Shireen in France

Well my Saturday started at 5:40am, where I left the apartment with my host mom, and went ot the airport. She dropped me off and luckily, almost evryone I had to deal with knew english. I figured out my plane ticket, gave in my bags, and went to my gate.
As i was sitting at my gate waiting for bording, I heard my name and looked up at my australian friend who had gone to the camp with me. We figured out that we were on the same flight to Paris. So we got on, had out two hour flight, and got out baggage. We were supposed to find EF rep's at the airport but only my friend's had arrived. So we all waited for mine, and we said goodbyes and parted ways.

My rep came with another German boy who was going to the same region as I was. Long story short, we all lugged our suitcases onto two metro trains, through the streets of downtown Paris, into a fastfood restaurant, and back into another subway. Ending up at the main train station of Paris. I found my train, got on, slept, and got off two hours later to meet my host family.

They're very nice, a girl named Charlotte my age, and her mother and father. I start school on Tuesday the 9th, and rugby as well. I'm a little nervous, but apparently everyone knows about 'The canadian'.

In this Language and Culture camp, you basically go to a couple hours of grammar class, a couple hours of culture class, and then travel around the closer cities with 10 girls and this nice french woman that spoke english. The grammar classes were kind of rough, the culture classes were a bit of a joke, but the touring was nice.

The first place we went was Monaco, a little...not really country, but independent state of France. It was of course beautiful, strangely enough completely built on a rocky mountain cliff side that faced the Sea. It's funny really, because they couldnt have found a more difficult place to build a city. Actually, we also saw the ship where Stallen and other political leaders had meetings.It was also the most obsuredly rich area I've ever seen. We went past the main casino of Monaco, and there were about 50 of the most expensive cars all in one compact area, Im pretty sure they were just parked there to show them off though. However there was also the older part of Monaco which was a nice little village.

On the 31st, the two girls i was staying with and myself went out to this small village near Nice where there were some of the only houses I saw in Nice. The city itself has only apartments, and in the country there are more houses, extremely large houses.So we went to this orchard and picked oranges for Claire who wanted to make jam. The village overlooked all of Nice and the Mediteranean Sea.

We also toured around Antibes, which was another little city, however unfortunately we had seen so many little cities that it was starting to get old... it was getting harder to appreciate it.

Finally we went to Cannes, which is apparently famous for the Cannes Film Festival. We were dropped off downtown by our familiar bus that had been taking us everywhere. There was shop after shop on every street. There was the cheaper streets and the more mainstream fashion. We also saw the building were the film festivam takes place, and outside it there are hand prints like in hollywood, and a beautiful beach.

Well after a very long trip to Toronto, I met another Canadian from Edmonton, and together we flew to Francfurt. We stayed in Francfurt for 6 hours, then caught a plane to Nice. Getting out fo teh airport was a bit of a shock. The weather was sunny and beatiful and the streets were all bordered with palm trees. An almost-only french speaking man picked up us and took us to our host family`s houses.

He brought me to a older apartment, rang the bell, put me inside the buimlding, and sped off with my new found friend, Kendra, the Albertian. There was a small wooden elivator, that said it held 3 people, but really could barely fit me and my new suitcases. With some pulling and squishing, the doors closed and i went up 2 stories (however, the 2nd story in france is the 1st in canada)
I met my host mother, Claire, and the two girls that were staying there aswell, Sasha from Australia, and Torri who was from Vermont. We walked around the town and Claire showed us our language school for the next week. The streets were really small to go along with the cars, and all the buildings were very old, very beautiful. Claire also took us to the outdoor market which was as french as you could get. With fresh fruits and vegetables, and flowers and seafood, and it was absolutely swarming with people. It was kind of funny, because what you see in the movies with the fresh baguettes, little bakeries, and old houses, was all acutally true. I think all of us were more surprised at how some steriotypes were true, than surprised with a culture shock.