May 30: Back to School

Back to School

May 30, 2008

Emerson Mann

Today started off differently than usual. Louis took the early train so he could get to his class on time, while I slept in and took the train a half hour later. (So I could be at school at 8:15) The train stopped about 100 yards away from the station in Tours (my stop), and we had to sit there for a good 15 or 20 minutes because of traffic. But I eventually made it to the station and started walking to school. It was about 8:00 at this time, so I couldn't stop for the usual pain au chocolat at the bakery on the way to school. I arrived at school at 8:30, thinking we could be at school later than our correspondent, but I was told by Ms. Downing and Ms. Walden that was not the case. So they sent me to a French class, where the students were writing a play. They had the whole class to work on it. After the French class, I was supposed to go to a history class, but there was a bit of confusion with the scheduling, so I went to a geometry class. It was very interesting because all of the students had this program for geometry that allowed you to explore the different shapes and lines in 3-D. Most of the material that they were learning seemed familiar to me.

After Math class, I met back up with Louis and we got ready for gym class. For the class, you have to take a bus across Le Loire River to an area with a big soccer field. When we got there, the teacher made us run two laps around the field for warm-up. Then we split into two groups; one for soccer and one for ultimate Frisbee. I wanted to play soccer, as did most of the American guys. The game was quite intense; the blue team (my team) was pounding on the other team 6-2. I had a goal and an assist. But the score doesn't reflect the effort put in by either team. Everyone was playing their heart out. After the game, we headed back to school and got ready for lunch. They were serving beef, with sides of corn, watermelon, bread (of course), and pineapples. After lunch, we got ready for the scavenger hunt!

We split up into three groups, my leader was Ms. Downing and we were determined knock all of the other teams out of the water. We traveled to various locations around Tours. The drive for victory died out at the end, but competition spurred right back up when we were split into groups of three and told to finish a quiz about all of the locations we visited. Different groups were seeking the help from random French students at the school. The first to finish was the group of Maya Land, Veronica Clark, and Sarah Higgs. In second was Michelle Wang's group (I can't remember all of the members of her group). And in third were Rachael Blondy, Michelle and Renee Montpetit. Then, we were all dismissed for the weekend!

Louis and I went to meet up with some of his friends for dinner. We went to a place for crepes, and they were outstanding. I ordered the Strasbourgousie, which had eggs, sausage, and cheese. For desert, I ordered a crepe aux pommes, which had warm caramel apples, applesauce, and sugar. I felt like I was going to burst. Then we all decided to go out to see the new Indiana Jones movie. We sat down to watch the movie for about an hour, when the screen went blank. The projector was having some technical difficulties, so we were offered to watch the movie FROM THE BEGINNING in another theater, or get a free movie pass. Louis and I took the free movie pass, and headed home. It was a hectic day, but exciting nonetheless.