Hello!

I'm writing from school again - the teachers are having a meeting and I didn't really want to have to pay attention to that much French, so I'm in the computer room until classes start again at 1:30. I think the last thing I wrote about was rugby practice, so I think I'll start writing about the weekend.

On Saturday, Ellie, Linnea and I took the train to Chambery for the day. It's about an hour east of here (I think - I only looked at a tiny map). It's a really pretty town and it was fun to walk around and explore. We saw the cathedral there, which was painted to to look like it was carved out of wood or marble or something - apparently it was popular to do that whenever the cathedral was built. (I have all the information at home - that's just what I remember now); We also saw the castle of the dukes of Savoie, but we couldn't go in because it's closed for repairs. The outside was pretty though. We walked through the old parts of town where cars aren't allowed. It reminded me a little bit of the medinas in Morocco because all the streets were narrow and twisty with big old buildings that are all connected everywhere. In the afternoon, we walked a little ways out of town to visit Rousseau's house. (Or one of his houses). It was a fairly small house, but the grounds were huge - there was a nice garden and an apple orchard, and I think there were grapes growing up the hill from his house. The view was also pretty impressive - you could see lots of mountains. After seeing that, we headed home.

Then on Sunday, I went with the rugby team to their match. I have no idea where we went - the town seemed to have 3 different names and I didn't recogniwe any of them and I don't remember them - it was about an hour away on the bus and we drove past Lyon, but that's as much as I can figure out. We got there pretty early, but since it was a Sunday everything was closed, so we just sat in the locker room to stay warm until the game. I couldn't play yet because I didn't have my paperwork done yet, but I sat with the coaches and administrative people and watched. It was pretty fun (absolutely freezing, but fun). The team played well - they won 19-17. They only play 12 on 12 instead of 15s, so it was a little bit different. It seems like that will make it easier to score points since there are fewer loose forwards to tackle you. We'll see. After the game, there was a social with the other team, but they didn't bring much of anything to eat or drink. Once we got back on the bus, we had our own social - Amelie had made a huge tray of brownies, and we hung out and ate on the way home. After that, we all went out to the bar where all the rugby players go apparently in Bourgoin, which was also pretty good. Everyone on the team is really nice and friendly and I can understand them when they're talking to me (it's harder when they're talking to each other because then they don't try to avoid slang and abbreviations and words I don't know).

Now I should go and get ready for my 3 classes this afternoon. I think we're going to play different versions of tic-tac-toe where each square has a word in it and you have to make a sentence with that word to put your x or o in the square. The kids this morning liked the game, so I hope it'll work as well here.

Talk to you later!