Two great Experiences!

Hello, this time it isn’t long since last I wrote, less than a week in fact!

Since last time there has happened two experiences in particular that I want to write about:

The first thing of interest happened on Saturday where I had my first match of handball, disappointingly enough I didn’t play well at all. But I got to say I miss my handball team in Norway... We have a much better team spirit, I mean here when we lost, afterwards they were blaming each other for who were the reason. I really miss my old team because there we had the real team spirit! I also miss the organization and the different play we had, because here it’s literally Hawaii..! In addition to this I amazingly enough miss the hell trainings with Steffen and Krabbe, hahaha! Yes we lost this match, but I also got injured… I had a strong head-butt with a guy from the other team and as a result I cut myself pretty bad right above the eye.  After the match I went in to Rennes and had a nice evening with Jakob, first we ate in a creperie and then we went to the Movies and saw Sheriff Jackson, a bizarre and funny movie. This was, though a preparation for Sunday.

Sunday was a special day because it was the first time I went to Western riding and it was an incredible experience! In 2 and a half hour I learned many things about horses and the western technique I would never learned otherwise! I learned how to control a horse and to read the horses behavior, and then respond correctly to that. It was an amazing felling to ride the horse and have control, and also the contact you got with the animal was amazing! I am really glad I chose to do something new, this was worth it!   

Ice skating, fastfood and Amnesty!

Hello, I am sorry for not posting in a while but this week has gone extremely fast…  I can start with Tuesday where I went to my first Amnesty meeting, it was an interesting meeting and I am definitely going to the next meeting.. It was thanks to Jakob Semb Aamundsen that I had the opportunity to go to this meeting. This night was also the first night I ate in a fast food restaurant in town. It was good but not even near as good as French restaurants in general. In this meeting with Amnesty International we discussed how we could engage more youngsters into Amnesty? Youngsters in France are not by far as active as for example the Norwegian youngsters. So I have been given the mission to talk to my history teacher and school to ask if Amnesty can have a stand or and come to talk about the organization in the history class.

My meal at the fast food place Quick...

Wednesday as always is the best day of the week starting at 9AM and finishing at noon! Often Wednesday afternoon I go do something with my friends. Last Wednesday it was the movies, and this Wednesday we went ice-skating! It has been a long time since last I did that and it was awesome! I mean no one knew how good I really was in ice-skating, so I owned the ice-skating hall like a boss. No not really, there were quite a few that did ice-skating regularly, but I was at least on their level. What’s cool here is that it is disco on the inside with ice-skating and on the outside warm comfy temperature. When I was in the ice-skating hall I felt a bit at home and a lot of memories from Helset and Hauger bandy, when breathing in the cold winter air, the sound of the skates tearing through the ice, it was lovely.

ICE SKATING!!

The ice skating hall :)

Thursday was a rather long day with class until 5PM, and when I came home I had a calm night where I watched Hawaii 5-O (season one) with my host sister and host brother.

Friday yet again was a long day, but in the evening we went to a seminar of a guy that biked from France to New Zealand, incredible story and images of how different the countries and people are!

Saturday was a wonderful day! It was time for an AFS weekend! 

Saturday we went 930AM to the south of Bretagne, we went with a young Chinese girl and Wilma from Finland! When we came to the place we were supposed to be there were other AFSers there, and oh my god what I weekend, I had a blast! It was so great to share my experiences with the other AFSers! It was an awesome weekend and we had a lot of fun! We had activities which involved making a role play of a poet and a rapper playing cards in a sauna in slow motion, hahaha! I was in group with Arthur from Brasil and Tibo from China, it was hilarious because Tibo didn’t understand what slow motion meant, so he didn’t understand a single thing during the play. In the evening we talked until 230 AM, I HAD A BLAST! 

Sunday the parents came and we had a great lunch with the best food ever!!!!!!! OHHHHHH! SO GOD!! We also had arranged a sketch where we played all the different schools in the different countries, we had china with the strictest school then France, Italy, USA, NORWAY and Brazil going from strictest school to slackest school! 

Croissant for breakfast Saturday :)

Stores in France... full of cheese !

Monday I had a presentation on Norway in English, and I asked for half an hour to do my presentation, but after this half an hour I wasn’t even halfway through…  Afterwards I got many compliments that my presentation was very good and very easy to understand and that’s a god thing!

Tuesday the only thing that wsas spesial was that the fire alarm went, when we had physics :) 

FIRE ALARM!

Untill next time! :)

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