Lycée Ozenne in fall colors

Everything since last monday went by pretty quickly, things are becoming normal, so where's the line where I stop describing the same things over and over again? I guess I can talk more about school...hmm. I've noticed that a lot more attention is cared about the method about doing things, even if they are simple. Instead of writing in-class essays, we write just as long in-class outlines (why don't we just write the essay???), then we spent the whole hour in math talking about how to read a graph, then we spent the whole hour in history talking about how to label a map of Europe correctly. I guess I am more used to going for the information and that's it. I like the history class, I think I'm learning a more well-rounded history, especially since Europe isn't really covered at all in the 4 year curriculum at Central, unless you took French. It's kind of sad that people don't learn the rest of history of the world, like we just learned how socialism and communism became in the world, why and how etc., we never covered that. Or maybe we did, but not heavily enough that I would actually remember it. Everything was so US centered, especially 11th and 12th grades. Here we are learning about the Civil War in anglais renforcé, enough to know what happened and why. I am usually so posisitve about school, but I really have no homework and I miss having some. I'll know I'll regret saying that next year when I'll be up over my head, but I've always had math homework everynight in high school. It's not like I don't do my homework, I do it mostly at school with Liza and Sarah since we share books, it's just that there isn't much. Nothing is ever collected besides science worksheets (once every 2 weeks is the same class), and for french you can just brainstorm your ideas then ellaborate if she calls on you in class. True, a large fraction of my schedule in english class, so I don't stress about that class. But the other day in math, it seemed so pointless what we were doing, so Liza and I found the equations, sans calculator, of all the graphs we were learning how to read. Our neighbors were impressed. I would be saying otherwise if I was in the Scientific track, they do calculus in 11th grade, but I'm in L, so that's what I think.
Let's see, Saturday was St. Elizabeth day, so in honnor of our fête, Liza and I got together and got chocolate crêpes, so very french. I also met with Lauren and am now helping get the exchange students to sing songs before the rotaract xmas dinner...i can't sing. We'll see what happens. I saw the movie 'in the valley of Elah', saturday night, dubbed in French, but it was pretty good. It obviously inspired a US pilitics and war conversation with my host dad, which is not forcement always that enjoyable. Sunday included a run with Antoine, then a walk in the afternoon with Nadine. We walked past crazy châteaus and had some good conversation about education, culture and history. I also found out that my next host family lives directly across the street from the rugby stadium...wrong one! So this should make my commute to soccer practice very interesting. No metro goes there, but a bus is straight from school to there. I will also have a 19 year old host sister who was in Japan last year who I already met and is super cool, so I'm excited. It's still very weird to even think about changing.
The weather last week was super cold, like in the 30s (F) all week. Soccer on thursday was not so much fun, everything cold, hands, ears, thighs, warm food did well afterwards. But you get e headache when you go into the warm locker rooms right afterwards. Friday night at band I got my funny bright yellow blazer that I have to wear at the concert...this should make for a funny blazer.
Tootles,
peace and love,
Liz