My district had our second weekend together in Briançon, a town in the Alps. This region of France is called Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Provence is where I live, with all the castles, abbeys, lavender fields, vineyards, olives trees, palaces, farms, etc. The Alpes is the mountain range by Italy/Switzerland, and the Côte d'Azur (coast of blue) is the Mediterranean coast in the South. Most of the exchange students in this district live around Aix/Marseille, in Provence and by the coast. Five hours away in the Alps, there are just three exchange students: Laura (US), Kelsey (US), and Catriona (New Zealand). Because they're always the ones that have to travel far to visit us, Rotary decided to have our October weekend together in Briançon they could stay in their city.
Friday:
The rest of us exchange students took the train together from Aix-en-Provence to Briançon. It took five hours to get there, but it was fun because we were all together. I watched some tv with Paola (Mexico) and played some Uno with the Spanish speakers while they helped me with my Spanish. After we arrived in Briançon we went to the hotel we were staying at, which was owned by a Rotarian.
We didn't have anything planned for the first night. I mostly played pool and talked with the others. We had chicken nuggets and hash browns for dinner, the most unexpected meal I've had in France. At around midnight we ended up shaving Chuchun's head, which goes to show how insane it gets when you leave thirty exchange students in a hotel with no plans.
Saturday:
We went on a hike in the afternoon, like the last weekend. We like hiking, but I think it's one of the only things Rotary can think of to have us do, which doesn't cost money. Every other year, the Rotary takes the district to Italy for the weekend. This year they didn't have the funds. It's fine because we all just happy to see each other, and the Alps is still really cool. We went hiking for about four hours. We went into the mountains and we found a small church and some cows. Briançon is a skiing town. In the winter, tourists come to their ski resort and hot springs. During the rest of the year, nothing much happens. Zephy and Kelsey are from Massachusetts, and we all thought Briançon looked like New England. It reminded me of when I lived in New Hampshire.
We ate lunch after we got back to the hotel and we were given free time until dinner again. For dinner we ate with the Rotarians and had a talent show. Sarafina (from Argentina) sang and did tango, Laura (from New York) played jazz saxophone, Patricio (Argentina) played guitar and sang, I played some piano, the Brazilians danced, the Argentinians also did a dance and so did the Mexicans. It's interesting because here more than half of my district is Spanish-speaking, so even though we do speak English and French during our weekends together, Spanish is the most-spoken language. After dinner we sang happy birthday for Xavier from Spain and ate brownies.
Sunday:
The plan for Sunday was to go swimming at a giant pool center. They had five or six pools, some outside, some hot tubs, etc. Catriona, Lara, and I didn't have bathing suits (and I don't like to swim) so we were allowed to walk around the town instead. They went swimming for a couple of hours and we had fun just hanging out outside.
Briançon has one main street with all of it's shops. We looked at all of the stores, shared some desserts from the bakery, and tried on fluffy jackets. Zephy and I got necklaces and at around noon we had to gather up again for a tour. Someone from Briançon gave us a tour, and we got to see all the old architecture around the city. There were cannons, stone walls, and the tour guide explained the town's history.
We went back to the hotel to gather our things. After we packed everything, organized the rooms, and gave back our room cards, we went back down to the lobby. The Rotarians handed out Briançon t-shirts and we ate lunch. We all took the same train back to Aix, and we arrived in the evening.
^The girls and guys of district 1760. (Savelii from Russia, Mariana from Ohio, and Suzie from Germany weren't there.)
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