The highlights:
Thursday:
For our final PE class, only 13 of our class of 31 showed up; we ended up playing rugby in the mud (it had rained the night before). I even have pictures-- one girl who lived close by but was "sick" showed up for solidarity and took pictures of everyone. It was my first time playing rugby, and I'm more or less as terrible at it as I am at all sports, but it was fun nonetheless.
In the early afternoon we had a little party to celebrate the end of the year, with much sugar in the form of beverages and cakes of various sorts. The teachers were all incredibly kind and gave me some books as going away presents-- two more new, recent ones (Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Marguerite Yourcenar) and a copy of de la Fontaine's Fables that is, as they put it, "almost older than your country." I was amazingly touched (I nearly started crying), and began to appreciate just how kind of a community I managed to stumble upon here in France, and how much I'm going to miss them when I'm gone.
Oh, and the potato chip cookies were a hit-- they disappeared within the first ten minutes. Thanks, Leedara!
Then there was the last math class, where we played Scattergories, and that...was it.
Friday:
The last day. There were no real classes (I don't think that anything after the last science class on Wednesday counted as an actual class)-- just several parties, one after the other. To start with, in Spanish we watched the first half of a movie that I'll now evidently have to rent in order to see the resolution. Half the class was playing Scattergories in the back and paid no attention at all and thus are spared the curiosity (it was a good movie, too, which is why I'm so anxious to see the end).
After that was Drama, where we had a picnic of sorts out on the lawn, where we all ate entirely too much sugar, in the best way. The drama teacher, who hadn't been able to make it to the party yesterday, gave me a present as well-- a copy of Celine's Voyage au bout de la nuit. I still can't believe how incredibly wonderful all these people are. In English we had a party with the Italian class (since, by five in the afternoon, most everyone had left, and only two of us showed up to English at all), where there was slightly less sugar but was no less fun for all of that. And that...was it.
Actually, no.
At home I made a cake for Camille's birthday, a real American cake from a box (I asked my parents to send me the mix). Shortly thereafter, I went back to Vaucanson for the Bal de Promo, which was not anything like an American prom but, I think, all the better for it. I only stayed for the first two hours since my ride home, my English teacher, left early since she had her six-year-old daughter with her and so couldn't stay too long. At the beginning I thought that the French students did a lot better job of pretending to dance than Americans do, but once the party really got started it was more or less indistinguishable from any other party with loud music and teenagers that I've been to, except that there was French pop as well. Oh, and they played 'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi'. Because I guess they had to. It made me smile. I've always wondered whether that song would be popular here or if they'd hate it. I get the feeling it's a bit of both, depending on who you talk to... In any case, it was alright. A better way to spend Friday evening that I could have come up with on my own, and it was nice to see the English teacher one extra time before leaving.
And then that really was it.
Saturday:
I spent the afternoon in town looking for presents for everyone back home (and I'm not telling what I bought or where I went). I took myself out to lunch at the same restaurant that I went to with Fanny back in March and had a nice risotto with a glass of Chinon-- the image was so lovely that I went so far as to photograph my little table before I started eating. It was an afternoon quite pleasantly spent except for the sunburn I got on my neck and shoulders (and even that disappeared pretty fast).
The evening was much more...interesting. Camille had her 24th birthday party with all of her friends, and I was sort of halfway invited (I wasn't ordered out of the house like Lea and Catherine), so I stayed just out of curiosity. It was definitely a party-- I think it was summed up very well by one of the neighbors the next day, after being asked by Catherine if everyone had behaved themselves: "Well, they are...young." Everybody drank far too much, but in general the atmosphere was pretty lighthearted, way too much smiling and laughing more than utter incoherence... The only mishap was when one of the guests almost spilled a bottle of...something, some fruit liqueur, I think, all over my backpack full of books and important papers. Luckily, he missed, so there was no harm done. We all got to bed around five in the morning, and everyone was pretty justly exhausted. I didn't really realize how tired I was until I actually went to bed, when I could barely keep my eyes open two minutes after the lights were off and people were quiet.
Sunday:
Sunday was very quiet. I slept until ten in the morning and only got up because it was too light out for me to sleep anymore, and then spent the day puttering around, listening to an audiobook, and taking walks in order to stay awake. Camille slept for most of the afternoon on the couch, Lea was over at a friend's, and Catherine was working, so it was very quiet and peaceful. Olivier came over later in the day and gave me over 600 songs in three different languages, increasing my music library by around 30%. All in all a good recovery day.
In the evening, however, when I was Skyping my parents, they informed me that Powder died a little over a week ago. I wasn't and still am not sure how to react. None of it seems real, as if it's happened on some other planet, not here, not anywhere I know. I know I'm going to miss him badly, though, and I feel guilty that I wasn't there to say goodbye, that I didn't see him one last time before he died. But he died like we want all of our pets to die-- old, in his sleep, and without pain-- so that's a definite consolation. If he'd gotten sick like Sibylle did, I would be having a much harder time coping.
Rest in peace, puffball.
Monday:
In the late afternoon Camille took me out with some of her friends to do a "tour of Tours" to see all the decidedly non-touristic places in and around the city (for example, the sketchy suburbs and the newly-built American-ish mall complex). It was fun, and afterwards we stayed over at the friends' apartment for dinner, which meant I could finally escape the party leftovers (we had sausage nearly four meals in a row-- I think it'll be another year before I'll want to have it anywhere near me). We also made plans to go visit a chateau together on Friday, which, if it's anything like today, should be fun in the sense of interesting.
Tuesday:
In the early afternoon Camille and I went out to Amboise to visit the chateau there. My accent was evidently good enough that the woman at the front desk thought that I was French when she sold me the tickets-- we only went back and corrected her because they take statistics on where visitors come from and use them for...some obscure purpose.
In any case, the chateau itself was beautiful, and we had a personal guided tour of about three rooms since we happened to run into one of Camille's friends who works there. On the way back home we stopped by a bakery in Tours that makes pastries double their normal size, and I found it humorous that nothing in the shop would have been considered outsized by American standards (though I saw clearly that it was outsized for the French). Despite being huge, the quality of the pastries is about the same if not better than other bakeries, and you get about twice the pastry for the same price, so I think I might be going back there at least once before I go.
And that's more or less it for the week, because absolutely nothing happened today. Well, I almost burned down the kitchen making lunch for Lea and one of her friends (I was cooking meat, and the paper package it was wrapped in got too close to the stove and caught fire. Lea and her friend helped me put it out but then they left me with the mess without another word). But other than that, nothing.
I'm not sure when I'll have time for the next update, since my dad is coming to visit next week and I'll thus be fairly occupied until next Sunday, so expect something around next Monday or Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday, if the pattern continues more or less like this. Until then!
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