. When I got here, I don't know what I was expecting. Gourmet something, maybe, small portions, twelve courses, and some sort of unidentifiable fancy sauce in little zigzag patterns all over square plates. (Like I said to my parents in San Francisco: "You just have to admit that square plates make everything look ten times fancier.")

What I got was something unbelievably better. At least in the south of France (I'm not even going to try and speak for the other parts, you might as well apply this disclaimer to everything I say on this blog), home cooking is one part amazing cooking, one part fancy, and three parts comfort food. Everything you eat here would be typical comfort food, I imagine, for a French person. It's what we Americans like to classify as "Good 'Ol Southern Home Cookin'", only less absolutely disgusting looking to the average non-southern person. Chicken, fish, pork, any kind of meat at all, but always made into the most delicious recipe possible. The only thing that breaks this rule is the pasta, which is absolutely tasteless because they never make any sort of sauce to go with it. You just sprinkle cheese over it. (I really should have expected this, but in reality nobody in my family eats all that much cheese.)

I also have found the most delicious non-dessert food item in the universe: baguette sandwiches. It doesn't matter what kind of meat it is, it can be anything you like, but it will ALWAYS be delicious. This bread is going to be hard to live without when I go back to America. (Fun Fact: It's completely normal to see a little old lady walk down the street with at least seven baguettes in her basket. It's also acceptable for my family of seven to go through nine baguettes in one day.)

The best dessert-item, though, also hails from France: it's called a pain au chocolat. Pahn oh shakolah. It's essentially a croissant, which are already delicious here in France, and it's also filled with chocolate. I have to get the recipe for these things. It's one of those foods where, once you've had it, you will never be able to go without it for the rest of your life. On extremely lucky days, there's a big bowl on the table at breakfast, covered with a paper towel, and when you lift up the towel, there are nine or ten pain au chocolat waiting for you. It's delicious.

So I'm kind of finding myself wondering why I'm missing the food at home so much.

~Josie Harris

So.

So, I'm actually starting to think at some point in this year, I might understand a full sentence. That would be an amazing change.

My French is getting better everyday, but that isn't really saying much, since it started out at "incredibly useless" and has since worked itself up to "speak slowly, and you have a 10% chance of being understood"...not to say that my French classes at school were in any way useless to me, because they weren't: they were great, in fact. However, the fact remains that you can take as many classes as you want, and you'll never be able to understand a language the way it's supposed to be understood. Big shock to my system, when I got here? You bet.

I've spent a lot of my time here adjusting to my host family. Coming from a family of three to a family of seven is understandably tough. So is having a little brother. (He can be adorable when he wants to be, which I think is the only thing keeping me from throttling him most of the time.) I like all of my sisters, though, which is great. I would hate to have disputes with them so early on, especially since we see so much of each other from day to day.

But enough with the boring stuff. Nobody cares about my relationships with people or my language skills, on to the fun facts!

Fun Fact 1: The keyboards here are ridiculous. (Every book about culture shock ever written is now screaming at me to rephrase that sentence positively.) Instead of the wonderful QWERTY system, they have an AZERTY system, which means that the W, the A, the Z, the M, and every punctuation mark ever are in the wrong place. Its amazing trying to type. Every time you want to use an A, a Q comes out instead.

Fun Fact 2: The Simpsons is translated into French and is officially the most popular television program among my family. It's actually easier to understand in French because I don't have to follow all the ridiculous political jokes. Also translated: Bones, House M.D., a few game shows...

Fun Fact 3: Weather doesn't always behave. I'm nearly sure I've mentioned this before, but the weather here can go from sweltering-hot-I'm-gonna-die to hurricane weather in an instant. It's crazy and great, since nobody here has air conditioning. Trust me, the wind blasting through your window is the only thing that keeps you sane some days. I am happy to admit, however, that it has officially gotten too cold in the nights to leave your window open. This is great, because it means that if you leave your window open in the evenings, you can close it at night, and not get too hot. I was getting so sick of waking up with millions of mosquito bites all over me.

Fun Fact 4: Today is September 11th. I wore an American Flag bandanna around my wrist the whole day. This prompted several question from my host family.....awkward questions from them. Yeah.

About time to go, now. I seriously need to make this headache go away...

~Josie Harris

Where Are We Going?

I just had my first day of school today.

Sorry for the post so soon after the last one, but I think the first day of school is something that needs to be written down.

So. School.

It's incredibly different. Now, I want you to go to your dictionary and look up the word "incredibly", and then look up the word "italics", because there's no way you're going to understand what I mean without me there to add the appropriate tone of voice. I was so lost the whole day.

