Max Dancik - May 30 in France

Today was a Wednesday so we went to school with our exchange students. The first thing we did was look at a PowerPoint on the town of Tourraine. After we watched the PowerPoint we toured the city of tours on foot. We split up into groups of five or six and walked from landmark to landmark. We visited multiple landmarks including a cathedral, the museum of Beautiful Arts, and a church. The cathedral was gigantic. We resisted the temptation to make loud noises just to hear the echo. There were chairs in the cathedral which lead us to the assumption that they had mass there every Sunday just like a regular church. There was also an organ in the cathedral that was bigger than some houses. We never got to go inside the museum but we did see the cedar tree and the gardin. The cedar tree was planted there in 1804. Fritz was on display next to the cedar tree. Fritz is an elephant that died in Tours and was then stuffed and put on display. The garden was behind Fritz. The garden was made in the French style. The church we went to was in use. When we got there we saw people who had come to pray and nuns. There was a tomb under the podium. There were many words and pictures carved onto the walls of the tomb. We were allowed on the top level of the tomb but not where the actual bodies were.

After school we went to a special restaurant for dinner. At this restaurant we were taught how to make our own meals. We were split into 3 groups of around 8 people each. Each group was assigned a course. My groups course was desert. We made pamplemousse au thé, crumble d'ananas au gingembre, sorbet passion, crème brûlée safran , and samoussa coco et mange. After we finished cooking the meal we sat down and each group took turns putting the finishing touches on their portion of meal and serving them. Since we were in charge of the desert our finishing touches included using the blow torch to cook the tops of the crème brûlée. I was in charge of using the blow torch to cook the crème brûlée while the rest of the group served it to the others. After dinner our exchange parents picked us up and took us home to go to sleep and write our daily journals.

-Max