IT'S COMING

We are now 2 days away from halfway through November, meaning we are 2 days away from the beginning of Operation Christmas Cheer (O.C.C.) in which I proceed to increasingly listen to Mariah Carey's Christmas album, wear ugly Christmas sweaters, eat Christmas chocolate, and pretend it's snowing on the daily (because here it RAINS).  Christmas decorations have started popping up throughout Lille and Roubaix; lights are being strung across the cobbled streets and every new Christmas-y adjustment I see makes me want to giggle with happiness.  I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

The following are photos from today in which myself, Liz, and Emily discovered the Christmas chocolate section of the grocery store.  So. Pumped.

Hi England

This past weekend we had Monday off from school (Armistice in France - and Remembrance Day in Canada!) so Yann took the long weekend as an opportunity to visit his sister who lives in England.  Well it was magnificent (here's me trying to describe things that I enjoy without using the words "cool" or "awesome." I will probably last less than 3 paragraphs without using a thesaurus).

Yann's sister Anais (??? I hope I spelled that right.. I have about as much trouble with French names as the rest of the world does with mine) lives in an adorable neighbourhood in Folkestone, England.  Picture a big, cottage-like home that has lots of trees and vines around it, in a neighbourhood of adorable brick houses and bright green, grassy lawns.  I felt like I stepped into Wendy's house from Peter Pan! They live within walking distance of the ocean, and after taking a somewhat woozy ferry ride over Saturday night, we got up Sunday morning and went for a nice long walk. It actually lasted all day, and I got to see so many different beauties of Folkestone while we were out!

Getting face-whipped by my hair and the weather on the ferry

Like I mentioned the daughters of Anais and her husband, Richard, are gorgeous girls.  Here's a few of my favourite photos of them.

Margot!

Isabelle!

And some photos of our walk along the sea:

Anais on the left and Margot!

Folkestone, aka the most homey and loveliest English town ever

We stopped at this hilarious and amazing place for lunch called the Cabin Cafe, where all the semi-truck drivers stop in for refreshments and some good hearty English cooking.  It had the coolest ambiance, and I had a "Full House" English breakfast while listening to a bunch of weathered old English men talk (not really understanding though, they had thick accents!) back and forth.

