Printemps de Bourges + moving families!

HELLO DEAR READERS!

Last week (Monday to Friday) I travelled to the faraway lands of "Bourges" (and hour and a half by train) to see a music festival. When first asked if I wanted to go to a music festival called "Printemps de Bourges" (translating to Spring in Bourges, or Bourges' Spring, whatever you want), I thought, why not? Cool little festival, haven't heard of any of the acts. Should be low-key but still fun!
Turns out that this festival is VERY POPULAR. A lot of the bands are fairly HUGE in France, I just hadn't heard of any of them. Now I have some new favourites!

Le Jacques Coeur in Bourges

There were signs like this ALL OVER BOURGES, but this one was the biggest

I found out that there is a MASSIVE hippie culture in France, especially at concerts. Hippie as in... reggae, Bob Marley, rave pants, vegetarianism, etc. It's pretty cool! There were stalls in the centre of Printemps (as it shall now be referred to) selling food and clothes and jewellery and... BONGS? I was surprised, also because there were police everywhere! Don't they NOTICE? But that's just another difference between Europe and Australia, I spose.

Speaking of Australia, I found this on a wall! There were heaps of them, I have no idea why.

Les trois petits cochons!

In the pouring rain, posing with police horses

It rained basically all week (SPRING? HA! Not likely), which was even better when my shoes broke and I walked around for 2 days with my feet as OCEANS because of the holes in them. Either way, still had an incredible time and found LOTS of new bands who I love!

This is my new favourite band, Dionysos. They were CRAZY, jumping everywhere!

The lead singer of Dionysos was absolutely awesome, crowd-surfing and wearing papier-mache bird heads and stuff. LOVE IT! And then there was a feather explosion - they had cannons! So now I have feathers on my blazer.

The best photo ever? I think so. CROWD DIVE!

Feather explosions!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bring out MR BIRD!

After Dionysos was Shaka Ponk - I don't know if they're popular in Australia? But in France they're huge. And CRAZY!

Shaka Ponk

More crowd-surfing!

We saw heaps of other bands too, but less well-known - and they were FREE! More than 200 artists at Printemps.

Us with the big-arse poster!

In other news, I moved families this week! On Saturday, in fact. I'm now living with Catherine (Jade's aunty), right in the middle of Loudun. It was a bit sad moving from the Baylarts, but it's also a nice change - so bittersweet, really.

This is my luggage. After 3 months. It really does pile up!

Spring is supposedly here, but it's been raining non-stop for about a week and a half now - we had 35mm yesterday alone!

The wind is killing all the flowers. =(

That's pretty much all I have to say! It's been a pretty packed first week of holidays (oh yeah, I'm on holidays now) and I have no idea what's on for this week. Hopefully sunshine.

The CIRCUS is in town!

Well, the circus among OTHER things. After Simon's soccer game on Saturday arvo, Sylvie and I had a walk around Thouars where there happened to be a fete/carnival thing! (For the Perthians, a mini Royal Show.)

How can I even describe how exciting this looks?

Now THAT is a 20 cent game. You can win 200 EUROS! And we get excited when a few 20c coins come out!

A wizard (A GRYFFINDOR!)...plus pygmies?

We stopped at Les Trois Moutiers on the way home and had a look at this sign in front of a church - made out of photos of the faces of people who live in Les Trois Moutiers! Doesn't make any sense, does it? Here's a photo. Of lots of photos mashed together.

And the church itself is right behind it. Awesome idea!

And guess who I managed to find? Pretty much the first face I saw, which was weird. JADE CANDELA! HA!

That night, I went with Sylvie's sister to watch Sandrine (her daughter, Sylvie's niece) and the team play handball. Easy win - 31 v 13 to Loudun! Woo!

After Loudun got a goal!

The next day, I went to the CIRCUS!! Le Cirque Zavatta, in fact. It was small but awesome, and as usual I took too many photos.

The big top!

Me and Gabrielle - CIRCUS FACE!

Caramel popcorn in a paper triangle. SO CIRCUSSY!

Here's a LION who just jumped through a ring of fire

I'm pretty sure that ALL circuses are awful to animals (and this circus had a LOT of animals, one of which I genuinely didn't have a name for) so I felt a bit bad about going. Especially the lions, which should be WILD! Not in a French circus! But I'll add "destroy all animal circuses" to my list of careers (after exchange).

This guy balanced on LOTS of things. Barrels in particular. Me and Gab were pretty terrified (on his behalf)!

