5.31.2011

So, here we are again.

It's a tuesday afternoon. The sun is shining as it has been since about mid-march. We're in draught here in Bretagne, and my host dad is worried about his potatoes.
The days of school are numbered. We finish class officially on the tenth, but everyone passes their insanely huge exams through the beginning of july. I'm starting to wonder where the time suddenly ran off to. I thought I just started the school year here... And now it's almost over? I am trying to not get nostalgic and freaked out. I'm trying not to stress about time and the imposing, inevitable change that is looming. Two months is still a lot.

I have more and more exciting things to talk about.

So I went to Italy, over Easter break. I spent five days in Milan with my friend Tomasso who is Italian and came to Minneapolis with AFS last year. It was great to see him and to see another country in Europe. We spent the days biking around the center of Milan, seeing neighborhoods and parks and monuments. And eating ridiculous quantities of ice cream. We also went on a day trip to Lake Como, which is an hour north of Milan, right next to Switzerland. It is nestled between rolling green mountains and the shores are lined with red-roofed villas (one of them belongs to George Clooney). It was a great little vacation, I hope to go back someday.

Otherwise, since being back at school after this vacation, my school days have consisted of lots of field trips. I'm in a theater workshop at my high school, with about 11 other students and a really excellent teacher. Basically every week (and often several times a week) we go on outings to see plays, or we got to workshops or conferences with other high schools. It's been a lot of fun, and I feel grateful to have the opportunity to see all these things.

With this theater workshop, we put up a show at our high school about a week ago. It was a really weird, funny, little show that we put together as a group through improvisations and discussions, but that our teacher really wrote and organized and directed. We made a little makeshift theater out of the gym and performed for students and teachers and parents. It was a great time.

With this same group, I will be going to the theater festival of Avignon in July, which is some pretty cool news. Avignon has a pretty big reputationas far as theater festivals go, in France as well as in Europe. The region of Bretagne is paying to send three high school workshops to the festival for five days in July, all expenses paid. We'll be staying right in the middle of all of it, and will spend five straight days of seeing shows, doing workshops, going to conferences, and just seeing Avignon. It is kind of sort of MY DREAM. And I am so excited.

Otherwise, my summer vacation will be filled with a big old French litterature exam and moments spent with my dear friends and host family.

This week we have a four-day weekend and my host family is taking me to the north of France, the region where my hos parents come from. We'll visit the city of Lille, go into Belgium for a day, and go to an accordion festival! As my mom says, "it just doesn't get any better than that."

Oh, and another thing.
This weekend here in Redon they had the third annual Taknaw Parade. It's a big parade which bears an uncanny resemblance to the May Day Parade and Festival in Minneapolis, and just so happens to be completely organized by my host dad. His company mobilizes people from all around Redon to put together projects (floats, costumes, music, etc.) for the parade; they have been working on it since November. It happened this sunday. The weather was perfect and the streets were packed. It was awesome. I was in the parade, I danced and marched and acted ridiculous with a group of teenagers accompanied by a drumline. However, I did the parade barefoot with some other people in my group, and the pavement was so hot that it literally burned the skin on my feet and I finished with gigantic blistery burns all over that bursted and bled. Mmmmhmm. It hurt, but I still danced and finished the parade. IT DIDN'T STOP ME. But right now I'm having a whole lot of trouble walking. And I feel stupid. At a certain point during the parade someone in my group went to find a parade official since my feet were bleeding all over the place, and it just so happened to be my host dad's best friend who arrived. Later, my host dad told me that they had had one injured person during the parade but otherwise everything went well. I very humbly hung my head and told him that it was me, the person who got hurt.


We had a good laugh.


So basically, that's what's new over here.
I'm sorry my blog posts turn out to be long and unorganized series of anecdotes. But, I mean, I guess that's what happens when you just have so much to tell and you don't know how to tell it and you don't have the time to really tell it properly.


The world is looking as wonderful as always, time is incomprehensible, and Vinora is just living it up here in France.


So there you go.


à plus,
Nora

3 comments:

  1. I love you, Nora, and I love reading these missives. You are having an amazing year. From your mother.

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  2. Bonjour, Nora!! Ca va? Tu as de la chance!
    We were at LCS today to celebrate Ms. Endsley's and Zoe's retirement. I saw your mom and I thought of you. I'm so happy you're in France, Bretagne, especially. What a beautiful place to be! We spent a lovely week near Carnac in '09 visiting Marianne who was the Funk's au pair/ nanny. Enjoy a crepe for me. O.K.? Mme. Tesdell

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  3. What a wonderful time you are having!!! I am happy for you Nora. You are wise beyond your years. Enjoy every minute of the time you have left... I know you will. Love, Cheryl

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