Bye Nantes!

(note: This is part 6 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started", "Are you hungry", "Game over prettyface", "the tables gonna turn", "We are talking!" and "Traumatic memories" to get the whole story in chronologic order)


Day 6; 7th May
This is the last day in Nantes, kinda sad really since I just got to know everyone (my family and the other french students). I still regret until this very day that I didn't take a picture of the family, I couldn't find the right oppurtunity (blah, whitewash). After breakfast we took my luggage to school, his mother woke up to say goodbye and then we went by car to school. I didn't even say Goodbye to his brother and sisters! (They really are the cutest siblings ever XD)
At the school we jammed all our stuff into this small room by the reception and then we had free time until 12 o'clock when we were taking off to Paris. So me and a couple of us decided to go into town one last time.

It turned out that Kristine, who we went out with, had lost her camera since yesterday and she suspected that it was when we were at the grassplot. The stores weren't open anyway so we decided to have a look, I thought from the very beginning that there were no chance at all that we would find it but I had to be encouraging anyway. XD We looked for anything shimmering on the grass and suddenly she burst out THERE and pointed in the grass, one of us were even about to step on it. LUCKY! Omg, if it would have been me, never that we'd find it. XD Then we continued walking around in town, being very very careful while crossing the streets.
Walking in the centre this early was really nice, not many people were out yet and we could take it easy.

We came back to school and said goodbye to everyone. I wanted to take as many classmember+frenchman pictures as possible I was like hunting everyone down. Then we went out to the mainstairs to take pictures, which is a tradition for the SPEU classes. (the first picture)

I think the whole exchange experience have been great. I've done language travel and that's also with host family and that but this is pretty different, you get to know the host family so much better with a exhange student about your age (hmm, he was 15 going on 16 but anyway..XD). And you know that everyone with you are there on the same terms. Everyone have their own french exchange student, it's cool because everyone has their own story to tell and it's cute in a way. :D At first it's really awkward and all but that's the interesting part, really. Prove to yourself that your'e a grown-up that can handle tricky situations and practice to be open-minded and polite.
It was also specially fun for me to see how my friends get along with their frenchman, I don't know why really it was just cute. :D

Then it was BYE Nantes and HELLO Paris again. It took forever to come back to Paris and it didn't help when we drove right through the whole city while rush hour!
Luckily we (me and my friends) still had time to go out before it was too late. We went out to Hôtel de ville again to go in BHV(big mall). My friends found a couple of things and about 9 o'clock the thought came to our minds: Shouldn't we eat? Basically we hadn't eaten anything since the baguette for lunch (around 12 o'clock).
We looked for places nearby and it was just like fancy restaurants but we thought since this was our last evening in Paris we deserved a fancy meal so after some minor quarrel we decided to for a restaurant.
It took some time to order, we were figuring out what was on the menu. XD I took a pizza just to make it simple. The food was ready surprisingly fast and we could eat almost immediately. It was great! It was long time since we had a proper meal.
(the third picture is the view outside from our table) And how about Richard talking from the toilet, huh guys? XD

After the restaurant we just walked for a while, strolling the streets of Paris in night time wonderful as ever. We somehow found this Irish pub and the boys insisted that we'd go in. Lucky for them the pub was about to introduce their Live band and that was what I thought would be interesting. It was much like how I always imagened pubs would be, loads of older people and football. XD The live band however was kinda awful. XD Yet quite an experience. After a while we began to go back to our hotel.

This time three of us had to share a room and it felt p-r-e-t-t-y crowdy but it was ok. After watching some TV we all fell asleep.

Traumatic Memories

(note: This is part 5 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started", "Are you hungry", "Game over prettyface", "the tables gonna turn" and "We are talking!"to get the whole story in chronologic order)

Guys, you must feel like this is a never ending story. I myself feel that way but anyway I've started this series and I am going to finish it, one way or another!

