99 Days

I'm not looking forward to leaving by any means, but that gives me a post title every day. haha.

Today was busy. It started out early with school from 8-10AM. Today our DS (test) was over a recent géography lesson. I am super happy to tell you that I did it correctly this time!!! I wrote an actual essay in French on the different "milieux" of France! (Sorry, I can't think of the appropriate word in English for translation.) I created an outline to start out with. Then I wrote an introductory paragraph, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion!! Granted, it wasn't the same quality work I would do in English, but I'm really proud of what I managed to accomplish :D!

After school, my host mom picked me up and took me back to Roclincourt where there was a bicycle race. It had started at 8:30, but I got to watch cyclers cruise by for the last hour or two. I hung out with Simon, Emodine, Pierre-Antoine, Antoine, and some other folks from the village in front of the "Salle des Fêtes." They were selling refreshments and there was a "Guess the weight of the basket of fruit (or veggies)" contest, as well as a chance to win a boquet of flowers or a chicken. The town's giant was out, too. That's kind of a complicated thing to explain, but in short, each town around here creates a giant for the Festival of Giants wich is sometime later this spring (I dunno exactly when).

The race was really interesting. Each time a cyclist came by, a motorcycle arrived just ahead of him, and then a car(s) would follow him. The number of cars varied from one to 7 or 8! Normally, they had a spare bike or tires on top. After all the cyclists had come by, there was a short parade type thing and the cars threw out candy and pamphlets and other stuff. I got a tourism guide to Arras and some candy.

When the event ended just before noon, I helped clean up a little bit. Simon gave me a couple of the balloons that had been used as decorations. I later handed those off to Thomas's kids. My host mom returned to see how things were going and to pick me up. Today there was an open house at Pierre's school, so we went to that for a little while. Then we quickly stopped at home to drop Pierre off, and my host mom and I went to the after party at Mt. St. Eloi for the cyclists and people involved with the whole deal. I met Miss Artois-H(something), and talked with her for a while. A guy had insisted on getting a picture with the two of us, too, so I'll put that up for y'all when I get a chance.

After mingling a bit, my host mom and I made a quick stop at Thomas's house (since we were in town) and gave the kids a couple things from the parade (including my balloons). Then we returned to our house for lunch. I watched a little TV with Pierre afterwards, and then got ready to go out with Annick. She arrived at 3:00 to take me into town. Our first stop was the librarie (a bookstore), where I got 5 cookbooks with different subjects. I chose crêpes, bread, potatoes, and chocolate. Since we had bought 3 from the same collection, we recieved a cookbook on verrines for free :)! I'm really excited about that! I am going to make you all dinner when I get back, if you want :D!

Our second stop was at Phildar (i thinkk?), where I picked out the color material I wanted for the scarf Annick is making me. I chose black, basically because it goes with everything. I was debating on the white, but I already have a white scarf, so I decided to go with the blackk. We walked around town for a while. I saw my French teacher out with her kids and said Bonjour to her. Then we went into a few other stores. Annick wanted to buy me a purse, too, but I told her that it wasn't necessary. She'd spent plenty on me already. I did allow her to buy me a "petit pain au chocolat" on the way back to her house, though. That was really, really good. It was still a little warm, so the chocolate was all melty and the flaky part of the croissant was soft. :)

Back at Annick's house, we each had a drink and talked for a while. Then we went up to her room and she showed me her clothes she was going to give away. I took a few of those off her hands, as well as a watch. Then she showed me her shoe closet and holy crap. I think she has more shoes than Rica's mom! The closet is stuffed full of shoeboxes. She told me she has 60-some pair shoved in there!! I found that pretty incredible. She has a million handbags and tons of jewelry, too. When we had finished looking at everything, we went back downstairs and Samuel arrived. He talked to us for a while and waited around until my host mom and Pierre showed up. Then he went to get cheeseburgers & fries from the "Frite Maison" for dinner. After everyone had finished eating, my host mom, Pierre, and I went back to Roclincourt. When we got home, we saw Vincent, Arlette, and her husband (forgot his name) at the fries shack, so we said hi and talked with them for a little bit. Then we came home and I got on the computer and voilà!

Tomorrow we're going to eat lunch at Thomas's house. :)
I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow evening.

à demain!
<3333Miranda

By the way, if you click the link where it says "other AFS blogs," MY BLOG comes up on the AFS pageeee :)!