Horses balancing!

A macaw riding a bike! Aren't Macaws ENDANGERED?!

I thought these guys were going to fall MORE than once! It's so STRESSFUL going to the circus!

Pony rides at intermission! As much as I wanted one, I don't think the pony would have appreciated it...

Acrobats!

Some camels started running around, and then a BULL!

The bull just stopped and looked at a guy in the audience... looked at him GOOD.
It was an impromptu staring contest! I don't know if it was part of the show or not...?

Does anyone have a name for this animal? I think it's African.
Actually I think it was in the Lion King! A WILDEBEAST?! (That killed MUFASA!)

Clown vs. Ghostie

 The funniest bit about the clown's act was all the kids yelling at him "BEHIND YOU!" Everyone just screams their face off and the clown is yelling back and running around - and the ghost just stands there (flapping his arms, for some reason).

Next up: Printemps de Bourges! The 5-day music festival I'm going to next week.

Joyeuses Pâques!

Oh the joy and merriment that is Easter! I've been looking forward to Easter in France almost as much as [a white] Christmas (but not quite, don't worry), and it didn't disappoint!
Because the Baylarts (current host family - do I have to keep saying this?! I only have 3 families! And two of them are sisters!) drove to Simon's soccer tournament which was a 3-hour drive away and took up the whole day anyway, I spent Saturday and Sunday with my two other host mums (the ones that are sisters, remember?) and their family/cousins.

Egg hunt! Aka: Chasse des oeufs with my adorable host cousin Florian

Spent Saturday night at Catherine's house (just eyeing off the territory for when I move there on the 1st May) with Catherine + Marie-Anne's brother Francois and his family. (3 kids - including Florian!) Went down to the local with my cousins to meet Angelina (Jade's sister) there - cousinly bonding time; we're now besties.

Cleverly hidden, eh?

Everyone turned up at Marie-Anne's house the next day - at 12:30pm! Easter starts pretty late in France. Or it might have just been because nobody could be bothered to get out of bed. (Except ME! I'm as bad as the overexcited five-year-old, jumping around the house in my pyjamas!)

Eggs everywhere!

So we had a SUPER EXCITING egg hunt (with Florian leading the chase, naturally), then had an amazing FRENCH EASTER LUNCH!!

The art of pouring champagne - seriously, this is a handed-down-since-generations skill!

Also, because Marie-Anne is vegetarian, we had (amongst other dishes) EASTER TOFU! Well not specifically for Easter, BUT TOFU!!! And guess what? It was DELICIOUS. No one was more surprised than me. So this means that from July to January when I live there, I probably won't starve to death!* Woohoo!

*This is a joke. Meat is not actually banned from the house or something - I just have to cook it myself.

Paté de Pâques

A good-and-proper Pâques tradition is the Paté de Pâques - it's normal paté but wrapped in pastry! Double the fat. Yummo.
After the meal (and cheese) it was chill-out time because no one could fit in dessert. The adults and Florian went for a drive, while the lazy teenagers watched Edward Scissorhands (In French: Edward "Mains d'argent" - silver hands. But that's stupid. No one cares that his hands are silver - the important thing here is that they are SCISSORS! Should really be Edward Mains de Ciseaux. SO THERE.)

Spring is here! All the flowers are popping out!

Then everyone came back for dessert (rhubard tart) and to give Florian his birthday presents (he turned 5 the week before). In the end, a pretty top weekend. And I got to do it all over again the next day (another Paté de Pâques...) when the Baylarts came home!


Oh and sometimes the Paté de Pâques has an egg in the middle. This was Monday's Easter

He can FLYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

ANNECY!!!

The weekend every exchange student's been waiting for!! ANNECY!! The actual event was "Journées Rotariennes de la Jeunesse, Annecy 2012" but we just say Annecy - it's a town, by the way, in the East of France. For my district, 7 hours by train cos we had to go via Paris. And then 7 hours back again.

EVERYONE!

The idea was that EVERY exchange student in France (every inbound), plus some Rotarians, spent a weekend in Annecy for a conference. There were 430 students there from 31 different countries. It was INSANE!

My amazingly awesome and wonderful fellow districters - 1720!!!

As soon as all the students arrived at the hotel (one of them, anyway) everyone just ran around screaming and searching for their friends - who we hadn't seen since the bus trip, PRACTICALLY A MILLENIUM AGO!! Then people were swapping pins and business cards, singing national anthems and kissing their flags - MADNESS. Then we had a dance party!

