Day Number 5?

Time for some updates!

On Wednesday, Maelle, her friend Lea, her boyfriend Anthony, and I went to Colmar again. I took pictures this time, which will most likely get on the computer sometime within the next month.
(By the way, Maelle put some pictures on her Facebook, and I am tagged in the album so you can look at them.)

Thursday was the real adventure though. Maelle's class at school had a feild trip to the Vosges mountains for a 16 km hike. For those of you that dont know, the Vosges are a mountain range to the west of Alsace.
The Vosges are completely different from the mountains in Tucson. Rather than the barren, harsh beauty of the latter, the Vosges are lush and alive.
The trail which we took was originally from World War One, and there were graveyards, monuments, and tunnels throughout the route.

It was absolutely freezing! The kind of cold that shinks into your bones like pin pricks, and , in Tucson, makes everyone think it is going to snow (but doesn't). We spent the morning wrapped up in jackets and raincoats ( did I mention it was raining?), while treking across perilous hills. That was enough to make me completely blissed out, but we weren't done yet.
We stopped for lunch by a small lake at the bottom of a ravine ( after all of the 37 teenagers had sprinted down the slippery switchbacks..), and after that we began to hike up to the top.

When we arrived, I am pretty sure that I stopped breathing. It was the kind of beauty I thought only existed in calenders, or Period-piece movies. Hillsides full of small yellow flowers, hundreds of different trees, mountains that are almost black against a weightless sky. It was the kind of beauty that you never want to forget, or leave, or deny a photograph.
That was when my day became magical.
After that, the majority of the hike was downhill and fairly relaxed. I had some conversations with new people without Maelle, who was busy running around and rolling down hills. Quite the accomlishment for me!

Today was great as well. After school I spent about an hour picking cherries for Sylvie, my host mom, and Maelle's grandmother so they could bake with them. Then, Maelle and I went to her dance class in Colmar, but ended up walking around sleepy neighborhoods because she didn't want to dance. We actually got to talk, which was fantastic. I want to say it was good bonding time, but that sounds too cliché for me.
(you have no idea how excited I am that I could type "é" without having to search endlessly for the insert characters option!)

For the most part, I have been having successful conversations (even if they are short, although not all of them are). I hate being seen as the timid girl who has no idea what is going on, and so I have been trying to interact more, even if I make a complete fool of myself.

OH, and I have decided why it is that kids on exchange gain weight! When you are on exchange and you cant speak the language, you don't actually have control over what you eat. People are making food for you all the time, and they serve you. Thus, because you cant express how much, or even what you want to eat, you end up eating copious amounts of delicious (and thus fattening) food. However, I am fairly sure that I wouldn't pass up fresh cherry tart even if I had the option. Yep, not a chance.