hilarious old english guy had quite the character, I wish I'd had the nerve to ask him for a better photo

~~~~~ BEHOLD ~~~~~

After our lunch we explored some more.  It was getting cold and we'd been walking all day, so Theophane and Richard took the girls home by taxi, while Anais showed Yann, Marie Jo and I some more of Folkestone on our long, but lovely walk home.

Remembrance Day yarn bombing: AWESOME 

There was this really interesting abandoned railway Anais brought us to that had this neat statue right in the middle of it.  Anais said it's currently her favourite place in Folkestone, and I can see why! It had such an eerie but cool feel to it.  They're going to be building homes or something there soon though which is a shame :(

Stopped for an afternoon espresso and tea!

AWE SIBLINGS

This was on a big read phone booth on which each little window had something written by a kid.  This was one of my favourite ones. "Art is for everyone not just for smashing!" You tell 'em Kevin.

Then Anais brought us to one of her favourite artworks you can find in Folkestone.  I'll let Folkestone fill you in on that:

so stunning 

We walked through an artsy part of town on the way home and I was loving every minute of it.  It really made me want to move to Folkestone.

hahahahaha this is just funny I mean come on

I GOT A TATTOO

The window into one of the most amazing thrift/vintage stores I have ever seen: "Skylarks"
ps. totally kidding about the tattoo ;)

Brb just wishing I was good at graffiti

"Women hold up half the sky" made me think of my Mum 

The next day we took the ferry home at 4pm, but Anais brought us to this awesome (it's my favourite description word I can't help it) English "desert" right on the edge of the sea.  The weather was the total opposite of the day before: freezing wind and sprinkly rain, but it was really fun all the same!

When I grow up I want a black cottage with yellow trimming with an illegible Olde English paragraph on one wall

One of the few legible words on the wall, and also a relevant photo for life right now. 

New tourist pose..?

Words and knick knacks on an old fishing cabin

weeee I'm cold

Yann exploring the beach

Anais takes shelter in the boat

Our wonderful English weekend was finished with the traditional fish and chips (seen below in which the chips are being obnoxious and you can't even see the poor fish) and it was the most perfect and scrumptious end!

MMM

Here's a funny story to finish the post: the time in England was one hour behind that of France, so my iPod, and therefore alarm clock for this morning, was not at the proper time.  So I woke up as usual and spent a few minutes resting in my bed before looking at my phone, only to realize that the time on my phone and iPod were different... and I had therefore slept an extra hour and had class in 30 MINUTES!!! Thus ensuing the fastest shower/dry my hair/get ready/stuff my face dash I have ever undergone, and I made it to school on my skate so speedily I shaved 6 minutes off the average 13 minute walking time.  Felt like a hero when I made it through the entrance gate just in time to get to class.  I ended up arriving to my class waiting outside the classroom.  After all my panicking, I was earlier than the teacher.  Figures.

Rookie no more

Last night I met with my host Rotary club for the first time since arriving in France.

For anyone who's still a little foggy as to what all this "host club" "host president" jibber jabber means, I'll take some time now to explain a little about how Rotary works, (if you already know skip this paragraph!)  Rotary is an international organization that has clubs situated across the world in countless different countries.  Clubs often cover a certain area.  If it's a big city, then the club will consist of people from maybe a certain suburb of the city, and there could be 4 or 5 more clubs within that city that are situated in other suburbs.  Likewise if it's a small town, there might only be one Rotary club in that town.  The clubs consist of a group of adults who gather, sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month, and often share a meal, have discussions, guest speakers, or put on special fundraising events.  They aren't just focused on youth exchange, but if I tried to explain all the other stuff Rotary does, this post would go on forever and probably put some of you to sleep.  One of the coolest and my most favourite things about Rotary is the Rotary Youth Exchange program (yeah totally not biased hehe).  A huge percentile of these Rotary clubs participate in the exchange.  What happens is they open their club to receiving applications, go through interviews, get to know the applicants, and then choose one from the possible 4 to 20 people (number of applicants depends on the area of the club) who applied that they believe to be the best possible candidate to represent their club, their city/town, and their country for one year.  This happens every year around September to November all over the world.  These clubs are called the "sponsor clubs," because they provide us students with all the means to travel, often paying a portion of the cost of the exchange, sometimes all of it.  