In the useless hope of saving this train-wreck of a blog post, I'm going to go in linear order. Please keep arms and legs inside the train of imagination at all times and refrain from pointing out grammatical mistakes. Thank you.

The day started out with me nearly falling out of bed, having been woken up by my host sister's old alarm clock, which makes a noise I've never heard on this earth. A quick shower (to rid my hair of the last of the sea salt) and a tiny breakfast, and my host mom and I were off along the streets of Orange to get to the bus station and try to figure out how to be at the right stop at the right time. (Eventually we just went in the same direction every other teenager there was going. It worked.)

It took me all of five minutes by bus to get to the right stop. Another five minutes, and I was at the school. Five minutes after that, I was at the right room number. Ten minutes more, and the door finally opened and we were allowed out of the sweltering hallway. (Seriously. No air conditioning, tiny hallway, a million teenagers crammed in. It was boiling.)

My first class of the day was French. I spent most of the two hours I was in that room trying to pick up a couple words here and there. My dictionary was glued to my hand, I must have looked so studious, but in reality I was just trying not to get trampled in a stampede of French. At the end, we had a ten minute break, and I stood around looking like an idiot.

After that, I had History/Geography. It was mostly Geography. The teacher is absolutely terrifying, the kind that will take absolutely no fuss and expects you to live up to your "potential", whatever that is. We spent an hour talking about Europe and why it's the most awesome of all the six continents. (No, it's not a mistake, I mean six. Apparently North America isn't cool enough to be its own continent: it has to share a room with South America. Tough luck.)

Then. Okay. This is the best part. Then....I had lunch. Now, think about your own school lunches. Or think back to them. They were probably the same level of nastiness we have now. Maybe a salad, some sort of unidentifiable meat, a dinner roll that's either rock hard or tasteless, and all of it is absolutely disgusting.

French school lunches aren't like that. At all.

French school lunches are three-course meals.

I wasn't prepared for this at all. You get a tray, reach into a little bucket for as much bread as you want, and go down the lunch line until your tray heaps with restaurant quality food. We're talking some sort of fancy-looking appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert. And when I say that, I'm not kidding. The main course today was grilled chicken with a side of pasta with some sort of really delicious sauce. For dessert, there was a dark chocolate cheesecake with raspberry jam. I felt like a princess. (The rest of the kids were complaining about how much they hate the lunchroom, I told them about American lunches and they shut up pretty quick. I think they were horrified.)

So, that was lunch.

After that, I had cinéma. Or, at least, I was supposed to. Instead, I had a free period, because my teacher was on strike. Then I had another free period, because he was still on strike. Then I had another free period. I had three hours of cinéma today, and I attended none of them. Tomorrow, my French teacher is on strike. I spent those three hours reading Harry Potter in French, and I'm incredibly proud to say that I've now made it to Chapter 3. I this is the way French school goes, I'm really going to like it here.

Of course, not to leave anything out, the second I got home I had a mental breakdown. I'm afraid it was too much French at once for my brain to handle, and it shut down and started only responding to English. My host mother asked me if I was tired when I got home and I couldn't understand her. (This is something both she and everyone else have asked me a million times.) But there's something incredibly calming about reading A Study in Scarlet in English for a couple hours, and I'm over it now.

Fun fact: I understood every single thing at dinner tonight.

~Josie Harris

Turn Left at the Castle

I love how in this part of the country, you can go down to spend the day at a beach on the Mediterranean Sea, and on the way back home you can get out of the car and stretch your legs walking on the Pont Du Gard.

(Guess what I did today.)

Every movie you've ever seen with a beach in it was probably modeled after the one we went to today.  Sandy yellow-white beach, beautiful crisp blue water, gentle waves, seashells everywhere you looked. I must have collected about a million of them. It was so wonderful. The only thing I didn't like about that whole place was that every time you moved, you got sand in a new place on your body, and that stuff stuck to human skin like glue.

Anyway.

It was two hours down to the beach by car, and in my utter boredom, I think I've discovered the single most irritating thing about France. (I'm such a pessimist, I swear I like it here.) As you're going down the road, signs jump out at you from every (Every. Not kidding.) angle possible. Most of them make no sense to me, being an American. Every so often, a sign with come up with a town's name slashed out. This means that you've just left town "so-and-so". But here's the thing: after that sign, there's absolutely nothing telling you what town you're in now. The only time there's any indication of your location is three seconds after it becomes completely irrelevant. I thought I was going to go crazy.

But, um, on to other topics.

I'd just like to make it clear that my host family is incredible. I don't think I could have gotten a better deal if I had searched myself. They're incredibly kind and wonderful, and for the sake of their privacy I won't talk much about them except when it's relevant, but I'm going to put it out here that I absolutely adore them. Just so you know. Even when I whine, I still love them.

