Millau

Salut!

So, on the weekend I had my first Rotary camp in a beautiful town called Millau. Its about 3.5 hours south of Vichy and about an hour north of Montpellier. Its also where I thought I was going origionally, so I was very excited to see it.

On Saturday morning Maria and I went and explored Millau. it really is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It was all very old, with those wonderful cobbled streets, lane ways lined with cute boutiques, an old bridge arched over a river full of swans and pretty wild ducks, and a beautiful church. We chose just one of the lane ways to explore and were more than pleased with what we found. I discovered this fantastic book store and bought my first french possession: Harry Potter and the philosophers Stone... in french. Its my goal this year to read the whole series in french :) I also went looking for a jacket, seeing as I have literally run out clothes (my host family only washes once a week), but I dont understand the sizing here! Either their sizing is stupid, or I am just too massive to fit in French clothes. I found this lovely red trench coat with huge quitky buttons, but the largest size (in the entire store, seriously) was a 4, which fit around everywhere except my gigantic shoulders! It was so annoying!!! But it was just the jackets that I had trouble with, and I ended up buying a red roll-neck sweater dress, a beaded necklace, and yet another long sleeved top.

The actual Rotary camp was brilliant. It wasnt at all like the ones we had back in Australia. It was more like a social gathering than a billion lectures in a row. There were about 20 or even 30 inbound students from all around the globe, but they had been in France for 5 months already, so they knew eachother and spoke French the whole time, etc, etc. The only new kids were all Australian, meaning I already knew them :) there was Meg, a girl from Melbourne who I caught the traun with on our first day in france, and a girl called Melissa, who remembered me from the plane (Meg and I didnt recall having ever met her). They were both really nice and I hung out with Meg alot because we were the youngest, most immature, loudest people at the camp.

My french is really bad, so I stuck to talking with English speaking people at the camp, including a lovely boy, James, from Missouri, USA, a Canadian girl named Brianna, and 2 French kids who went to australia last year on exchange. It was great talking to them and I must say they are the first people I have spoken to since my arrival in france, that have known where Ballina, Byron Bay, and Brisbane are! Amazing, I know.

Alot of funny things happened over the weekend, but Im just going to name a few in some good old dot point form:

- Meg, Melissa and I were talking with the kids from USA about terrible last names.Meg told us that her mum's maiden name was Whore and Melissa and I were like "Haha! OMG!", but the Americans didnt get it at all. When we explained to them what a whore was, they replied, "Oh! You mean a whooorrrrreeeeeyyyyyy". They didnt understand half the stuff we said, because our accents were so "weird".
- The mexican boys invited Meg, Melissa, and I to play volleyball and so we went outside to play, but it wasnt real volleyball-there was no net. They were just passing it around- and we were absolutely terrible. After about 10 minutes, they just stopped and said "You're Australian! You should be good at volleyball!" I explained to them that not all Australians are good at volleyball, particularly not us, and so we started playing soccer instead.
- Meg and I were bored so we went onto the basketball court and started kicking the volley ball around. Meg was seriously the worse soccer player I have ever seen (and thats coming from me... I totally suck at soccer!) and somehow she got the ball wedged between the basket ball hoop and the basket ball backboard. Skilled, I know. Anyways, I thought Id get out my inner genius, and broke a branch off a nearby tree, then tried to use it like a spear to knock the ball down. We got some weird looks from passers-by, but eventually Meg managed to hit it and we got it down.

Anyway, Id better be going,

Miss you,

Love Jess

PS.Sorry, Grandpa, but it was impossible to get a photo of the viaduct bridge thing because we were on it! And you couldnt see it from the town, just occasionally on the road.