The Trip to the Mountains...And the Death March

My host family, the Halary's happen to have a long line of home owners in the South of France area. One of their "family homes" happens to be in the mountains near our house in Ustaritz. I can safely say it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

Our dog (Voyou) loves the mountains its the one place he can run free and he gets a lot of food. We go up to the mountains usually to have dinner parties with my host parents friends. The house is being remodeled because it was neglected for a number of years, so we eat on the porch and we make the food over a fire pit (my host father makes the best steak over a fire you have ever tasted!)

My parent do a bang up job of putting on a dinner party. We hauled an entire truck load of food and we prepared it all...but not before we did the death march. My host mother presented our 4 kilometer walk (yes I map quested it!) as a "little hike". I was wearing skinny jeans, no sleeves, and vans sneakers...to say the least I was unprepared for a long...uphill...treacherous....through a stream walk. And I forgot my camera so I have no pictures...so sad. The walk ended in great reward. A beautiful sunset greeted us back at the house.

And we had a dinner that was fit for a king....and my favorite part of the evening we sang. Everyone tried (with not much luck) to teach me basque country songs. I have to tell you Basque is the oddest language I have ever heard. It is not Latin or Greek based.....and experts don't really know where it comes from. All the same the night was filled with a lot of laughter and merriment and I can't wait until we go to the mountains again!

Royan Orientation (Part 2)

I left off on our boat ride home(this is gross but one of the girls who was sitting near me actually threw up I am scared for life...)....this leads up to the best part overall. THE FARRIS WHEEL RIDE!!!! Yes I agree it was a strange way to end this ....interesting day. We got to watch the beginnings of the sunset from 300 feet in the air and our seat was absolutely filled with hilarious Americans. I have to tell you I have never laughed so much in one weekend. and

On with the weekend. When we got back to camp it was time to practice our talents.....or the lack there of. I decided to sing....with a bad cold. No worries everyone one loved my song and said it was the highlight of our talent show. Other acts included a parody of "Call me Maybe", A dance to a very weird French song, the Brazilians doing some sexy dancing, the Asians singing a song from Guam, and the Americans which did some sign language.

(Me singing at the preshow!) Though really the crowning moment of our night is when each country had to sing our national anthem. Us Americans were sure that we were going to kill the competition. Sadly that was not the case. Our rendition of our glorious National anthem was brought to a dead stop at "the rockets red glare" because no one could sing high enough (except me and I stopped because I was hit with an uncontrollable case of the giggles when everyone dropped a key in the middle of the song) It was the most embarrassing and funniest experience of my life. Our talent show/dinner ended at 1 in the morning when I proceeded right to bed with my terrible cough and cold. The next day our activity included lunch....which involved fire and raw seafood. Now when I say that they set our lunch on fire I actually mean they put the mussels on wooden board,covered them with pine needles, and set them on fire.

The most interesting part of all of this is that when they are set on fire they scream! The rotarians assured me that its just the air in their shells being sucked out slowly....gee that's much better! The saddest part of the weekend was saying goodbye. I have never met so many people that understand my feelings so deeply. We are all going through the same thing and we all have the same problems. I am so glad that Rotary gives us the chance to share together at these weekend!