So.

I went to my school orientation on Friday. You can see a picture of it in the dictionary, right under the word "intimidating". It was bad. I understood almost nothing, and not a complete sentence to boot. All I can say is that I'm so grateful that my host mom and sister were there taking notes and trying to help me, or I wouldn't have gotten anything done. On the other hand, I do have my schedule now. Which I'll write down.

Monday:
8-10 French
10-12 History
12-1 LUNCH
1-4 Cinema (I have no idea.)

Tuesday:
8-10 Gym (yuck.)
10-11 Free Period
11-12:30 History
12:30-1 LUNCH
1-2 Free Period
2-3 English
3-4 French
4-5 Italian

Wednesday:
9-11 French
11-12 English
12-1 LUNCH

Thursday:
8-10 Cinema
10-12 English
12-1 LUNCH
1-2 Free Period
2-3 Math
3-4 Free Period
4-6 TPE (I don't know. Social Studies?)

Friday:
8:30-10 Science
10-11 Italian
11-12:30 Math
12:30-1 LUNCH
1-2 English/ECJS (?)

That's it.

I have to go now, wish I could talk more, but seriously, this salt is not good for my hair.

~Josie Harris

Elle N'a Pas Compris

So I've officially been in France for three days. Where am I supposed to begin? How do you summarize your first impressions of a whole country?

I won't bore you with the travel details; just know that it was really long and really tiring and by the time I got to Orange I had been awake about 48 hours. It wasn't fun. I'm still really jet-lagged, I keep trying to sleep in until 11 in the mornings, but sadly both the dog and my host brother think silence is a luxury I should not be afforded, and they start screaming at about seven. I will get used to this. I will.

France.

I've been in France for three days, like I said, and I've already kissed so many boys I lost track. No, I'm not super attractive or anything, it's just the greeting here. Three kisses, for everybody. (You can stop having a heart attack, Dad.) I mean, I was informed that I would be greeting people like that, but I had no idea it had such magnitude. When I wake up in the morning, I kiss every single one of my family members. When I see someone new during the day, I kiss them too. But the funny thing is, when there's a huge group of people together, and they all arrive at the same time, it doesn't matter how big the group is: you have to kiss every single one of them. It takes forever, but it's so funny. (The word kiss doesn't sound right, but it's all I've got in English.) But everybody does it, all the time, and it's no big deal at all. The only time I didn't get a kiss from someone was this afternoon, when a boy about my age refused to do more than wave at me. This could be either because he hates me, or because he was getting embarrassed by Alexia constantly teasing me that "He could be your boyfriend, if you want."

Anyway.

There's so much I could say right now. I could go on forever about my host family (and I will in my next post, I think) but for now I'm just going to write down every single significant thing about France I can remember. In list format, too, because even though it's only been just a few days, speaking English is already so strange to me that I can't be bothered with transitions.

--- Driving. The French way of driving is completely baffling. On one hand, they'll sit and wait at an intersection for a car that's 500 meters away to pass by. On the other, they'll cut you off immediately without warning or reason to do so, and the speed limit is entirely optional. From what I've seen so far, the general rule here is that no matter where you are, you should be going 90 km/h. Residential area? You should be going 90 km/h. Unlit street in the middle of the night? You should be going 90 km/h. (With your brights on, of course.) Parking lot? Wait until you're out on the street, and then you should be going 90 km/h in under three seconds. These people go around round-abouts like they're race-car drivers. Did you have groceries in the back? Now you have groceries all over the back.

---The radio. The station my family usually listens to is the FUN radio, and it plays the same fifteen songs over and over again, in no particular order. Also, most of them are in English. I keep getting questions: "You know this song? It's in English." (Like I didn't know it was in my language, yes, thanks.) "No, I don't know this song. No, seriously, just because I'm American doesn't mean I know every song my country has ever produced." But then I surprise them by knowing all the words to Alejandro by Lady Gaga. (Thanks to my friends.)

---People think I'm British.
   "So, what's the weather like in England? Is it like here?"
   "I don't know. But in the United States, it's pretty hot right now."
   "Oh. But they said you were Anglaise."
   "No. They said I speak Anglais."

---People here refuse to believe that I will eventually comprehend their French if they use simple words and speak slowly enough. My host parents are the worst about this. They assume that when I don't understand their rapid and complex French the first time, I must be an idiot, and they make one of their daughters translate for me. The worst part is that now they tell all of their friends that I only speak English, so nobody tries to speak to me in French. I surprised a few people that were having a conversation with Majorie about me in French by answering one of their questions myself. The didn't know I could speak any French. This is going to be something I'll have to work on.