They also do all the organizing and communicating with our host countries to ensure that exchange works the best that it possibly can for us students (shout out to my sponsor club, the Rotary Club of Okotoks for making this all happen for me, and to Jeff my co-ordinator and Brad my sponsor club counsellor!!) Then when us students finally depart for a year, our sponsor clubs receive a student from elsewhere in the world, who they take under their wing and "host" for a year.  Just like how now I have a French host club etc.  This happens with hundreds of students, in hundreds of clubs.  It's pretty mind blowing to think about all the other kids who are doing what I'm doing right now.  And on top of all the cool stuff involved in exchange, Rotary Youth Exchange is run by volunteers, so all the people involved in making this happen do it because they believe in the power of these international connections among today's youth and not because they are in it for money.  Pretty cool.

 Anyway!! I got a ride with my host club president (who I already met at the French-race-up-a-scree-slope) and his wife to the meeting, and on the way we picked up Sidonie who's a 17 year old local French girl who did the exchange last year to Wisconsin in the USA.  She actually arrived back home just a few days before I arrived in France.  She's awesome.  She had a very successful exchange and it was really fun to listen to her talk about it and fill Tanguy in on stuff in the car on the drive there.  She was so bubbly and just gushing happiness, it was so inspiring to see someone that loved exchange that much.  Everyone I met at the dinner was really nice, and loved asking questions about where I was from.  Also there with his parents was this boy Alexandre who's 15, and who is my host club's candidate for next year's exchange.  Just before dinner started, Tanguy introduced the 3 of us to our club of about 40 people, then myself and Alexandre stood up and each took a turn giving a little intro of ourselves.  I did mine in French, with about a 2 minute heads up that I had to say anything, and it went really well! There was a lot of loud applause when I finished, which either means I spoke well, or I butchered it and they just felt bad for me haha, gonna just tell myself it was the first one.  Sidonie had a powerpoint that she showed later of her year in the States.

The dinner and evening overall was really great, but by far my favourite part was talking with Sidonie and Alexandre (and his parents.)  It was so cool to have the "three generations" of exchange students there.  The rookie, the veteran, and me the current inbound.  What struck me as so unreal, and still blows my mind now when I think about it, is how much I have already changed in just over 2 months.  It feels like only a few weeks ago that I was sitting in Alexandre's position with my parents, asking so many questions about exchange, not sure what to expect and nervous, scared and excited all at the same time.  I cannot believe it's already been a year since that was me.  I could see the worry and anxiety in his parents' faces, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for how difficult it is not just on us exchangers leaving home, but on our parents who let us go, and who spend a year missing us and reassuring themselves that time will pass quickly before they see us again (love you Mom and Dad!) It was also so interesting to watch Alexandre throw question after question at Sidonie.  I remember perfectly doing the exact same thing with the Rebounds (returned exchangers) back home.  I realized as I sat there listening to him, that no matter how many questions he asked, or how well Sidonie explained, he could never possibly imagine what exchange will be like until the moment he arrives in his host country probably next August and it begins for him.  I could tell that he has a picture in his head of what he wants his exchange to be: what country he wants to go to, and what language he wants to learn etc. As I listened to Sidonie try to explain to him that it would be unforgettable no matter what the circumstances were, I was amazed by how only after 2 months I could identify with everything this returned exchange student said.  It was the first time it clicked, and all the puzzle pieces that were my questions and worries had finally fallen into place as I understood. And it was awesome.  Exchange might be one of the greatest challenges ever, but it's impossible not to love it!! I've finally stopped feeling like such a newbie, and my eyes have really begun to open to how INSANELY COOL what I'm doing is.  I get a rush of excitement just thinking about it.

READ THIS IT'S EXCITING: Today TWO of my friends at school told me on separate occasions that I speak much better French now (yes! yes! yes!) than I used to, and after a teacher made me read a paragraph out loud in class, another (different) friend came up to tell me that my accent is actually not bad! SCORE!
