Week of entertainment, the Movies and Karaoke!

In the beginning of the week I met Jakob another young Norwegian living his life here in Rennes this year. He travelled with Explorius, another organization who arranges exchange. He is a very nice guy who is very engaged into human rights and politics, but especially human rights. He is an active member of Amnesty International, and lives in Tønsberg, Norway. We had a great lunch Monday, I really enjoyed it. In the evening I skipped my handball training because I had to work with an German presentation, first ever – hahaha!

  The next day was the usual up 620AM and come home 630PM. So there isn’t much to tell other that it was a long and fatiguing day. It’s literally work, eat and sleep.

Wednesday on the other hand is the best day of the week! Start school 9AM and finish noon. First we have one hour of history with the best teacher, and then 2 hours GYM.  After school Ahmed, Amin, (?) and me went to the movies to see no pain no gain, IN FRENCH! It’s bizarre to watch dubbed movies, the mouth of the actor and the French voice just isn’t synchronized. But it’s genius, when they don’t have something to do (no tests the day after) they come to the movies, pay for one movie and when it’s finished they go into another hall. They keep on going on like that the whole evening seeing up to 4 movies for the price of one. So Wednesday we watched 2 movies, cool!

The Movies!

Thursday I had my first test.. (MATH) I love math! Well it went well in the beginning (1^st part but then it got too complicated). Otherwise the Thursday was a nice day, after school o went to buy supplies for the school. The first two weeks I noted everything on lose papers and it’s a mess! Therefore I bought notebooks … Then when I came home I had received a care package from my family <3 Thank you!! With BIO KING and Norwegian chocolate and GRØT m BRUNOST!!! <3

And of cours MY HAT! <3 

Friday I had two tests physics and Nature science. In Nature science I tried to explain the mitose process (which is rather easy in Norwegian) with a poor vocabulary in the sense of the theme. Then it was physics.. I didn’t get it at all so I ended up enjoying the sun and watching the rest of the class work their butt off. After school I had planned to meet Jakob in the city of Rennes. I met him nearby his school and then we went to where he lives and talked a lot.. It felt good to speak Norwegian. After talking a bit we walked into the core of the city and ate dinner in a Creperie. I had salade au chevre chaud, and Jakob had gallette au jambon, fromage. Then we had a conversation whitch was so interesting about human rights and Amnesty International. I enjoyed it a lot! After a nice dinner and Bretagnes own coke Breizh Cola we went to the BAR of the host parents of Jakob. They own a bar where they play board games, and that night it was karaoke night and Jakob and I did “Optimist” and “What does the Fox say” hahaha!

 

The others are working, while...

...Enjoy the sun!

Jakob, from Tønsberg.

Salade au chevre chaud.

The best Coke!

Games!

Karaoke!!

Saturday was a chill day and in the evening I made Pizza! They really liked the Pizza and I am happy with the result.. ! Also I worked a lot with the presentation I have tomorrow.. As up to now I have 54 slides on PowerPoint, damn it as lot to say about Norway!

Sunday I had another lazy day finishing my presentation and in the afternoon we went for a walk in the woods nearby.. It was lovely! Although when we did this I missed my dog Luna and the nice walks in the woods with her and my family.

A + !!

Siljan

La plage et l'ecole!

Hello again!

Time flies, I feel like I have been here for several months although I’ve only been here for 2 weeks. I am sorry I didn’t post yesterday but there simply wasn’t time yesterday evening.

The week started nice with a rather short day on Monday finishing at 4PM after school Christophe (my host dad) and I went to decathlon to buy handball shoes and I am happy with what I bought! With new handball shoes and part of a new team I was ready to go to training, however I managed to go to the wrong hall, typical… Soooo instead of handball training I watched 11 year old girls play basketball!! HAHAHA, but I have to say I am impressed by the level of those 11 year olds, they shoot hoops better than me!

New handball shoes!

The bus in the morning, it's like in the middle of the night and theres this alien like light in the roof.

French homework...haha, at least i try...!

I love french litterature!

Crepes Saturday night! mmmm

mmm Caramel au beurre sale! Delicious!

  Further into the week (Wednesday) I had fractionated running in the GYM class which wasn’t fun at all, being used to a school somewhat less efficient than here GYM often was a class where you could chill at least a bit, but here… NO! We started with some info about le BAC and then we had 1H15min with running, very much fun! In the evening it was time for handball training and I didn’t know I trained handball with 10 year olds, apparently we do. I had only been on one senior training and there all where the same age or one year younger. Being used to play with guys my “size” and age it was weird to, well play with 10 year olds. I am actually being called “Monsieur Colle” (Mr. Glue) this is because I take so much (glue?) on my ball, and it’s hilarious because when the 10 year olds try to throw they throw it down into the floor 9 out of 10 times… HAHA!    

The rest of the week went fairly well having a long day on Friday with handball training afterwards, and a slack Saturday pour me reposer!

