I recently got back from my first "weekend of integration" with the other exchange students in my district, District 1760. I had met some of them at the airport and we also had a picnic together in August, but this was our first weekend spent together. Before I recount the weekend, I'm going to say that I love everyone in my district and I miss them already (I got back yesterday).
Friday:
Alberto, the Mexican in my town, and I got picked up early from school on Friday. I only had to go to my Italian class, my French class, and half of my Spanish class before leaving. My YEO Evelyne picked us up and drove us back to Lauris so that we could pack our bags and prepare. We were able to have a pretty smooth conversation in French during the car ride which was nice. My host-dad then took me and Alberto from Lauris to Buoux, the town we were staying at for the weekend.
We stayed in a castle. It was an actual, old French castle. It seemed unreal that we were about to live in a castle for three days but it was great. We got to our rooms, which had about ten bunk beds. I was rooming with Paola (Mexico), Laura (New York), Kelsey (Boston), Suwapat (Thailand), Lara (Australia), Catriona (New Zealand), Suzie (Germany), and Mariana (Ohio). After getting setting up the beds and getting ready, we went to a room downstairs -on really cool spiral staircases- and went to the introduction meeting. We met Pierre and Dominique, the main inbound coordinators. We were all seated by country at long tables around the room with name tags. When they announced a country, all of the inbounds from there would stand up for the anthem, introduce themselves, then would each share about an important person in their country. This was time-consuming but it was fun and interesting.
We had some free time after and played some games. I don't remember that much but we were all just getting to know each other. We had dinner downstairs and I ate with Catriona, Mariana, Suwapat, Laura, and Lara. It was Suwapat's birthday so the chef brought out brownies with candles and we sang Joyeux Anniversaire (Happy Birthday) for her. After dinner we went to the basement, turned on some music, and it was basically a party for the rest of the night.
Saturday:
On Saturday morning we had to get ready for hiking during the day. We went down to breakfast for some fruits, cereal, and hot chocolate. We had a presentation about Eurotour, French trips, and other Rotary rules. We got the forms to register for the tours, travel forms for us when we want to leave the district, etc. We left for hiking in the afternoon.
We hiked for a couple hours. We stopped at the top to take a lunch break, and everyone was tired from walking and from the heat. Despite how exhausted we were, the hike was really pretty and it was nice to spend some time at the top with the others. We ate some sandwiches and took a lot of pictures together.
When we got back to the castle, we had free time until dinner. We ate dinner outside and celebrated the birthdays of the inbounds who had birthdays in France before this weekend. Apparently the Rotarians will do something for all of our birthdays. My birthday is in January along with about five others, and that weekend we have a ski weekend in Barcelonette, which should be fun.
After dinner it was like the night before and we all just hung out around the castle. The Rotarians here are laid back and it was fun to have our own time. At night we went outside and admired the stars. The Rotarians didn't really understand why we were looking at the stars but here in the French countryside you can see all of them while in the US and some other countries we barely ever see the stars.
Sunday:
We had a lunch with our host-families and Rotarians in the afternoon. Some students organized things to perform for everyone. For example, the Argentinians danced, one of the South American girls sang, the Russian recited a poem, etc. For lunch there was a giant buffet and all the food was really good. After lunch we all said our goodbyes and were sad even though we had just met.
In our district we have inbounds from America (6, all girls), Argentina (5), Mexico (3), Taiwan (3), Brazil (3), and one person each from Thailand, Russia, Peru, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, and Japan. This is the photo we took for Rotary.
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