On top of those few moments of awesome, since returning to school after the two weeks vacation, I've found that I actually understand so much of what goes on in regards to language.  I've started catching the little jokes my friends will make among each other while they talk a mile a minute, and now I can laugh with them instead of being the dopey looking kid who needs everything explained.  Sometimes I understand what's being said so fast it's like I don't even put an effort in, they could be speaking English and I'd understand just as well.  It's probably one of the most exciting things of all time.  YA LIFE.

Sicily!!!

Hello blog readers I have returned! 

After a long day of travel by car and plane yesterday,  I arrived back home to the house in Roubaix feeling awesome.  I had an incredible 2 weeks! To anyone looking for a quick update post that can be read in a rush... look elsewhere, this will definitely be my longest post yet.  

We stayed in this house that my host family has owned for a while.  It was Marie Jo's dad's house growing up (he was Italian..duh).  It was in the middle of the countryside, with the closest village being this place called Grotte.  It was tiny and very cool, and not a tourist destination whatsoever, so I got a lot of funny looks walking around with my giant camera, shorts, and pasty skin.  Marie Jo speaks Italian really well, so we got by having her as our translator! The Italian language is soso cool and the food is delicious.  

From the moment I stepped off the plane into the warm, humid air, I had a feeling I would like Sicily.  I can't find another word to describe it aside from "COOL."  We picked up the rental car and first things first went and found some food.  Did somebody say pizzeria?!?! I give a good 20% of the "Siobhan loves Sicily" credit to the giant pizza we (we being Marie Jo - host mom, Theophane - host bro, and Toni - neighbour and very good family friend to my host family) ordered and devoured that first night of arrival.  

MMMmmmmMMMMMM YUMMY

Fast forward to Day 3 of Sicily vacation (Day 1: arrival, Day 2: recovery from arrival).   Marie Jo drove us to this giant rock/cliff structure in the middle of the countryside and we proceeded to climb all over and around and through and under it.  Toni has a knee problem so sadly she didn't get to come adventure with us, but Marie Jo, Theo and I had a blast!

YA SHORTS AND IT'S MID OCTOBER

You will soon see that thumbs up tends to be my go-to pose.  Every tourist needs a go-to pose.

Before descending into the Cave of Doom

In the Cave of Doom (look at the terror in my eyes)

After the Giant Rock, we drove to this cool place that is hard to describe so I will let the pictures do the talking:

Theophane getting crafty

My knee got a little dirty

miniature volcano made out of mud yayyyy!

Marie Jo's work is really busy and demanding and important.  She's like her own boss, and does a lot of it from her laptop, so she can't really afford to constantly take time off.  She brought the laptop to Sicily to be able to keep working, only there's rarely a WiFi connection anywhere.  She ended up buying this internet USB thing that gives you internet wherever you go, but she had trouble getting it working while we were at the house.  Anyway so there we are enjoying the countryside, checking out all the curious little mud volcano spewy thingies and I turn around to see Marie Jo has sat herself down on the ground in the middle of nowhere to see if her Internet stick will work.  It was so random and so surprising. Toni and I burst out laughing and proceeded to take photos of her trying to work her computer, while sitting on the ground, surrounded by spewing mud puddles, in the middle of the Sicilian country side.

Like what.

So basically what it was was this giant mud farm, kind of.  The whole place was made up of dried up mud, sprinkled with the mini mud volcanos or puddles that kept bubbling and spewing.  You had to be careful where you stepped, some of the really soft and squishy mud looked exactly like the hard stuff you could walk on, and Theophane and I had a couple almost-falling-and-ending-up-thigh-deep-in-mud catastrophes.  

Considering that most of the amazing food here is carbs, and I was constantly fuelling my hunger without any guilt, I felt the need to get a little exercise in.  I couldn't run like I normally would alone because I didn't know the countryside or language, and hadn't brought runners, but Marie Jo was happy to take me for a little run/walk/hike every morning which was awesome.  We got to explore the breathtaking sights, and also get refreshed by the morning exercise.  We ended up finding and exploring this huge old abandoned house which was so cool!

View from in front of the house

spookay

panoramic from the top of the hill where my host family's house is!!

view from abandoned house

Marie Jo exploring abandoned house

The next day we drove to the ocean! It wasn't even far from where the house is, and it wasn't cold or hot but the perfect refreshing temperature.  Marie Jo and I were the only two who went for a dip.

serene

Toni getting a taste of paradise

MJ and I

yay beach ya!

The next day we went to the market in Grotte.  In France the market is usually weekends, but in Sicily it's every Thursday.  

harassing Theophane with my camera

Toni and Marie Jo buying some cheese (THE ITALIAN CHEESE IS SO DELICIOUS)

Grotte

