From December 29, 2008, to January 22, 2009

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Monday was interesting. I woke up at 6:30 am, did the normal morning routine, finished packing my bags, and headed off to the train station to catch the train to Paris. I had no trouble buying my ticket or getting on the train. However, there was apparently a backup of trains at Gare de Lyon (ironically enough, my destination). As a result, my train arrived ten minutes late. I missed my connecting train. I ended up exchanging my ticket and waiting three hours for the next train.

I arrived. I went for a walk with their current exchange student, who gave me a tour of the downtown. We came home. We helped make dinner. Watched a film on TV, “Sisi”? I think. I’m pretty sure that the leading actress is Austrian. The next morning, it had, to my delight, snowed.

I had a nice day: took another walk, drove up a hill to get a really good view of the whole town. From the “Croix de la Libération” with the mist and the snow, Autun looked like something out of a storybook. It was beautiful. Again, came home, helped with dinner, and watched a TV movie (this time one about the fashion designer Coco Chanel). I stayed the night, took another walk in the morning, and then took the train back to the Tardif’s house. There were no mishaps on the train ride home.

The party on New Year’s Eve included almost the same people as the party we’d hosted back in November, but I managed to avoid dancing much better. Jessie spent the night at a friend’s house, so there was a different tone: the teens couldn’t really retreat to her room. I lasted until 3AM, this time. Mostly because dinner didn’t start until after midnight. I have no idea what I ate. I passed up some kind of shellfish, and I think the meat was duck. I tried fois gras. It wasn’t bad, but the psychological effect wasn’t exactly positive. It’s just too weird to think about the fact that you’re eating liver of something or other. The music was loud, the food was good, and overall it was a good night. The only downside was that my sleep patterns were completely thrown off.

There is a reason I didn’t name any of the Autun family. Just a week after I’d left them, I got a call from YFU, informing me that for reasons relating to their jobs, they could no longer host me. I was back where I’d started. I started asking everyone again. I kept getting “maybes", which turned into “no's". It was incredibly frustrating.

School itself has been getting more difficult. From this side of the break, everyone is focusing completely on the baccalauréat. I don’t really understand their stress, because I’m not experiencing it. I do know that we’re getting more out-of-class assignments. Nothing particularly memorable happened.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up with a headache, a runny nose, a sore throat and a nasty, hacking, scratchy cough. Fortunately, Delphine made me stay home and then go to the doctor. I didn’t really resist, and that’s a good thing, because he (the doctor) informed me that I had “the flu”. This is technically not possible, as I have been vaccinated, but in any case, he prescribed cough syrup, a French version of Advil (which dissolves in water, rather than having to be swallowed 😊, and something to keep my nose from running.

That same night, I got a phone call from someone (a complete stranger, but a student at my school), who had a definite “yes” from her parents if YFU would approve her family.

Last night, I moved to a temporary home, close enough that, were I not sick, I would be going to (the same) school right now. I will be staying…I don’t know exactly how long. Long enough for a permanent family to be arranged. For now, I’m working on getting healthy: sleeping a lot, taking my medicine, eating regularly, and saving my voice in order to save my throat.

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