The France Tour is basically an organized bus tour around France. You take a big charter bus, fill it with students, sight-see all day and sleep in hotels and youth hostels at night. On my France Tour there were a total of 49 exchange students from all different parts of the world that are currently staying in all different parts of France. The tour started and ended in Paris, and lasted 12 days. Everything was paid for already except for the lunches, and so in short we just relaxed and had a good time. So here�s the play by play...

On April 4 I left Thionville at around 6 in the morning on a train heading for Paris. I was with about nine other exchange students from Lorraine that I already knew. When we arrived in Paris we had to take the metro across the city (quite the adventure) to get to the meeting spot which was the Gare de Lyon. So when we got there we met everyone else we were going to be spending the next two weeks with. The majority of people were Australian, then Canadian, the American. This was odd, normally there is always way more Americans than any other nationality, so I felt slightly intimidated to tell you the truth, as both Australians and Canadians can be pretty frank at times when they talk about how much they don't like the US. Anyway, after the Americans were the Japanese, with four cute little Japanese girls, and then there were two German guys, two Mexican girls, a Brazilian girl, a South African girl, a Finish guy, and a girl from New Zealand. All these people were staying in different parts of France too; there was Lorraine, Alsace, the Alps, the central region, Normandy, and Brittany. So we made for quite the group as you can imagine. It was fun.

We started the tour by loading onto the bus and taking a guided tour around Paris. We saw all the major monuments, most of which I've already seen and described. We stopped at the Eiffel Tower and they let us have some free time to go find lunch and poke around. So I ended up eating possibly the most frightening meal of my life at this small restaurant with a group of other people, I was so worried I'd catch some horrid disease but thank god I didn't. After that we did some tourist shopping and stuff and then loaded back onto the bus to head out to a town called Caen, which is in Normandy. We spent our first night there at a hotel, and it was nice. I stayed with a Canadian girl named Shannon who was super cool, and we all had a blast exchanging our cards and pins that first night. The next morning we got up and ate breakfast there, which consisted of bread croissants and hot chocolate, like most French breakfasts.

The first thing we did that day was visit a really great museum on WWII and the D-day invasion especially since it was in Normandy. I may be a peace loving hippy at times, but I have to admit that I love studying past wars. It�s all so fascinating. I spent my time in the museum mostly talking to another Julie from America who surprisingly enough knows her wars and her war movies quite well. She also does reenactments of the revolutionary war, something I would totally be into doing as well. My favorite parts were this one long passage in the beginning that was just full of letters that soldiers had written to their families in all different languages, but the cool part was that they actually had audio speakers reading the letters aloud too, so you'd be listening to an American letter and then take two steps forward and here a German one at the same time and then a little further on was a French one and it just was so cool, it was like being spoken to by all these voices from the past. My other favorite part was this great video they played at the end showing both sides of the D-day invasion. It was impressive.

After the museum we had lunch at a supermarket cafeteria type thing, and then headed off to see an American cemetery. This was really one of the most impressive things that I saw. We pulled up and the place was all but deserted and it was starting to rain. We walked out and it just took your breath away to see so many crosses and stars. It was so huge. I went walking through them just to see if I could find a relative of mine and I just couldn't help but think that for every cross there was a man should be standing there. How can anyone justify death like that. It was so humbling. I also just couldn't believe how many soldiers seemed to come from my home state of Michigan. It was so bizarre! There were almost more people from Michigan than any other state that I saw. I guess we must have just been unlucky or something. Anyway, all of the Americans grouped together and we got our picture taken with the American flag. I felt so proud to be a part of America right there. Some of the Australians were kind of jerks in the cemetery, like saying that it was boring and stuff, but almost everybody else had a huge respect for it and oddly enough for the Americans that were there too. Like it was great to just pause for a moment and really have everyone appreciate just how big a sacrifice America really made for the rest of the world.

Anyway, after that we went and saw Mont Saint Michael, another really cool place, but in a totally different way. So the Mont St Michael (MSM) is basically a big castle built on a hill in the middle of the floodplain. The castle is so big that the whole hill is covered, so it just looks awesome. You have this big flat plain that�s basically full of sand and in the middle is the MSM rising majestically above it all. When the tide goes out the MSM looks just like a big castle in the middle of a field of sand, but when the tide comes back in the MSM actually becomes an island surrounded by the ocean. Isn't that just wicked? I think it�s so cool! So we saw the MSM when the tide was out, and it was just amazing. First of all, the castle is just so cool. It looks just like the castle of Helms Deep when you're inside of it. So cool, winding staircases and towers everywhere. And then you climb forever and suddenly you find yourself on top, and the view is just the coolest thing you'll ever see. It looks like you're standing in the middle of the ocean, only the ocean has all dried up. Wet sand just stretches for as far as you can see. Oh man it is so cool. And you can smell the ocean in the air and everything. It�s awesome. So we spent some time there, I spent a ton of time just looking over the edge and feeling the wind wiping my hair everywhere and just loving it.

After the MSM we saw another castle, only we couldn't go in so we just walked around the moat outside it, which was still pretty sweet in and of itself. That night we stayed in another hotel and played a big match of Australian football, which I still fully don't understand, before we all went to bed. I roomed with Shannon again. The next morning was another typical breakfast and then we headed out to Tours. Tours was pretty boring in my opinion, just an average French city, and we took a tour on this stupid train thingy. I was glad when they just gave us some free time to eat. I went with a group of girls and ate one of my packed lunches and then we went and shopped for a while. We all had to pee before we got back on the bus so we paid one of the outside pay toilets just once and all packed inside and used the toilet one by one together. A true female bonding experience to say the least. Actually I didn't go, but about three or four of the girls with us did just take a pee right there, it was kind of weird but fun in a way. If nothing else, it was something to add to my snowball of experiences.

So after Tours we headed out to a castle called Chenenceaux. It was really cool! It was a castle built directly over a river, and it just rocked. So we spent some time there, though as always the inside wasn't nearly as impressive as the outside. The gardens were the coolest part I thought. Anyway, then we got on the bus and drove for a good long time to get to Poiters, home of Futuroscope park. We stayed in nice hotel, this time I was with Shannon and a girl named Liz from Australia and a super cute girl from Japan named Mikado. She was so fun, but it was difficult to communicate because she only spoke French and Japanese so we had to speak French, and her accent was something else! It took a while to get used to, but once I did, we had fun. That night we went to a cafe/club and danced a little, though the music wasn't really dancing music. I was so jealous of the South American girls in our group. The must actually teach there kids how to dance down there, because they all dance so well! No joke, both boys and girls from South America can totally get down!