Day 5; 6th May
.......(man I really need some thinking to remember it all now..XD). Oh yeah, todya we came to school and it was the day for our presentation in front of the frenchmen. A presentation of our project work in front of not caring and not so english skilled frenchmen, felt like we were going to make a success (not).
We had the morning to prepare and I guess every group was panicking a bit. XD First up was my frenchman's class, which I knew a bit now and knew that they're not exactly "engaged" in the classes. Anyway, our group was first and here goes "Japanese cultural influences in Malmö", either have class already fallen asleep only during the headline or decided not to listen to some freakin' geeks. XD From our side it felt like it went very well (only that we explained "hard words" in simplier english all the time, like increase XD), but from the very beginning I felt this thick invisible wall between us and the class, they wouldn't care a bit.
Then the teacher tried to start a discussion which ended up with only the swedish students were takling, yeay! (Are there unusually much irony in this entry already? XD)
Blablabla....then after break we did the presentation a.g.a.i.n. BLAH is all I have to say. XD This time our teacher amde it even worse by dividing us in groups with french students to discuss, fortuante as I am I came togetehr with totally dead French students as well as the Swedish, hu-hu.

After lunch the programme was to go to a wineyard. Yupp, our bus took us like half an hour into the middle of nowhere and there was this small wineyard. Pretty nice actually adn it turned out that one in my class lived here, that is her frenchman lived here. Hohoho, I felt really bad for her I lived like 10 minutes walk from school and she lived like 10 minutes with car to the nearest bus station. XD (Hoho, somebody's lucky)
Here we are on the wineyard (picture one), the owner (the father) talking about how to make wine and picture two is taken from the cellar or whatever it's called, thought it was kinda cool. :D

When we came back to civilization (XD), me and two other friends decided to go down to Commerce (the centre) to check out the shopping there. The french students had, aparently, planned a dinner together at a crêperie later this evening and we thought we could as well stay in Commerce until then.
We took the tram out there and tried to remember where we went with the group yesterday. XD I think we did a pretty good job after some time.

Maybe you can't see it on the picture but we walked and walked, then we came back to this square and just as we come in we see these 50-60 people stadning dead still in the middle of the square. We were like, Whaaat's uppp? Then we saw a cameraman going around filming them so something commercial was it anyway. It was a pretty cool feeling, like someone froze time but you were not. (Watched to much Heroes?)
Around 8 we were supposed to meet everyone at the tramstation, for the tramline going from school (which is line 2 for your information XD) and there we met some familiar faces. While waiting for some late students. Something tragic happens....

Here I've drawn a picture for you guys to understand the situation better. On the picture I am the red cross and I'm standing on the pavement the square opposite me is a platform, also the stops, for the tram going the other way. The rounded squares are trams.
So we, my friends and some frenchstudents were waiting for the late ones, it was probably a quarter past 8 now. I was standning with my back facing the street and suddenly I hear this "thuump" sound behind me and when I turned around I see this woman (the circle on the pic.). She's shaking, really shaking all over and looking towards the tram on her side. She was terrified and didn't know what to do. Then more and more people starts to gather around her, before I could even react some of my friends have gone over there and when they rushed back they said that a person had been run over by the tram and was stuck under it. YIKES! Then even more people came and some fo them asked us what was going on and everyone was in shock. Luckily, where I stood you couldn't the the person that been hit because all of the trams had stopped. I could however just step out and see for myself but I know that I wouldn't be able to handle such a view and after certain descriptions from my friends I was sure that I didn't want to see.

You can not possibly imagen how's it like if you haven't been in that situation, it's not real until it really happens. It gave me the chills, this person was just 3 metres away from me it could have been any of us. It gives you a whole new perspective in life, life is only for once there's no do-over when it's over. Several students were horrified and burst out in tears and I could understand them, that's why I chose not to look it would get more personal that way and I didn't want that.

