It's been 2 weeks!!!

2 weeks and I feel totally at home in this house....I love my siblings....it's so fun!!! I love the weekends b/c I can just relax and hang out, it seems like I'm never home during the week. I went to 7 TFC practices in these 2 weeks, that means I leave for school with all my stuff, then I come back at like 9:30pm, eat dinner, then go to sleep soon after. But they have gone by generally fast and everything's good. This week was interesting, my host sister was an exchange student in Australia in 05/06, and 2 of her best friends from there visited her this week. It was the first time she had seen them since she was in Australia. We were all the same age, but in Australia the school year is the calender year, so it ends in December, so they had finished HS in December 06, then taken a year off and worked. One was an aupère in Switzerland, then the other one visted her and now they were on their little backpacking around Europe trip. They came Monday night, then on Tuesday my host mom said I could skip school so I could hang out with them...so I did! Wep profited from the sales in the city and showed them around Toulouse...Chloé was asking me for directions!! I definitely felt like I got to know my host sister better during their visit because the Australiens didn't speak any French, so we all spoke English, so I could be more of myself, so we got to know eachother better. Wednesday we went shopping again, and I only went to school from 10 to 12 for our acrogym routine in PE class...such a funny sport. I can't wait for volleyball next week! Wednesday we had a pizza party and went out! It was fun. It was pouring rain the whole day on Thursday....and we still had soccer. They made us run outside for 15 min at first...just so we were soaked..then we did agility and jumping over things under the bridge on the basketball courts, then we actually played basketball. One thing that I as better than some of the girls at! It was a pretty athletic game, but pretty funny b/c everyone was playing basketball like soccer, so everytime they had the opportunity to shoot the ball they did..and as hard as they can. After like 30 min the score was like 8 to 4, just b/c no baskets went in...it was so funny. Friday was tired at usual...english class then soccer. Yesterday I helped out at the blood drive in Toulouse, it was being run by Rotary. My job was walking groups of ppl from where they filled out the paper, into the town hall where the blood drive was. I had some pretty interesting conversations, including being told that I was the smartest American this lady had ever met b/c she was from Mauritius and I knew where that was located. Oh yeah, on Thursday Sarah and I got our hair cut...first time in France. The lady complained that b/c my thick, wet, hair was really heavy and making her back and arm hurt...sorry lady! Also I got scolded that I waited so long to get my hair cut...whoops. But its shorter and I like it.

Not much is happening at school these days....Liza and I are trying to get out of the English class, and go to a 12th grade philosophy class or something, but we'll see. In French we are just finishing reading Dom Juan by Molière and some of his other works. In History class we are learning about the 3rd and 4th republics, and now colonisation. There was so much stuff going on in the world at that time, its interesting to learn about, and I have never really before at school.

4 weeks until the vacation, I'm going to Germany, and the new exchange students are coming soon. We said bye to Jenna and Danielle recently, we all cried at the airport and it was sad. There is a strike this week, like the one in November, and I think I can play in a soccer game this weekend. I kind of want to go to band one friday, but now I feel obliged to go to soccer, there's no other way that I'll ever play in a game. You have to go to Friday's practice to go to many of the games. It's so competitive.

* Us after the haircut

* A really old and cool piece of furniture in my house...my host mom loves old things.

* Emily and Julie, the Austrlians, and Chloé and I in Toulouse