Cinquante-sept

Monday we got our history tests back. I was astonished and delighted to find that I had gotten 4.5, and the class average was four. It is cool getting good grades in a second language, I have to say. Other than that, nothing really interesting happened. My classmates had a two hour French test so I worked on grammar and reading.

Tuesday we started an ecology unit in biology class which is way more interesting than what we were doing before. In gym class we did a three class rotation. First we played soccer, then we did more high jumping, then we played basketball.

Wednesday we had art class, but in addition to working on our projects we had to help put up the annual art exposition. For our grade the teacher showed four things we had worked on: the alien painting, drawing of bottles, painting of a "symbolic message in a bottle", and normal/color drawings of leaves and insects. I had three things in, which were my alien, my message in a bottle, and my colored insect drawing. Andréanne had her drawings for each of the categories (she is really good at art.) The rest of the day we just had normal classes. After school I went to get the photos I had developed. It was super expensive, so I won't be taking any more before I leave. The quality wasn't that great because I think there may have been a problem with the film (or possibly with my camera's light meter) so I won't bother putting them up (I would have to scan them which would take ages.) I will just show them to everyone when I get back if you remind me about it!

Thursday we had to present short sketches in French class. I had one line: "J'oserai jamais aller lui parler." ("I would never dare to go talk to him".. I will remember that forever.) The morning classes were fine but in the afternoon we had biology and then double economy classes and it was ridiculously boring and long.

Friday I woke up with a slight sore throat and stuffy nose. In history class we went to the computer lab to work on our history projects about someone from the 18th century. I think I mentioned this before but it was a long, long time ago.. I am researching Antonio Vivaldi. We have to make a powerpoint presentation, which is due in a week. Then after that we will have to do a presentation for ten or fifteen minutes (yikes..) I have to present in about a month so I have time to prepare and everything. After history class we had German, math, and English. The math teacher gave us a lot of homework, so I went to a study hall during English class (I don't know if I talked about this before, but once in a while I go to study instead of English if I have a lot of homework to do, because for me English classes are really boring.) In the afternoon I had a chemistry lab but it was pretty boring.. it was about how much of different types of salts water could dissolve at different temperatures. After school I went to get my haircut and I had a nice time talking to the stylist. She had immigrated from Portugal (a long time ago now) so she asked me lots of questions about how I was adjusting, how the language was going, and so forth. It was nice. Then afterward I took the bus home. That evening Andréanne went to Fribourg with some of her friends to see a movie, and Béatrice went with the neighbor to see a movie. I could have gone with but I was feeling really tired so I ended up staying home.

Saturday I woke up around 07h30 and my sore throat/cough was way worse. I could hardly keep my eyes open. I ended up going back to bed and sleeping between 10h00 and 12h15. Then we ate lunch. After lunch, we went to my school to see the art exhibit with Bernard and Béatrice. When we got home I ended up sleeping some more from 15h00 to 18h30 or so. I can't even explain how tired my body was, it was pretty crazy. After eating dinner I felt somewhat better, at least I could keep my eyes open. In the evening Andréanne and I watched a French movie called Les Choristes (please wikipedia it.) I liked it a lot and it was a good movie though I didn't understand 100% of the film because there were no subtitles (nowadays I generally watch in French with French subtitles which makes it easier to follow, but this time there were none at all.)

Today I woke up around 08h00. I showered, ate breakfast (bread with butter and quince jelly), started writing this post, and read a book. Around 11h00 I went back to bed (I feel I should "listen to my body." I almost said that to my host family before realizing that it would probably not translate well.. but it doesn't matter, they understand that sick people should sleep!) At 14h00, after eating lunch, we headed to an arboretum in the canton Vaud. It was about one hour away in the car. The arboretum had an area of about 300 acres and took up most of a valley off of Lake Léman.. for Switzerland, at least in the part I live in, 300 acres without houses is huge. We first went to drink a coffee, then when we were looking at the map trying to decide on a route to take, a volunteer guide from the association asked us if we'd like to go on the guided tour. We decided to do that. It was about two hours long, but he stopped and talked really often. He was really knowledgeable and even knew the names of pretty much all the trees in English. Actually, the route we took went through "la forêt USA" which was a reconstruction (I don't think that's the right word, but you probably know what I mean) of the forests in the Pacific northwest. After the walk we looped around to see the rose bush section, though most of them weren't in bloom yet. At this point it was about 16h30 so we headed back to the visitor's center, bought an ice cream for the road, and headed home. I fell asleep in the car.

This week that is coming up, I only have school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday is "Le pont de l'Ascension", which is the day catholics celebrate the ascension of Jesus to heaven, and in Switzerland and some other European countries it's a public holiday. Then Friday we also don't have school. I don't have any real plans yet but I will probably do something fun.