In the second week of spring vacation I got to go to south France! It was another camp, this time a conformation camp. I was able to tag along even though I'm not getting confirmed (if that is how it is phrased...). South France is beautiful. It is made up of small stone houses that are falling apart. It has little towns in forests of green. Castles can be seen peaking out behind hillsides, and old churches resting in the middle of the small villages. Our house wasn't the prettiest or the cleanest, and although that bothered other people, it didn't bother me. I like the homey feeling of hostels, plus they're less expensive which is always a bonus! Here is what I learned and saw in France:
Day One:
We drove about 7-8 hours in a small van to our destination. At one point on the way there we stopped at a rest stop. In a store there it had a touch screen vending machine. It looked like it had cereal as an option on it. My host sister decided to buy it because it looked interesting, and who wounding like to say that they bought cereal out of a vending machine? It turned out to be hot coco with coco rice Krispies on top of hot chocolate, my host sister did not like it at all, yet I found it quite good. It was hot coco with a crunch... on second thought that does not sound very appealing, still strongly recommended. We arrived around 3 in the afternoon in France and were greeted at our house by a crowd of French people. There was one woman who owned the house, for teenagers from the church, two Belgians (I have no idea why they were there), a few other people, and one teacher. We ate waffles as a snack, they were superb, and than went down to the river. At the river we played a game. In groups we tried to see who could stack stones the highest. Later we went back for dinner, outside once again, and than to sleep.
Day Two:
In the morning we went to a museum about the Protestants in France. It turns out they lived a pretty rough life. After one of the Louis became king (I don't remember which one) he decided to ban the religion. Anyone who would not change to catholic would be killed. In an effort to save their faith they hiked up mountains and lived in caves away from civilization. While moving into a cave is a little extreme, I found it courageous that they would not convert their religion. After we learned about this we had a picnic, than hiked up a cliffside to check out one of the caves for ourselves. It was dark, and cold. I would have not liked to live there. In the afternoon we planned for the conformation, than went to a crepe restaurant for dinner. It was simply delicious! During dinner I tried to talk to the franchise, however I cannot speak French, and they could not speak English. We ended up trying to communicate in Spanish, which did not work our well either. Never the less we shared quite a few laughs and had a great time together.
Day Three:
After waking up early and driving two hours to the coast, we exited our small van. I thought we were going direct to the beach so I wore my flip-flops and sunglasses as we walked towards... a tower? Misunderstanding people is a side effect of being bilingual. We ended up touring a tower. The tower was an entrance to a wall surrounded town. A long long time ago (like King Louis and only one religion era) they locked up the non-catholic women in this jail. Women were held there until the converted their religion. One group of women decided to go against the King and would sing songs and riot against the guards. They would carve the words resist into the stone every day to show that they would not give in. Eventually the escaped by climbing down from they tippy top of the tower with a rope at night. I'm not sure if I could do that. After lunch we went to the beach, this is when my flip-flops came in handy. It wan't warm enough to go swimming, but we splashed around in the water, played soccer, and took a bunch of photos. The whole ride home the two French boys sang as loud as possible to the music. We danced and sang the key words to songs, considering the fact that a majority of the lyrics were hummed due to lack of lyrical knowlage.
Day Four:
On our last full day we started off the morning by walking through a garden and looking at all sorts of plants. It was interesting, but a little boring after the second hour. When we were finished learning about plants we had lunch at the train station. In the afternoon we took a steam train ride. Everyone got in the same cart and we danced to music as the train slowly chugged along. We played card games, took photos, and much more before the ride was over. That evening was once again conformation preparation, and than a restaurant. After dinner we had to say good bye to the Frenchies, and than went back to the house alone. That night we stayed up until 11:30, pretended to fall asleep, and than snuck back to the other section of the house to have a dance party. I was surprised no one heard us while we did everything from limbo, to the whip, to the can can. At 12:00 we celebrated my host sisters birthday. The hours passed by slower and slower until 4:00 am when I finally fell asleep.
Day Five:
Most of us slept on the drive home, I sat and watched France pass by. I cannot sleep well in cars. At lunch time we stopped to see an old aqueduct which was very cool. We finally arrived back home at 7.
