I thought it would be possible for me to write every day, but being realistic, it’s not. Also, I’m trying to enjoy the best out of my exchange year, so that means less computer, less cellphone and less social media. I can’t believe it’s the last day of the year, it went by too fast. My last entry was almost a month ago, so I will try to write about everything that has happened in my life since. We put up the christmas tree and it was so much fun, it felt like home. We played christmas music and sang and danced while we decorated. Also, there’s a tradition here in Provence, called “Crèche de Noel” in french.
You put up these little figurines called “santons” and you build your own little town including Virgin Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. I will post pictures at the end of the entry. A weekend before the last week of school, Elena (my host sister from Austria) and me tried making eclairs. Needless to say, it was a disaster. But we had fun. The next day we tried making them again with the help from our host parents. They were not so bad. A friend from Mexico, Sergio, came to visit me that same night, he stayed until Monday. It was nice having someone from home.
Sunday we went to Aix-en-Provence and there was christmas music and the little christmas market. It was really cute. The next day my host mom told me I could skip school to spend the day with my friend so I stayed and we went to visit La Ciotat and ate a really good burger at a small local restaurant. That same week, the school had an event called “Classe en Classe” which consists of dressing up real nice (boys with tuxedo and everything) even the teachers. We went shopping and I found a dress and heels to wear. I almost died after wearing heels for the whole day (okay, not really).
Friday, the last day of school, my social economics teacher let us bring food. The whole hour we listened to music, talked and ate. She even brought a machine for making tea. On Sunday, a German girl named Seren came to visit. She stayed last year with the family but they got along really well so she came to spend Christmas with them. She was really nice. She stayed 6 days but we did a lot of stuff. One night we went to a nearby village, called Sanary. They had a Christmas light show with music and fireworks and all the sailboats decorated.
After that was christmas but I will write about that in another post. Christmas was so much fun with the family. We ate foie gras and opened the presents. I thought it would be harder for me being away from my family and all that, but i really enjoyed it. New years we spent it with a friend of Bea from Italy and her family. Her name is Virginie and she lives in bologna with her husband and two daughters. The oldest daughter ir 12 years old and speaks a little bit of french. The youngest is 9 and she speaks only Italian so it was a bit funny how we talked with her.
