A Dispatch from Normandy

Phoenicia is a Rotary Exchange Student from Stratford. This is her first report to the Club.

Bonjour :)

Monday (October 26) marks exactly two months for me here in France. I’m staying in Granville, Normandy. It’s a small city - about the size of Stratford - known mostly for it’s fish and beaches. The city is surrounded, on two sides by ocean. My house backs on to the beach. These particular beaches are known for their giant tides - the largest in Europe I believe - that at high tide completely cover all of the beaches and at low tide allow you to walk all the way out to the light house.

I am staying with the Carli family, the father is a Rotarian, my YEO and counsellor. They have three kids - Juliette (20), Cesar (18) and Edgar (16). Only Edgar lives with us the whole year, the other two are gone to university for business and medicine respectively. I have my own room here, I stay in Juliette’s room and am usually expected to wake myself up for school (however, my host mom still insists on coming to check to see if I am awake). I switch family’s around the end of December - Beginning of January.

The Rotary Club here is the Rotary Club of Granville, they are a completely male club and have mixed socials once a month (or so) where the Rotarians bring their wives. They meet every 15 days on Thursdays. There have been, at most, about 20 - 25 Rotarians at our meetings however, there are more members than that as they have a list of common absences. Even though I am a girl, I am still invited to all of the meetings, and therefore have been the only female there on many occasions. Since I have been here the club has not done much. We had a ‘Contact Club’ come and visit us from Cuxhaven, Germany, in early October (the weekend before Thanksgiving). The ‘Contact Club’ brought two girls, one girl on exchange from Thailand and the other a German girl - I believe the daughter of a Rotarian. Most of the Rotarians (from Germany) didn’t speak French so I ended up translating for most of the weekend. We have a pre-viewing of a new Christmas movie (starring Jim Carrey) that raises money for, I believe brain research in order to help ‘Maladies de Cerveau’ (brain diseases).

My host district doesn’t have very many ‘get togethers’ for the young students. We had a one day orientation meeting in September (from 11 - 4) where I met a few students but it was not nearly long enough. We then had a weekend last weekend (October 17 weekend) at Mont St. Michel for all of the students in (I think) the Northern half of France. There were over 150 most of which were from English speaking countries (excluding Mexico that had the largest group). It was from Saturday at 11 until Sunday at 4. We walked along thebay of Mt. St. Michel (tide was low) for four hours - for no reason - and then had a Rotary dinner where we all sang our anthems and then we had a dance from 12 - 2 (am). The next day we went to a visit at Mt. St. Michel from 10 -12 and then had lunch and then the students that had come from area’s such as Paris had to leave to get back. We have a weekend (starting this Thursday - 28 - where we are going to Parc Astérix - a popular amusement park in Paris, I am really excited.

I met many kids from Canada, including two girls from our district. I met a girl from Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec, and many from British Columbia and Ontario. We spoke English all weekend since that was the only language that everyone could speak well enough to communicate in all weekend.

School is going really well, I am in Seconde, which is the equivalent of a mixture of our 11 and 10. Mostly 11. All of the kids in my class are 14/15, which makes me the oldest at 16. Our schedule is different everyday and the same every week. Over the course of the week I have: Math, English, MPI, Geography/History, French, Physics/Chemistry, Biology, Gym, First, and Civics. I go from 8 - 6 everyday except Wednesdays when I only go until noon and every other Monday and Tuesday when I only go until four.

Life here is really good. I am having loads of fun and every day is a new adventure. I have yet to be truly homesick, I have only missed knowing precisely what is going on. My knowledge of French before I got here (thanks to French Immersion) has helped a lot. I didn’t get headaches like some other kids have reported. I understand most of my classes and I am getting alright grades (they are low for France by only a few marks but low for home by about 10 - 15%).

I haven’t done much traveling yet. I have only seen Granville and Lille (I went with my host mom when she went to drop my host sister off at school). I hope (and plan) to see Paris and the D-Day Beaches before I leave.

I hope everything is good at home. Thanks to everyone for making this happen. If anyone wants to contact me Carol can give you my email, I’d be happy to hear from anyone

À Plus tard,

Phoenicia