I really could say so much more, but that's the other thing about France: no Wifi. I'm typing this out on WordPad, and I'm going to copy and paste it up stairs when I connect to the internet. Because of this, my posts might sometimes be posted a few days after they're relevant, so I'm sorry for that. I also won't be on the internet much, because in order to connect, I need to unplug the internet connector from the main computer, which five other people use. So, no internet in my room...

~Josie Harris

I love you all so much, and I miss you all terribly. Night time is hard, I keep crying, but know that I do like it here, even if it is the hardest thing I've ever done. I love you all.

A Monster Named Suitcase

I'm packed.

I can't even explain to you how scary a feeling it is. I feel like, if I don't have everything packed, if I forget something important, then I'm going to have to make room for it. But I can't make room for it, I've only just met my weight limits. So I'm doomed. And I need to charge every electronic thing I own, so that I can use it on the plane. Except my cell phone. Oh god, I'm traveling across America without a cellphone. Am I crazy?

Two big suitcases. One full of clothes (I'm such a girl...) and one full of quite literally everything else. We're talking books, makeup, notebooks, jewelry, photos, contact solution, bobby pins, teddy bears, space bagged EVERYTHING. I think I'm basically set for just about any environment. Including the middle of a desert. Yeah.

I leave for Boston the day after tomorrow. I've said goodbye to just about everybody but my parents...I'm not gonna lie, that was really hard. There have been plenty of times I just wanted to drop out of exchange altogether, and I figure there will be a few more in the next two days, but I'm just gonna suck it up and power through. Once I'm on that airplane, there's no turning back. Now...I just need to convince myself to get on the plane. (My parents have orders to drag me into the car, kicking and screaming or not, and throw me on the plane, and if they have to drug me to do it, so be it.) (Not to sound like I'm not excited, but right now my fears are seriously outweighing my joy.) (I'm such a pessimist.)

I've packed my laptop. If all goes well, I should be able to find a wireless internet connection and start blogging the week I get there!

~Josie Harris

Less Than a Week, Now

I had my going away party, yesterday. Oh man, it was so much fun seeing my friends again, we had a blast just hanging out. Almost all of my friends wrote me a letter for me to open on the plane to France, and it's taking all of my willpower to wait until then. And some even gave me gifts (though I told them not to, goodness knows how I'm going to pack everything), including a Toy Story 3 deck of cards and an absolutely gorgeous bag that one of my friends made herself. (Instructions: No textbooks or heavy items.)

Having a going-away party really puts things into perspective. (Oh no, she's gonna go on one of her exchange perspective rants.) Knowing you won't see these people for a whole year...wondering if you're still going to be the same person when you come back, whether they'll still like you. You can't ever know what's going to change. But I do know I'm going to miss every single one of them. I'm going to miss all our inside jokes, being able to understand them. I'm really going to miss the comfort you get from knowing someone for years. I don't mean that I don't want to make new friends too, but it's going to be so much harder...(end rant.)

On another note: SIX DAYS! Under a week until I board a plane to go away to France for a year! You're probably all dying to hear how excited I am, but the truth is I'm absolutely terrified. This is such a big step in my life. While I am really excited, I'm also both looking forward to and dreading trying to speak French for a year. I want the experience, but I really really like being able to say what I want to say when I want to say it. This...will be awkward. 

~Josie Harris

I Left My Heart In San Francisco

Okay, gotta say: San Francisco is absolutely amazing.

The hills, the flags everywhere, the cable cars, the waterfront...amazing! I heard so many different languages spoken there, I was amazed. People on the street would walk by you speaking Russian/German/French/Mandarin, and that wasn't at all weird. Boy, was I in a different world. I had fun teaching myself what all the flags were, because we were in a part of town that had a lot of embassies.

And speaking of embassies, the French one wasn't at all bad. Great location, I have to say: You could drop in, get a visa, walk over to Chinatown, and mosey back for dinner in a little French café right outside your hotel! Ah man, I loved San Francisco.

And you know how I was freaking out about getting my visa and making sure all my paperwork was in order? I think the hardest part of the whole thing was getting past the security guard (who wanted to search my bag, my purse, my folders, and wanted my appointment slip to boot, she only gave up when I told her it would take me a while to dig it back out of my folder.) Then I sat down in the most terrifying row of chairs in my life, next to three other people who looked just as worried and disorganized as I was, which was kind of a relief. At least I wasn't the only nervous one, you know?

