I’m looking forward to seeing all of you in May!!

Easter Break was a great experience and I learned a lot. I first stayed with my host family for Easter, which was really fun, complete with an Easter egg hunt, which I haven't done in a while. Then I went with another girl from the program to Tunisia, for a week. It was crazy!!! So different!! It wasn't as hot as I thought it would be. It even rained the first day we were there. We took a two-day excursion in 4x4' with four other French ladies in the car besides us, and a crazy African driver. It was classic, we'd be racing other drivers and going about 90 mph and listening to this fun Arabic music!!! We listened to this one tape so many times, that I think I have all the songs memorized by now. But it was fun as we stopped at a lot of different villages either to see an old roman ruin, a zoo, ride a camel, see an oasis, the Sahara desert, or just to stop and give the driver a break. It was hard to be crammed in a car for 2 days, but it was worth it.

One part of the trip was really fun, the wind had swept sand across the whole road and so we got to go off -roading and our much skilled driver, Samir, would shift into four wheel and haul ass over the sand piles. It was crazy fun!! The rest of our time in Tunisia, we spent avoiding the pool guy, the waiter, and this other guy who works there because they were constantly asking Americans out on dates. While it was kinda sketchy, we felt safe and everything is allright in the end. A lot of them had never seen Americans before; so that was interesting, but they don't seem to understand the concept of leaving people alone sometimes. That’s okay, the majority of the people were nice and we even went on a 4-wheeler tour of the country one afternoon and the kids would all come running out to wave hello at us, It was great!!!

Then we had major culture shock coming back to France and going to Switzerland, where we could understand the language and read signs and not feel like an exhibit at a zoo. Switzerland is very beautiful, full of mountains and lakes and nice people. The chocolate, of course is also very good. We went to Lausanne and Interlaken, and found too many American tourists staying in our hostel. It was crazy because they were all there to go sky diving or do some other cheaper than in the US extreme sport. I felt like I was in the US and was too overwhelmed with Americans for my own good. We did find out by watching some CNN that in Tunisia there were some suicide bombings and stuff. Then it clicked for me why on the second day of our 4x4 tour, we had to be escorted by police through certain towns.... Not very safe. and it’s a good thing we are not in that country anymore. But it was a good experience.

Now I am back in Dijon, good to sleep in my bed again, and to sleep peacefully. I think every night we were in a hostel we had some weird roommate that snored, yelled or talked in her sleep, made weird clicking noises that annoyed me until I threw something at her to make her stop, or someone in the room above that would not stop standing on the creeking part of the floor!!! Finally, it’s great to sleep a whole night through. The weather here is still cold but sunny. This weekend I’ll be going on a program trip to see some chateaux; should be interesting …

Hope everyone is doing well. Later,

Kim Racine.