After a while the police and the ambulance came. The french students couldn't believe either, what was the odds that this would happen exactly when we were there, and exactly where we stood? We had to get going, the longer we stayed the worse it would have felt. It was easier for me to drop it and not think about it but for some it was much harder.
We came to this kinda small cozy crêperie and all the guests must have been kinda surprised seeing 60 teenagers strolling across the small restaurant, luckily some french students had booked a table, or really it was more a entire room downstairs for us. We went down there and sat down some even had to sit in the smaller room next to this.
We had a great time, honestly it was as if the accident never happened. Really awesome! Only that it wasn't before 10 o'clock we got the food, which meant that I haven't been eating in approx. TEN HOURS. Huhu.
Afterwards some of us (the ones that didn't go home) went to this grassplot and just sat down and socialized (XD?) A drunk man (if not more...) came by and started to talk to us and he had this reggea music on his cellphone and soon some of us started to dance with him. XD

Then after a while Louis father came to get us adn then we went home...to his place.

Here we are playing around in the grass XD

We are talking!

(note: This is part 4 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started", "Are you hungry", "Game over prettyface" and "the tables gonna turn" to get the whole story in chronologic order)

Day 4; 5th May
I woke up several times during the night. What a sleepless night! I went to the bathroom and had to like sneak out the quietest as I could not to wake anyone up, especially Louis who slept outside just outside. XD

Anyway we got up 7 in the morning and the thing is he takes a shower in the morning, and I don't. After I was finished dressed and all that I had to wait for him in the showers to brush my teeth, I couldn't just go down to the kitchen by myself (!),so I had to like pretend to have things to do until he was finished.

Eventually we went downstairs to eat breakfast. His father was up (can you imagen what a great memory I have? We came home from France like 2 weeks ago XD, or maybe I'm just making everything up ;)), anyway we sat down still not talking to each other which made me not wanting to talk either (I was like maybe people don't like to talk in the morning XD).
They took out so much to eat for breakfast, cereals, baguettes,yoghurt and so on. They had bowls, I thought it was for the cereals so I didn't think more about that. Then Louis started to pour orange juice in it and drank from the bowl. I was like: WHAT? But I tried my best to be casual. Then I saw his dad driking coffee from a bowl too and I realized that it was something they did. His father had made tea, which was clearly that he had made it just for me because I told him yesterday I drank tea and none of them drank the tea.
So I have this dilemma. I had gotten a glass which I had drunk from and if I wanted to have tea, where do I pour it into?I was thinking like for an entire minute or so, I just took the tea pot and pourred the tea into my glass. The father immediately reacted and he was like: No, put it in the bowl...if you want. Must have looked ridiculous!

eWe walked to school and I saw this oppurtunity to talk. Finally he talked back. Relieved! XD Coming to the school I immediately felt that I was starred at, was it really that obviuos that I was an outsider? XD I had no idea where to be, they hadn't informed us only that our class was having a intrduction meeting at 9 o'clock, that's still an hour until then! I neither my frenchman knew so we just wondered round in school and I finally saw some from my class. They didn't know either and then some of their frenchmen said that we could attend their class. After running around for another while we walked into their Frenchclass a bit late, making everyone stare at us even more. We sat there, me trying to make out what they were doing and what the teacher was saying. XD
At nine o'clock, coming a bit late for the introduction meeting, I was really happy to see my friends again(friends as in the people I usually hang around with). We had so much to talk about, it was like Gossip Girl-the frennchmen verision. :P After a small "breakfast" treat we were assigned to take part of our frenchmen classes until 2 o'clock. I was thrilled to see that one of my friend had a frenchman going in the same class as mine, which was a great relief from my side. XD We went first to their English class, which I really looked forward to because it was finally a subject I knew I could understand. It turned out that their teacher was a total psycho XD and she sucked at English too. EN-cour-rage, right? XD Then it was history lesson, which was just like detention for us.

Then we had lunch on the school, their food are like restaurant food, it's delicious! (But they also pay 50€ for it, each semester).
After lunch it was chilling at the school yard until 2 o'clock when we were given a guided tour around the city. So we sat there in the school yard and got starred at some more and then we went with the tramway into town.
Strolled down by the river and seeing things like that robot elephant (picture 1) and this castle (picture 3).