But then I was called up (in San Francisco they don't even call you up in order of appointment: You just arrive sometime on your appointment day and wait in line until they get to you.) and I started talking to a nice French lady who took all my papers and started checking them off on the online list that we put my paperwork together based off of! It was so funny. Mom was like "Look, she's using the same list!" The only scary moments were when she called over her supervisor and started speaking very rapid French that I probably couldn't have understood even if there wasn't a big sheet of glass between us. Every time she did that, I nearly died, but it was fine. Finally she just took my papers and my passport and said "Do you want us to Fed-Ex you the visa or would you like to come and get it?" and I was like "I so totally did that!" :) It was great. Really fast, too.

Did you know they take your fingerprints? I didn't. The guy at the counter kept getting this angry look on his face because I wouldn't press my fingers down hard enough.

So now there's 25 days until I leave America. I've been talking with Alexia and Marjorie on IM systems, and I think Alexia and I already get along well. :) Twilight exists in France just like in America, and twelve-year-olds are the same everywhere, I guess. She speaks really good English, too. I think the only problem I'm going to have is going to be getting people to speak French to me! But I bet Téo can't speak English, so I'll get practice there, right?

It feels weird to be planning a goodbye party and counting down the days until I go. I don't think my brain is going to catch up to me actually leaving until I'm boarding a plane for Boston. It still feels...distant. It's such a hard feeling to describe. Like I know, but I don't know yet. But over this year it's been slowly sinking in, so I don't know. What I do know is that I can't wait.

~Josie Harris

Visa Squeeze

So far, every step of the way, everyone has been conspiring against us to make sure getting my visa is as hard as humanly possible. At least, it seems like it sometimes. Among the list of infractions:
-CIEE sending my host family info the week before I left to get my visa
-No one willing to notarize forms in French (In WA state)
-All the forms are in French, but only some of them have English translations
-I didn't get my essential paperwork from CIEE until yesterday evening, and I'm leaving for my visa tomorrow

I'm not saying this to whine, as much as it may seem like it. Sure, I'm worried, and I'm stressed, but I'll get over it in less than a week. Then France will come along, and I'll be happy and cheerful.
Instead, I'm saying this to warn you. If anyone out there reading this blog is a future exchange student to France, I'm going to give you some tips I wish I had known about. In no way am I saying you shouldn't apply to either France or CIEE: They're both amazing and wonderful and each have their own excellent qualities. But as for French visas, oh man, listen up.

-Ask for paperwork early. If they say it's not possible, ask again politely. If they say it's still not possible, ask again politely. If they say it's still not possible, ask again politely. If they say it's still not possible, ask again politely. Rinse and repeat until you have all the essential papers in your hands.

-Find someone early on in your preparations who will do notarization of signatures for French paperwork. (When a signature is notarized, it means that someone certified to do notarization watched you, or in this case your parents, sign a legal document in front of them and can therefore confirm that they were in fact the people who signed. This is usually done at a bank.) Find someone who is both certified for notarization, and can speak French. It turns out that banks won't notarize anything that they themselves can't read or understand, even if you bring along an accurate English translation issued by the consulate themselves. Be safe, not sorry. If your French-speaking notary still won't sign it because the paperwork doesn't have the right verbiage for notary signature (which also happened to my parents) then call the consulate and ask them for an amended document.

-Start to schedule an appointment for the consulate at least two months before your departure date. At least for the consulate in San Francisco, appointments must be made a month in advance, and all visas must be applied for a month before your departure date. (So, for instance, if you leave on the 30th of August, you must have your appointment at the consulate by the 30th of July.) Important Rule: Visa procedure trumps exchange company policy. If your coordinator says you should wait until you have a host family to schedule an appointment, but the consulate website says you should be scheduling your appointment right now, you follow the consulate's rules. If worst comes to worst, you can cancel an appointment. You can not (unless you are very lucky) schedule an appointment on a day's notice.

-Use your resources. There is likely a French teacher at your local high school. If you are going to France, you have probably known them for several years. Take their help if they offer it, ask for their help if they don't. Most of the paperwork you will submit for your visa will be in French. It doesn't matter how well you think you know French: You will not understand paperwork French. Chances are, your French teacher will know what they are saying far better than you and your trusty online translator will. Ask for help. It is not demeaning, it is not awkward, it is not unnecessary. What it is is a brilliant idea and a potential life-saver if you've made a mistranslation. It doesn't take a home visit. Look up their school e-mail on your school's website, or call your school during summer school hours (which your school will most likely have) and ask for their phone number. Look them up in the phone book. Use your resources, and avoid looking like an idiot at the consulate when you realize you checked all the wrong boxes.

Make sure you don't make the same mistakes I did, is all I'm saying. I'm looking back at the last few months, and I'm realizing that a lot of what's been stressing me out (thought not all of it) could have been helped if I had known then what I know now.

