Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Pictures I Promised...

Here are all the AFSers going to France from the U.S. There are 46 of us in France now! This picture was from the orientation in New York at the hotel we all stayed at.



 This is just a picture I took of the flight plan on the video screens of the plane we took from New York to Zurich. At this point in the video we were passing over France on our way to the Swiss international airport. Carrie and I (seat buddies on the plane) agreed we should have parachuted out then and skipped the layover in Zurich!



The fleet of Swiss airline planes at the Zurich airport.



 These are the famed Kiwis I met at the Paris orientation. That's their flag (obviously) and this picture was taken right outside the youth hostel we were at. At the time, we were waiting for the buses that would take us on the toure de Paris.



 Now I'm pretty sure this is a view of the Paris operahouse, but I may be wrong. There happen to be a lot of grandiose and beautiful building around Paris. Imagine that!



 This is one of the ten (ten, right? Je ne sais pas) roads that meet at the round-about that creates the star of the Champs-Élysées. The red bus is one of ours; the yellow one is just some other bus full o' tourists heading the same way. In this picture you can just make out the legendary monument at the end of la rue.






 Here is the Champs-Élysées! Unfortunately that was the best picture I could get since we were in a bus, driving around it, without stopping because of the traffic. I would have liked to get out and see it, mais c'est la vie! Anyway, it's still an amazing and impressive piece of architecture.



 And here it is! The Eiffel Tower. The "most visited paid monument in the world" having carried more than 200,000,000 people since it was built in 1889. Not bad, eh? Something you don't often see in the pictures, however, are the awesome public pools at this plaza that we were at. We got to wade in to our knees and take pictures, and would have gone swimming, but we had to move on.



 Here's me in a terrible picture taken a whole lot closer to the tower. That fuzzy spot on my chest is some water on the camera from when I tossed it to one of my Kiwi friends in the pool and she dropped it. She freaked out because she thought it was done for (at the time, she didn't know that it was waterproof, nor that my throw had fallen short purposely!).



 These are mes copains at a Perrier mixing bar at the train station we went to to get to Angers. Left to right: Elise (Wisconsin), living Angers but at a different school; Elizabeth (Australia) living some other place and going to school there; and Gabe (Texas) living in Saumar, south of me, but going to my school.



 This is the first photo I have of me and my host family. Left to right: Laurence, my mom, standing behind Aurelien, my little brother, standing behind some cousin of theirs who was visiting that day and came to say hello. Then Guillaume and me in the middle. Then some other cousin standing behind yet another cousin. (François was at the block party manning the grill then.) This was at the train station in Angers about 15 minutes after I met my family.



This is just another picture of the Eiffel Tower, from the bridge across the street from the square under the tower. It was about here that my damn camera decided to die on me, although I guess it's my fault because I hadn't charged it once since I received it in the mail. (Mom: by the way, we were right with the charger thing. It all works fine, no converting necessary, the devices themselves take care of that.


So that's what I have for now and later I'll post some pictures from the block party and of my house here in Mûrs-Erigné. Today was my first day at school and although I don't have time to talk about it right now (again it's late and I need to organize my backpack for school tomorrow!) but for now I'll just say "Holy sh**!"
Talk to y'all later.
Benji

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