Then at 5 we came back and I had no clue where my frenchmen was and freaked out. Didrik know how I was XD. It was a such odd situation I kinda freaked out but luckily he was waiting for me in front of the school (which we went by but didn't see anyone XD).
I calmed down and we went home to his place, he had some home work to do and I read Manga on his bed while waiting. We chatted and I was really glad that we had breaken the ice now.

He suggested that we'd go down to this place to bowl and play pool. I didn't want to be standoffish so I said okej, still I thought it was a bit weird just hanging out the two of us. XD We met some of his friends on the way and that was the first time I had a cheek kiss (I think?), chchch anyway she was nice!
Then we went bowling and after that we played pool. (...........) Whe
n we came home it was time for dinner and I thought that this was a great time to give them the present I have bought for them (which took 1/3 of my whole suitecase).
They seemed to love it, genuinly, his siblings (2 sisters and a brother, they're SO CUTE!!) really liked them. Did I tell you guys what I bought? It was two cups and a light holder. His mum thought the light holder with moose motive was cute, I was so glad! And the present seemed perfect, they had no cups, so here you go! XD Then we all ate together (7 at the table XD), they were all so nice and sweet. This is family is tight, really! The siblings talked about their schoolday and everyone listened to them, it's cool.

What I liked most from the dinner was when, the youngest sister asked me if I had seen High school musical (we somehow came into the subject high school) and I said yes and both fo the sisters became all excited and the brother said (translated): Oh no it's so lame!

For not making this entry too freakin' long (if it's not already) I'm just gonna summerize the evening.
-Lending their (slow) computer
-Shower
-Watching Indiana Jones with Louis and his father

The evening was great.

Stealers strikes again!

I'm blogging from school right now, hence a picture less entry. It's going to be a short one anyway. XD

School's not much better, I wonder if it hasn't become even more stressful. Yeah and I really should write the 3 freakin' essays I have for Europe knowledge but I am not as you see.
However we've managed to get even more things to do, it's insane!!! Still I'm not feeling the panic just yet, I should though ...I should. (I know it'll come back and kick my ass XD)
Yesterday I went to see an Opera. It was tickets from the school but it was optional and I signed up for that one month ago. I didn't know then that I would have thousands things to do, so tough shit. No, it was quite a experience I've never been to an Opera before. They were all singing in Italian! Without the subtitles I wouldn'y understand a bit, sometimes I noticed they didn't translate everything they sang, sometimes it was because (I think) it was jsut a long tone they're singing again and again but then in some parts they were singing whole sentences and there were no translation, great! XD

I had a concert with the orchestra I'm in, this Monday, it went pretty bad but anyway.
It was meeting the Prettyface for the last time, it is really over. (YYYYEESSSS) But don't worry you'll always be the Prettyface. ;)
Just before the concert I had a rehearsal for my theatre play which is to have premiere this sunday and it's still CHAOS! And I feel bad for not trying my best to make it work because innermost I don't like the play at all. (Okej, hope non of those read this entry or else they kill me XD) So this Sunday we have to be there like 3 hours before to rehearse....

You will not believe this but miraculously someone stole these rubber things on the ends of handlebar to my new bike. Does it say steal stuff from me, it's OKEJ on my forehead?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG? Am I some stealingmagnet or soemthing?
And the funny thing but bike wasn't even outside, it was in the basement! What kind of sick person steals stuff from people in your own apartment?! SICKNESS!
Why do you need those rubber handlegrips, huh?! You need them so bad you have to steal them?! OMG I just think it's insane, it really disgust me!