France is an amazing country, with great people and great everything else, and CIEE is an amazing program, with great coordinators who put up with my mini tantrums and great programs that have inspired thousands of kids to go on exchange. Exchange is always going to be hard, but getting your visa should not be impossibly stressful. I wish I had someone to tell me all of this a long time ago.

~Josie Harris

Host Family

I finally got my host family!

I'll be living with the Henriques family of Orange, France.

Orange (what a funny name, I love it!) is located in the southeast of France, down by Marseilles apparently, and I'm relatively sure it's part of Provence. I'm extremely pleased, I was really hoping to go to the southeast. I've heard stories about it being the most beautiful part of France.

The family, though, is even cooler. I'm going to go from my American three-person family, where I'm an only child, to having four siblings! I can't even begin to imagine what that's going to be like. There are three girls, Marjorie, 16, who I'll be sharing a room with, Sandrine, 14, and Alexia, 12. Then there's a boy, Théo (or possibly Téo, they've spelled it both ways) who's only three. The parents are Joël and Sylvie, and they've expressed in their application that they'd like me to help their daughters with English, which I guess I'm fine with.

So far I've only got two pictures of the family: one picture is of them in Venice, and it's pretty recent, but also very blurry. The other one seems far less recent, but it's very clear. From looking at the pictures, they all look very nice. (Not that you can really tell what kind of people they are from a picture, I guess, but whatever.) The parents look pretty young, actually, I think their application said they were 44 and 38, almost exactly ten years younger than my parents.

I'm so excited, I haven't been able to stop smiling! It's one thing to know that you're going abroad. It's another thing entirely to know where you're going and who you're going to live with. I can't wait to meet these people! There's already so much personality in the application I have from them. I know that Sandrine and Alexia like to do cheerleading, I know that Marjorie plays the violin (and I'm a little apprehensive about sharing a room with someone that plays the violin, it must be said), I know that M. Henriques has an absolutely lovely script type handwriting (and that it's impossible to read), I know that the family keeps not only a dog, but also a chicken and several rabbits, and that's only the beginning. I'm going to try and e-mail them soon, if they don't contact me first. I want to get to know them...

(Subject change, sorry.) On a different note, I'm leaving soon for San Fransisco to get my visa. Thanks to my host family's timely arrival, I will soon have all the paperwork I need to turn in. Seriously, it's a pain in the butt. My parents have to fill out about a million forms, but half of them are in French. I know, you're thinking "So what, Josie? They're in French, but you speak French! Just translate for your parents." And I'm here to tell you it's not that easy. These forms are in both very formal and very paperwork-y French, which was really not covered in French 3. They ask simple enough questions, like "How long are you going to stay in France?" but they ask them in the most roundabout way possible, like "In France, you plan to stay for how long?" until your head spins. So, I should be helping Mom get those done soon, and I'm not looking forward to it. But whatever, it's good practice.

Anyway, I'M SO SO HAPPY THAT I HAVE MY HOST FAMILY! It's so great, you don't even know. I'm going to be in a good mood all week, not even summer school is going to drag this down!

~Josie Harris

Visas, Dates, and Flights: Oh My!

Ohhhhh. Wow.

So, today, Mom and I decided enough was enough, and it was already July, so we should have gotten my host family placement by now. So we called both of my coordinators at CIEE and left them voice-mail messages. A few hours later, my regional coordinator called back, and Mom had a chat with her about how much we're freaking out about the visa.

She told us that my host family placement will come in the next two weeks. Again. But this time, she had a reason for it: apparently France is very particular about having everything worked out before any exchange students get their placement. France wants to make sure that our schools are going to accept us, so that they won't have to change host families on us, and the week for the schools to mail back the acceptance is this week. Apparently, it's also the last week of school for French kids. Which is great and all, because now I at least know that they haven't missed me or anything, they've just been being extra careful. :)

The other part of the phone call was, obviously, dealing with visa stuff. I didn't hear much of what Mom was saying on the phone, but when she hung up she told me that we needed to schedule my visa appointment right now. And when she said right now, she meant right now. She hung up the phone and went over to her computer to schedule it. As it turns out, the consulate wants you to get a visa one month before you leave. Since I'm going to be in France on the 27th of August, this left us trying to get the appointment this month.

So, very luckily, the next available date for an appointment happened to be the 27th of July. At noon. So on the 26th, I'm going to be driving down to California with my parent(s) with a whole bunch of essential paperwork (some of which we don't actually have yet).

On another note, the day I'm leaving has been changed. I'm now leaving on the 24th of August, because my coordinator wants us all to arrive at noon on the 25th at Boston. Yeah. From Washington state, that's just not happening. So I'm leaving early on the 24th and getting there late the same day, then spending the night in the hotel booked for our orientation. I'll still be getting into France on the 27th, though.