MADNESS! Might not be captured from the photo, but trust me.

Next day, we had a mini-conference about the Olympic Games because Annecy is a candidate for the 2018 Winter Olympics, which is cool. Because it's such a beautiful town - there are (permanently, I think?) snow-capped mountains overlooking  Lake Annecy which is HUGE and actually clean (more than I can say for the Swan River, AHEM). So we were listening to these guys talk for a while, then we climbed a mountain and had lunch. On a mountain, looking at mountains. Drinking mountain water (see below).

The home of Evian! WE FOUND THE MOUNTAINS ON THE BOTTLE!!!

Then we went for a boat ride! A CRUISE, actually. On the lake (not on the mountain). Which was PICTURESQUE and MAGICAL and all that. Here's a photo:

Ahhhhhhh!!!!

Alright, so that's not on the boat. That was on land, before we left. But we took patriotic flag photos while waiting for all 3 boats to arrive!

Me and my Canadian friend Elle pretending to be Australian

AUSTRALIANS! Plus...three extras?

Yep so we were on a BOAT! YEE-HAW!!!! Then we went and walked around the lovely town of Annecy, terrorising the townsfolk and the like.

Standing on the Pont des Amours (why is it that every bridge in France is about LOVE?)

How ROMANTIC!

As you can see, we made it from the boat and onto a bridge. Then we progressed to a PARK! Which wasn't full of people until we got there! WOO!

Yup. There we are. In a park.

Everyone was going CRAAAAZY and waving flags, singing national anthems (and just random national songs), jumping around, taking the same photo with fifty thousand different cameras, etc. So fun.

And because it was such a hot day everyone lined up at this teeny little ice cream stall cos we were all desperate for a delicious french ice cream... but a 300-strong queue doesn't really disappear quickly, especially with only TWO PEOPLE working at the ice cream shop! We waited for about 2 hours. And then as we were about to order, OUR DISTRICT HAD TO LEAVE TO GET THE BOAT BACK TO THE HOTEL!!!!! It was heart-breaking. As we were walking back to the boat, there was another ice cream stall right in front of the harbour bit where you board the boat. Sooooo... BACK IN LINE! Our district organisers were going bananas about being on time and sticking together and futile exercises like that, so we were AN HOUR EARLY anyway! Ergo, we FINALLY got ice cream! HURRAH!

SUCCESS!

Yeah that's the story for today. Ice cream. I HAD TO SAY SOMETHING MUNDANE ONCE IN A WHILE, otherwise you'll all get sick of hearing about all the amazing things I'm doing!!!

Alright, here's a boat photo!

Then we went back to the place we were at in the morning (super advanced language here, also try and keep up if you don't remember where we were this morning) and had DINNER AND A SHOW! ie. the TALENT SHOW!! Each district had to perform a little skit (which we'd practised/invented at Fontevraud the week before) which was GREAT! Most groups did a dance to a song (eg. Ai Se Eu Te Pego or however you spell that STUPID song) but we did a sketch about all the new and weird things in France - eg. whether to do the bisous (and how MANY!) when you meet someone or to shake their hand; the phenomenon that is unisex toilets; answering "oui!" to every question because you don't understand, etc. WE THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY!! But... another group did something similar that was much better.

Then we had another dance party!! With STROBE LIGHTS this time!!!

I can't claim this photo, I didn't take it. But it's great!

OH and before the party there was a flag-waving, very official ceremonial ceremony. A representative from each country carried their flag onto the stage and every went beserk (respectively). Especially for the U.S. - at least HALF of all the exchangers were American, I swear. It's ridiculous - there were less than 20 Australians!!!

Again, not my photo. BUT STILL COOL!

Then we had a crazy fun night where me and my friend didn't actually sleep...and rolled in for breakfast! Gave out the rest of my pins (yeah I only had 50... sorry to those people who didn't get one! Which was most people.) and some more cards and then we were ON THE BUS, LEAVING! Quel horreur.

Train buddies

I just wish the weekend was a WEEK - we needed MUCH more time with that many people there!

As predicted, it was REALLY HARD to wake up in the morning on Monday, at 7am, for school. I kept falling asleep during class and my maths teacher actually laughed at me! Then an economics test... UGHHHH. Am hoping to get AT LEAST 1 out of 20...

The view from my window

Standing on my loverly balcony!

LOVE this photo! Again not mine, but sometimes other people HAPPEN to take, er, better photos than me.