May 24th: Lac de Orient

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Hopefully this post for today can be shorter because we just spent the entire day at the lake, Lac de Orient, with limited activities. It was an early, and VERY long, day which consisted of some canoeing, swimming, Obut, and rowing on a longboat. Besides that, it was pretty much doing whatever you wanted in 85 degree scorching sun.

My roommate was able to set an alarm the night before, so we woke up at 8:30am to be on time like we were supposed to. Since I had gone to be at 1am the day before, I was a little groggy at first. I decided against showering because we were going to a lake so I'd be getting nasty anyways, so I just threw some clothes on and packed a bag, then I was ready to go. Our entire group (about 50 people) was going again, so we all met out front around 9 to leave for the lake. I'm not sure how, but we all managed to fit on the bus and take off for our 1 hour ride to the lake.

When we got there, we all put our bags in the designated room and changed. Then, we sat around for quite a while waiting for instruction. My friend, Lee, and I tried to take some paddles and go canoeing at one point, but our attempt was thwarted by the French woman that was in charge of the longboat. She told us to put the paddles back and wait for them to tell us what to do, so we obeyed. After a while, they split the group up into a group of 14 people, and then the rest of us. The 14 people took out the longboat, I guess known as a Yule, and the rest of us went canoeing. We branched off into groups of 3 for the canoes. My group was me, Luis, and Lee. Lee took the back, I took the front, and Luis the middle. We pretty much were told to follow the instructors in the motorboats, but we did have some freedom to explore as long as we kept them in sight. At first we started on the open seas, but soon moved on to some waters with trees in them, creating an Amazonian effect, as we referred to it. We weaved our way through the trees and grass and bugs for a while, calling what we were doing "extreme canoeing." Then, we moved in the right direction towards the motor boats, bumping other boats we saw along the way. We also managed to get caught up in a couple splash wars, all of which I believe we were victorious in. Our next point of action was to pioneer all the floating docks on the lake, and there were 4 in total. We took the first 2 without any huge problem, although the second was a near-miss situation. We managed to beat out some kids from Singapore to claim the dock. We had spent too long in our glory of claiming the second dock when we noticed two canoes making moves, serious moves, on the 3rd dock. We jumped in our canoe and took off as fast as possible, but alas, we just missed (although we put up a good effort). This dock was lost. So, we headed for dock 4. As soon as we got close, the male instructor yelled something in French to get away. We saw a duck sitting on the dock, so we assumed it was lost to the wildlife, leaving only 3 docks to be captured by us. Thus, our final total was 2/3, which wasn't bad for a days work. We hung out around the docks for a while, torturing other boats by bumping them, and then took off through the Amazon back to the beach. When we got there, it was time for a rest.

It was lunch time when we got back, but since nothing is open in Troyes on the weekend, very few people had a lunch. Mine consisted of an apple and some Goldfish crackers, but I wasn't that hungry anyways. I played a little volleyball with the French UTT students, but they tried to play with an over-inflated soccer ball, so we all went away with bruises from trying to play! After this, Lee, Joe, Luis, Alvareo, Zach, and I all played the French version of Bocce Ball, called Obut. The only difference was, we didn't know how, so we made up our own "extreme" rules. We would do trick shots with the colored ball or throw it as far as possible, and then try to land the metal ball we held as close to the colored one was possible. It was a really good game, and it was a lot of fun since not too many people were at the beach yet. After playing for what felt like forever, we went and took a break.

After the break, Lee, Jason, Luis, and I tried to play some soccer. The problem was, it kicked up a lot of dust on the girls that were tanning, so we had to stop. The day was really going by slowly, so I'm not sure what we did after this until our next event, the longboat. I think we just saw, relaxed, and talked to people, but time really did move remarkably slow. It was pretty amazing. Around 3, we took out the longboat. It made us feel like vikings. We pillaged and plundered the lake, screaming out "row" as we went around. It was actually pretty tiring, but we took it out for 30-45 minutes, and it was a lot more fun than the canoes. We even navigated an obstacle course, successfully I might add, because we were just that good. We all became tired and fatigued, though, so we put in to port. It was like Puzzle Pirates, only in real life. Cool.

When we got back, it was more time to just hang out (until 7pm when dinner started). We sat on a bench and relaxed for a loooonnng time. There was a French kid that kept hitting one of the Michigan girls with a frisbee, and she was NOT happy. The French kid was jerk, obviously. There was a shooting game where you used a laser shotgun to shoot plastic discs and see who could get the most points, but I wasn't really interested in that. Instead, they brought out cookies and white wine plus a fruit liquor, which was delicious. Not too much later, we played the drums with some UTT students, and then went up for dinner.

Dinner was great. There was sausage, cheese, more of the drinks, and other food. It was all excellent, and I talked to a lot of people this time around, some from Singapore, some from Michigan, and some from Buffalo. It was a really great dinner with a lot of very interesting and nice people, so I had a fantastic time. After dinner, we played a little more extreme Obut. Finally, we helped clean up the beach and took off for Troyes.

On the way back, we sang a few songs, but not very extensively. The best one was "Row, Row, Row your Boat" because we tried to translate it to French. None of the UTT students knew what we were talking about, so we asked individual words and tried to go from there. We thought we were doing well, until we got to "gently." Once we got here, we gave up. And, as it turns out, most of our song wasn't even correct. So overall, that was a big failure. It killed time, though, and the ride back was very short. When we got back, I went to bed instantly. It was a long day, and the sleep would prove to be uncomfortable because I burned on my shoulders (and I sleep on my sides...). Considering this was the only place I burned in 85 degree, clear sky, blasting sun weather, I'd say it was a great day! Tomorrow, though, would not be as great, as it is time to start classes. Boooo.

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