It's overwhelming, sorry. I have no idea how I'm keeping all this straight. If it helps at all, absolutely nothing else about my life has changed. :)

So now when I say there won't be anymore posts until my host family info comes, I might actually mean it. Wouldn't that be a lovely change of pace.

Over and out.

~Josie Harris 

Yeah, Not Yet

OVERVIEW OF ALL INFORMATION:

Date of Departure: August 25th. I will arrive in France sometime on the 27th.
Host Family:  "In the mail"
Country: France
Language: French
Knowledge of Above Language: Fair. (If you give me enough time I'll get my point across.)
Exchange Company: CIEE (Council on International Educational Exchange)
When: Junior year, all year.

Now you know what I know. ALL of what I know.

I have to say, I heard somewhere that exchange trips are 95% waiting, and that might be true. Waiting for my doctor's appointments, waiting for my recommendation letters, waiting for my application photos, waiting for my passport. And now, most recently, waiting for my host family.

I'm being absolutely pitiful, checking the mail box every single day. We've e-mailed (annoyed) my coordinator so much she said she'll overnight Fed-Ex the packet the moment she sees it. With every passing day I just get more excited!

My parents are getting worried, of course, because we need to make an appointment at the French consulate to get my visa, and we keep hearing horror stories about it being a lengthy process. You need proof of residence plus a whole bunch of other paperwork that we don't have yet. So...I'm not really sure what we're going to do. There's only two months until I go.

Yes, you saw correctly. TWO MONTHS! (And five days.) That's so soon....

(Cross your fingers that my host family information comes soon!)

~Josie Harris

Ring Ring Ring

Well, the conference call was certainly an odd experience. As it turns out, my mom didn't think it was important enough to open the e-mails I forwarded to her from my CIEE coordinator, even though I told her about them twice, and we had to scramble to find a phone that could do long distance calls to Maine. Then, when we called in, the line told us cheerfully that our conference call would be starting in roundabout fifteen minutes, and hung up on us. Only after three tries at calling did we finally get in, and we had to wait another five minutes before the coordinator even called in.

Then, after about half an hour of talking, the coordinator suddenly hung up.

So me, my parents, and six other France participants sat there anxiously waiting for her to get back online. (It was the opinion of several of the girls and their parents that the coordinator, who is admittedly a tad long-winded, was talking to herself for so long that even after five minutes she hadn't even realized that she had hung up on us.) It took one of the parents calling her office to get her to come back. So, that was fun.

But all in all, it was a good source of information. She mostly went over the handbook with all of us girls (no boys this year...) and our parents, and we were allowed to ask questions. Of course, my parents immediately jumped in wherever the poor coordinator took a breath and asked dozens and dozens of questions, but they were all good ones that would have been asked anyway.

Long story short, she explained to us what would happen when we arrived at our last orientation at Boston, how we should go about getting our visas, how we should handle money while abroad, the ways we should treat our host family and the ways they would treat us differently than we expected, French customs and culture, and tons of other useful information. She also explained a lot about the typical French school system.

Which brings me to my most exciting piece of information...

My coordinator said we should be getting our host families sometime in the next two weeks!!

I can't even believe how excited I am. This is one of the most important parts of the exchange program. I can't wait to see who I'll be living with, if they have any kids, in what area of France I'll be staying, knowing their names. It's an indescribable feeling. I mean, how do you describe the feeling of gaining a whole new family? I can't wait to talk to them and e-mail them...I have no idea how I'm going to make it through the next week.

I'm studying like crazy for my finals, especially my French one. Well...and my Chemistry and Geometry. The rest I can pretty much handle without doing anything. It's the last week of school, I can't wait for summer, even if it does mean summer school. The ability to sleep in is worth even the most nasty of online courses. Five more days and I'll be free~

More when I get my host family information.

~Josie

Baggage: Emotional or Otherwise

Well, it's all coming together, piece by tiny piece.

I have my luggage already, Dad and I went into a luggage store just to look and got pressured into buying a suitcase at a really good deal by this sweet old couple. :-) And I got some locks for it that are something-something approved, and all that means is that they won't be broken at the airport. (They're bright pink. Highlighter pink. If I can't recognize my baggage at the airport, I don't know what's wrong with me.)

And, also, I have a phone orientation scheduled for four o'clock tomorrow! (Sunday, June 6th.) All the people at CIEE have been doing country-specific phone orientations, and they sent us an online handbook on France that I immediately printed out. It's not really all that interesting, mostly stuff I already knew or boring stuff about plugs and weights and insurance, but there was a short paragraph on whether or not tap water is safe in France, which I thought was hilarious. (It is, by the way.)