(the series about my trip to France will be continued in the next entry, hope you like it. :D Please comment)

The tables gonna turn

Day 3; 4th May
After a hectic morning with packing and not getting a wakeup call (!) we finally got to the Louvre Museum.
A mile long queue almost scared the whole class off but luckily it went very fast. I've never had good experience of queues, sometime had to be the first right? XD

Louvre was pretty much how I remembered it, I was here with my family and grandma like 8 years ago. Forcing a little girl of 10 years walking around in the Louvre is pure torture! Please, never do that to your children! XD
So from the very beginning I was very sceptical about going to the Louvre, again! I even made myself watch the whole "Da Vinci Code" movie to make the visit more interessting. It wasn't that bad as for 8 years ago, I've grown up now!
We went to see Mona Lisa,off course. It's totally insane how all the toursists shoves, pushes and fights to get a freakin' picture of the painting, insane I tell you! I'd seen it already so I didn't participate in the big mission to wrestle japanese people to get in front of that tiny painting.
Map of how to get around in the Louvre anyone? Seriously you CAN NOT go anywhere without the map, you'll get lost and you'll like die there you'll not find the way out without the map!

We whirled around the Louvre for 2 hours or we just ended up chilling on Starbucks. XD After the compulsory hours at Louvre we'd planned to go to Les Halles to shop just before we're heading to Nantes. We knew we didn't have much time until we had to go back to the hotel and get to Nantes.
To our surprise it was closed! Yeah, because it's sunday. Who the hell closes on Sundays? I was really disappointed, instead we hoped on the Métro again and went to Hôtel de ville and ate lunch (lunch as in a baguette and a bottle of evian water). We then just hung out by the fountains there, before going back.

Here's the bus ride from Paris to Nantes.
-One hour to get the hell out of Paris (we drove right though the whole city)
-We made many stops with many delays
-The air condition stopped working half way

SOOO when we arrived half an hour late in Nantes we where all sweaty and bummed out. I didn't feel quite nervous before now. Maaann it was jsut 24 hours ago I found out that I signed to stay with a guy. That have been like the ultimate horror scenary me and my friend have imagen before the trip and it was about to become reality.
With lack of time and information (or whatever the teachers blame on) we didn't get to know who we were going to stay with before, which still pisses me off. XD Can you imagen all the frenchmen standing there starring and waiting and all of them just seem strange and intimidating. Really it was awful, for us to get off the bus, take out our luggage and face the frenchmen.
The french teacher, who's the one organizing this whole exhange programme, had this list and he asked our names and then paired us up wiht the correct frenchman. It was absolutely AWFUL! It was like first day in school mixed with blind dating or something. XD I waited as long as I possibly could but I knew what I had to do. Around the teacher was like the remaining french people looking a bit confused themselves. I looked at them discreetly and was like: Who is it , who is it gonig to be, is it him or him or him? I said my name and the teacher called for Louis, he wasn't really any of the guys standing there, the teacher had to like grab him from the back of the surrounding people. Then everything went so fast, I met his father, I tried to be nice and talk (in french), we got into their car and drove off. Mostly it was his father that spoke, if not it was me, I really tried to be very nice and social. It turned out they just lived like 10 minutes from the school but they had got me with the car anyway, that's so thoughtful!

Their house was spacious and old but in a good kinda cosy way. I met his mom and she didn't spoke English, at that time I didn't feel that it was a problem...YET!
They asked if I was hungry and I said a bit, translation; I was starved. We sat down and had a small dinner. They started to ask me what I ate and didn't eat and what i ate for breakfast and all that. It really flattered me and I tried, in vain, to say that everyhting was fine that I'm not very particular with food. It was really weird sitting their in their round table eating cheese (we ate cheese alot! XD) and I hadn't really directly talked to my frenchman. (Sry, if I refer them as frenchmen, it sounds kinda bad or rascist but I absolutely don't mean it in that way, I'm just used to it now). Later his sister and brother came down and kissed their parents and Louis Goodnight, this family was really tight, it's so cute!
Yeah and I forgot to tell you, they go around with their shoes on in the house. I know some people do that but I've never been in such situation, it was really weird for me. We went upstairs with shoes on, they showed me my room with shoes on. It was all new for me.
Okej here's the deal, they had given Louis's room to me and he was now sleeping in a bed jammed in the hallway outside the room. I immediately thought of my own apartment, never in a million years that we could give my frenchman a room fo his own, not even my siblings have a room of their own. XD ANXIETY......
I brushed my teeth and then tried to have a conversation with the guy. I asked something, he answered, I asked something again, he answered. It was like that, but I guessed he was just really shy or really uncomfortable around me. XD After saying goodnight I closed the door and went to bed, NEVER in my whole life I felt more alone than I did then.