Sunday was a wonderful day, the weather was nice (cloud free sky) so we decided to go to the beach, so beach day it was!! Although we are closing in on the end of September the water was surprisingly comfy, I mean we were in the water for 35-40 minutes without problems… I would guess 17 degrees Celsius. It was literally wonderful! It’s incredible how big the difference is between low tide and high tide! We were there when it was low tide and I’d say it’s a difference of 7 meters at least, when we came to the port, before we drove along the coast it was literally boats lying on the seabed, just like that..

Toooo da beach!

Canal gates !

Boats just lying on the seabed..

More boats!

The beach!

The beach!

Today (Monday) in lunch time I met with Jakob a Norwegian guy from Tønsberg who travelled with Explorius, and it’s funny that we ended in the same City. He is staying say five minutes from the center of the city and he is living with a gay couple who has no kids, and the couple owns a bar where they drink and play board games! I have in fact been invited this weekend to come see this bar, and meet his host parents, cool!   

  I am steadily getting better and better contact with those in my class especially Etienne and Ahmed, but also all the others. It’s a bit funny though because I was told that French people where very closed and that we had to make an effort to make friends, bit to me it was not at all like that. I found contact easily and made friends already, in fact we are going to the movies Wednesday to watch The Millers, and I can’t wait! Sadly though it is dubbed, but I guess I will just have deal with that.

Etienne Lejeune

Thom, Charlotte and ? (dont remember :(..)

Ahmed Maach

La première semaine et la fète du cheval!

Hello again the time has come for my weekly Sunday post and i just want to start off by saying: "What a great start!" Well you all know what happened on tuesday, it was my first day of school... The rest of the week i had a blast! The people in my class are really nice and they think it's cool that i am from Norway, at least thats the impression i'm getting.. So wednesday was junst the best day better than school in Norway, school started at 9AM and finished at noon... ah thats just wonderful!!! Then coming home to relax read some English and try out the weeks homework... haha!Although comunicating with the people in the class and the family, but the school is just...SCHOOL!

Everything goes so fast! I mean in Norway we have classes and the teacher takes his time to show and explain and illustrate but here... Well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RrNVrsgVXk 
Yeah it's like that.. Say you have one hour lesson and you have onfo for two hours, but you just talk faster so you can squeese it all in a one hour lesson... It's like watching a movie whle fasting forward and taking notes at the same time.. well its hard and the moment i look anywhere else than the blackboard i am lost! haha...

Thursday was a rather long day (finishing at 4:50PM) and starting pretty hard wit tho hours of french and then two hours of math, but with a follow up of two hour lunch break and one and a half hours of history and then again 1 hour break it was really no problem untill..... We had Euro Math(english) i swear it is the wors teacher i have ever had in any subject ever in my life! He is there to teach us Englis math but his Englis is so bad we don't understand what he wnts to do! I laughed so "hard"(silently or else he would decaptivise me) and so much that class you wouldn't imagine! And he kept telling the pupils to shut up in the worst accent you could possibly imagine.... HAHAHA!

Friday was problably the worst day of all starting class at 8:30AM and finishing at 5:45PM, it's not that the day is long that is the problem in fact we have 2 and a half hours of lunch break! The problem is simply...

Science of the Earth 1 1/2H
Physic & Chemistry 1 1/2H
Pause 2 1/2H
Math 1H
French 1H
Physic & Chemistry 1H
Math 1H

The whole day consists of heavy subjects and when everything is going fast well then I'm lost!

Friday night i had my first handball training in the local clob with the seniors and the juniors and i ha a lot of fun.. As I imagined the hanball level  wouldn't be the same here in this little village as back home in HASLUM! I played left and right back(not usual positions for me to play, thise i play with in NOR can verify this) but i still firing bulls eye rockets from my hand into the goal and it was  a lot of fun!!! I will probably play handball monday, wednasday and friday while i am down here...

Saturday was a calm day where I had a long nice sleep and woke up at 8 o'clock haha i am getting used to the rythm down here... I ate a nice sweet breakfast with lots of sugar and then i had a great skype conversation witm my parents, sisters and friends of my sister Fiona... We had a great 45 minute conversation and was great to see them again although it has just been a week!

Saturday afternoon Maëva, Mathis and I watched Iron Man 3 together in French, bisarre to watch in another language, especially when it's dubbed...

Saturday night the three of us played kinect on the xbox and had a lot of fun there as well.

Thi morning i woke up at 9 o'clock ate brakfast and went to the swimmingpool, we came back at 1 o'clock having the whole day ahead of us.. In France ypu are not allowed to wear a swimsuit going down to the knees (regular bathing shorts) NO I HAD TO BUY A 13Euro swimsuit from a WENDING MACHINE, thats where you buy chips and soda NOT SWIMSUITS anyhooo everything went well, but i felt naked in the swimmingpool...

This is where you buy IT...

Oh yeah it looks soooo confy!!

Look at those destinguished colors!

I got style ... After pool time hahah

 Later in the afternoon we went to "La fète du cheval" where there A LOTS OF HORSES... There where competitions, obstacle corses and even HORSE BALL where they play a mix of handball, basketball and horsebackriding... wierd.... 

It has been a great week i hope the next one will be as good!
A la prochaine fois!

First day at school!