The next day we went to the live volcano Etna!! It was really cool, you drive for like 10 minutes up this constantly ascending road with this stuff on either side that looks like black rock but is really dried lava.  The landscape is really interesting too, so different because of the climate and volcano (yes that is obvious) but still really beautiful! It was cloudy and foggy up at the top, which made the whole atmosphere that much more intriguing.  We mostly explored the big dried up craters and pathways and didn't see any giant hot steaming lava-filled craters, but it was still super awesome!

omg I'm holding lava and man am I excited

BOOM goes the dynamite

theooooo

Chairlifts take you up to the top! I believe that's where the crater is located.

"And here we have a rare specimen of volcano"

yummy

YUMMY

so pumped to be at Etna like omg

Theo and I jumping for joy

Theo in the crater

Almost fell

on my face

I don't understand why... but there were ladybugs EVERYWHERE

My first Sicilian cappuccino! DEEELICIOUS

 After we explored a bunch of the craters, we drove to a spot where you could go for a hike.  We parked the car and walked up to a nice spot in the trees where we ate our lunch of baguette, cold cuts, and Italian cheese, then Marie Jo and I left Toni and Theo so we could go explore the trail!

Woo made it!

No big deal or anything

L A N D S C A P E

bouldering some lava 

Etna was so awesome.  Definitely one of my favourite parts of the trip.  The next sweet thing we did was go back to the ocean! We drove a little farther than our first go, to a beautiful location on the edge of a big city (sorry everyone I haven't a clue what the name was).  It was ridiculous.  So breathtaking and beautiful and maybe I've used those words too many times already in this post but that's what it was.  We sat ourselves down on these rocks just a little bit out into the water, as opposed to the beach where everyone else was.  Marie Jo went and swam and explored with a scuba mask because there were reef-like rocks all around.  Theo and I went to go swim for a bit, but because of the rocks, the water wasn't really deep enough for swimming, and hard to walk in.  We mostly just splashed around but it was still refreshing! 

Then we walked over to this one cliff that was all white and smooth and hard to explain but awesome.  It felt like I was in a dream world, it was so pretty.

Sea-doos on the ocean... blissss

Marie Jo!

Then the sun set and it was B - E - A - UTIFUL

The next awesome thing we got to do (yeah Sicily was one giant bundle of awesome events pretty much) was go check out these old abandoned mines! We saw one kind of "mine" and the rest was pretty much just a beautiful view and Sicilian sunset.

MINE 

The sicilian dude that lives in the house in the background...

...yelled something up at this horse...

...who then proceeded to climb down to the house like a puppy who'd been called home.  It was hilarious.

making Theophane wave for the camera ha

YAY SICILY

The next day we collected olives from the olive tree in the backyard of the house.  It would start out easy and kind of fun, then as time wore on it became boring and a little tedious... but soon enough we had SOOO MANY olives and the tree looked naked compared to when we first started collecting.  We took them to this place near the house where olive oil gets made.  Since there's olive trees everywhere, the local Sicilians are always gathering them.  Then they take them, in however small or large the amount, to where they make they oil, and they get the amount of oil back that they gave in olives.  So basically the more olives you bring the more olive oil you get, and it's free! 

Gathering by hand got to be tedious... so we started just raking the tree

The fruits of our labour!

The last event to talk about was our last day in Sicily.  And my other favourite day aside from Etna! In the morning we got up early to go to this museum full of archaeological finds from old temple ruins near the city, then we went out for some food, and afterwards we drove to the temple site and stayed there all afternoon.  We were there from the afternoon until when the sun went down, and Theophane and I ran around exploring and taking photos.  The day was sosososo beautiful and the countryside never looked more stunning! 

Somehow these last photos posted in reverse order... starting with the sunset! (The order of this last batch is pretty jumbled in general...)

found some old tombs!!

Marie Jo is FAAABULOUS

thuggin it temple style

Yay Toni!

Such an awesome lady!

Summarizes a lot...

THEO

SIO

there was I just being a tourist and Theophane was gearing up to shove me off the rock *cue tears*

Me in my natural habitat

Hi my name is Siobhan and I know how to be awkward 

like OMG it's like SICILY!!!

And that was my last two weeks.  It was unforgettable! Here's a few leftover photos from tidbits here and there.

Making a homemade barbecue to grill the dinner sausages on the stone terrace!

Theo gathering stuff for the fire

View from the gate to the entry of their property!

Rope swing

MJ rocking the fire building

Marie Jo and Toni 

Pizza leftovers for lunch on the terrace!

Grotte

And that's that! Congratulations if you managed to make it here to the end! And thanks for reading :)