Heavy rain started to fall and shortly the thunderstorm joined, perfect!

Game Over Prettyface

(note: This is part 3 in a series of my trip to France, please read "Let get this party started" and "Are you hungry" to get the whole story in chronologic order)

Day 2; 3th May [part2]
We some how found the way back to the hotel and finally check in. Me and a friend got a room on the highest floor, typical! It was annoying waiting just like 20minutes for the tiny elevator to be available for us to use, and you know me I prefer the stairs.

So now we've decided to go some great Manga stores at 11th arrondissment and then China Town at 13th. Automatically we needed my cousin to guide us, I'm pretty sure I can find the way in China Town but just in case you know. XD
Some how my cellphone ahd died during the night and my cousin couldn't get in touch or anything, because I'd called her a week before and we've decided to meet today.
Clever me, I found a wall socket in that shaggy luggage space and charged my cellphone, mmaahhhaaa!

We came back as I said and then I found out that my cousin had textmessaged me twice saying she was waiting at La Défense for us! OMG! That must have been like one hour ago, poor her! I hurried up and called her, told her that I said that I'd call her when we were finished but she must have got it wrong so I told her to come to Gare du Nord.
After ten minutes I rushed out to the trainstation to fetch her, alone! We were absolutely not allowed to go by ourself in Paris, hhuhuhu, hush hush. XD
We both came back to the hotel and I introduced her to my friends and we immidiately had a communication problem. My cousin hardly speak any English and my friends hardly speak any french nor chinese, I had to play interpreter speaking Swedish then Chinese and vice versa. XD

We came out to Voltaire at the 11th (I think?) and I still recognized the place, I was here the frst since last summer so it was pretty cool. I analyzed the place better this time and came to that freakishly many alternative people hung out here. French alternative people freaks me out, really I get all intimidated by them. Believe me it's not like the Swedish ones, I make fun of those! It was just weird and we ditched the place as fast as we could, no I'm exaggerating.
I guess my interest in Manga/Anime have decreased (XD) in general making me not buy anything or so. A bit sad I must admit.

Then after just 2 changes with the Métro we came up in China Town. I always feels so much like home there. XD We felt that we were hungry, not hungry hungry, but hungry then very hungry then not hungry then hungry, eehh you probably don't get it, me and my friends have discovered these many new stages in hunger while being hungry in Paris, I'll tell you later. ;)
We started to hunt down a decent restaurant that had good food still for a good price. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that we'd eated anything since breakfast, which meant a croissant and a juice. (Starved much?)
Everything was closed and we didn't want to eat at McDonald's! (picture one), apparantely they closed after lunch or didn't open before 6 o'clock, which wasn't until 20 minutes or so. After a while hunting for restaurants we just went into the first best that was open. We had to wait 15 minutes for our food but it was very good and I was delighted that my friends thought so too.
Unfortunately the stores in China town had closed when we were finished so we decided to head back to the hotel and rest (remember the 4 hour sleep I had the day before?)

When we came back I was dead tired and didn't want to do anything but to shower and go to sleep.
Anywho (wut?) the hotel had this small kinda cozy backyard (picture two, that's the stairs up to the rooms, you can not even see the fifth floor XD) and there we found our classmates not "completely sane", no clothes party and all that they came up with didn't seem very tempting....
I'm really glad I just took a shower watched some French TV and then just went to sleep.

How come everytime I have a concert, Prettyface is there? Do you know what? I was thrilled today to realize that it was Game Over for his sake, I'm so glad! I think I'll talk to him this monday, see if we could be friends wouldn't that be cool? XD
It's almost exactly one year since we first met Prettyface, how would I know we'd constantly meet the coming year?