Hello i didn't suspect to make another post already, but here i am. Today was my first day in school and it was a special day... I had to get up at 06:30 those who know me know that i am not an earlry bird so as you could guess it was hard... Once i was up everything went along quite smoothly and class started 08:10 until noon, then i had a 2 hour brake where i ate Lunch with Etienne and Ahmed two relly nice guys!! They showed me around school and their room (they live in a dorm). Today i had a gret time although i finished school at 1745 and because of some issues i cme home at seven o'clock. Today i had the subjects Science-life and earth, Physics-Chemistry, German LV2, French, English and Travx Perso.Encadres. 

An exiting but tiring day - i am not used to school days this long.. Luckily tomorrow school is from 9AM untill noon!! History and the gymnastics!! 

See you around!

Bienvenue!

WARNING!! English grammar may be on a bad level! Enter at own risk!






Hello it's time for my second (technically first post,?) in this year in france.

Thursday morning I woke up realising I won't spend another night in Norway witch at the time scared me a bit.. To think that I in less than 6 hours had to say godbye to my dare ones and leave Norway for ten months was making me a bit sad but at the same time I felt butterflyes in my stomach. I am such a big fan of France those who know me well can verify that for sure!! So I was looking forward to coming to France and experience the country I love sooo much on a whole other scale.

So the time came where I had to say godbye to my two young sisters Fiona (14) and Nea(10) as well as my dear father. It was an emotional moment standing there on the platform saying godbye, then seeing the train arrive and realising this is the moment. Take my bags and enter the train. When sitting on the train I felt sadness as I saw my two sisters cry, however I chose to focus on the positive and tell myself: "I am going on a vacation, thats no problem", but in my uncountiousness I knew ten monts is more than a vecation.

Arriving at the airport all the other AFSers going to france, being the only boy amongst 10 girls I still managed to find the tone with everybody. All the participants traveling with me were very nice and I enjoyed the company of them all.

After boarding the plane and realising the plane was on its way down the runway that was when it really came to me "TEN MONTHS IS A LONG TIME!"

The flight was a nice flight that lasted aprox. 2 hours and when we arrived we where welcomed by a AFS volounteer from France, really nice!

After we arrived we had to wait for all the people to arrive (from different countries before leaving to the hotel). Arriving late at the hotel met up with my roomates two already sleeping.. From China Zixuan Zhu (Sherlock) from Poland Waldemar Kesner from Brazil Arthur Hilf and the last guy was from Paraguay but sadly I dont remember his name. They where all very nice and spoke french and englis well:) I learned a bit chineese from Zixuan and Arthur had a native Brazilian flute whitch I could try!  This flute was special because you blew through your nose (very cool!)

Saturday we went to Paris in the afternoon and we saw the Eiffel Tower, L'Arc de Triophe and this thing Napoleon brought from Egypt (I don't remember the name of it :(.) Saturday I also met som swiss people and it was very cool that I could speak their language they where surprised at the beginning, that a norwegian guy knew how to speak SWISSGERMAN, and not german.. haha!

Eiffel Tower

Ferrari and Laamborghini.

Eiffel tower

L'Arc de Triomphe

This is all the Norwegians!

Me and the Eiffel Tower

Fountain and the Eiffel Tower

Fountain by the Eiffel tower

Here the two on the left are swiss!

Later on Saturday I did an interwiew for the french radio in Paris with three other Rachel(Norway) Hugo( South america) and a girl I don't remember the name of (I think honduras) cool!

Sunday I had to get up 5 AM altough my train left 0908 AM but it wasn't that big a deal.. thankfully.
We took the TGV in direction Breste, and for every minute closer to 1114 AM (Arrival Rennes) the more butterflies I felt in my stomach.. Although when I arrived the Blanchard family was soooo nice and welcoming and it only made it easier that I could speek french pretty well.. When the five youngsters going to Rennes got of the train the regional television France 3 was standing there covering our arrival in order to premote people to take students from AFS, of course the Blanchard family and I was chosen to do video interview for the regional news station!!! IT WAS COOL!!

http://pluzz.francetv.fr/videos/jt_1920_pays_de_la_loire_,88445863.html  (Begin to watch at 3 min 25sec)

After a nice lunch and a french interview we went to se my hostbrother Mathis(14) do acrobatic biking, it was incredible! When we came home we had crepes for dinner.. mmmmmmm and opened gifts from norway afterwards, they seem very happy of the gifts i gave them.

A crazy good guy!

Mathis on hos bike!

The next week i will have my first day at school (tuesday) and we will see how that goes.

HADE BLOGGEN <3

PS: Hvis Reistad familien leser dette.. tusen takk for smågodtet og de fine ordene jeg setter veldig pris på det!! <3 Jeg skal nyte hver eneste godteribit mens jeg tenker på dere.. takk <3 (Det lekker veldig fra øynene mine skjønner ikke hva det er...)  
   

Hei bloggen!! I dag har jeg besøk av besteste, søteste Svorte. Det har vært den beste dagen i mitt liv!!!!!  Elsker deg Svorte <3 <3 <3 <3