Mom and Dad and I are already making plans to get my student visa, and, let me tell you, I have WAY more sympathy for all the Mexican people in the United States. It's so hard to get a visa. You have to submit so much paper work I think I might have to kill an entire tree. I can't go and get it yet, actually, but CIEE will send me some paperwork soon and then it's off to sunny California to the French Consulate in San Francisco!

School is almost over and I'm so ready for summer to start. But, of course, I only have two days of vacation, and then I'm off to summer school. Never let it be said that exchange is not a whole lot of fun, but it is a lot of sacrifice and hard work also. I'm taking two classes over the summer, the second semester of my junior English class, and a music history class to earn a fine art credit. Both are online. I still have to finish my first semester of English online, but I can get that done soon, I hope. I'd really hate to be working on three classes...

Yay for summer! 81 days until I leave. That's...eleven weeks and four days. Wow. It's so soon...I can't wait! No news on a host family yet, but I should get one soon, because you need proof of residence to get a visa.

~Josie

I'm in!!!

Yes, it's finally happened: I'm in the program!

I just got my acceptance letter yesterday, and it was the most amazing thing. I read all the material they gave me, even the parent handbook (which is exactly the same as the student handbook, but with different pronouns) and devoured the website they gave me full of information for confirmed participants. I'm a reading machine, point me in the direction of anything to do with foreign exchange students and I will immediately check it out. I have to know more...

It just sort of hit me recently, you know? I'm going on exchange. I'm going to leave my family and friends for an entire year and live in a country that I've never seen before. I'll speak a different language, eat different foods, learn different slang, go to a different school...it never really sank in before. A little while ago, it was "Yes, I'm going to France, if I get into the program." It was kind of...far away. Like it would happen, but much much later.

Now, it feels immediate. I'm leaving. I know WHEN I'm leaving. (It's August 25th, by the way.) There's not too much time before school is over, and I'll be preparing. It's a more definite "Why, yes, I'm GOING. It's certain, now, I've been accepted."

And yes, it's terribly exciting. It's also really really scary. But what it is above all else is just plain awesome.

So now, another long wait begins. I still don't know who my host family is going to be, and I don't think I'll find out until Maybe late July or early August. (The program ominously says "Shortly before you leave" and the cynical part of me is wondering if they mean "at the airport".) This may actually be harder to wait for than the program acceptance was. The acceptance I knew was only going to take about a month to process, but this could take all summer...

So, yes, patience is a virtue. One that it seems I'm going to have to master very soon.

~Josie

To Begin With...

In about...four or five months now, I'm leaving. I'll be leaving America for the first time in my life to live in Europe, away from my parents, my family, and my friends, for an entire year.

It's both exciting and really, really terrifying.

Last year, about this time, I realized that I would really love to go on a student exchange. (This didn't just hit me from nowhere, this epic revelation or something. We had been hosting a girl from Japan.) After doing some research and working out an elaborate speech to present to my parents, it was finally decided that I could apply to become an exchange student and go to France.

If that wasn't exciting, I don't know what is.

By the end of the summer, I had chosen a program (CIEE), had printed out all the paperwork, and was ready to start applying. Eight months, three letters of recommendation, several translations, a lot of worrying, and a couple arts-and-crafts projects later, I was finally ready to actually send my completed application in. The finished monster was somewhere around forty pages, nearly a fourth of them completely in French. Goodness, that was a lot of paperwork.

And now, a month after all of that, I'm still waiting for a response.

Okay, yes, I understand that it takes a long time to review forty pages of application, especially when you've got a whole bunch of them from a whole bunch of kids, and then it will take a lot of time for the French branch of the program to look through it. I know this.

But it really doesn't stop me from being anxious and absolutely terrified.

There's this little voice in the back of my head (everyone has one) whispering "You've messed up. They won't take you, you're not good enough. You won't get in." It's driving me crazy!

But anyway, enough of my whining.

So far I've been doing a lot to ensure that I won't have problems with this exchange:

-Completing my Junior English courses online and during the summer.
-Babysitting at my church for some money.
-Taking my Consumer Economics course a year early. (And getting a lot of confusion for it. I don't recommend anyone else doing this.)
-Supplementing my French 3 class at school with a lot of learning on my own time. (Berlitz Advanced French course book, you are my best friend.)
-Filling out all sorts of paperwork and getting my passport. (Which was a pain.)

Well...it doesn't really look like much, when I list it. But, it sure feels like a whole bunch...

I really can't think of much else to say on the subject until I'm accepted... (or not...)

Wish me luck!

~Josie