Baptiste Jenard

2008-09 Inbound from France

Hometown: Rodez, France

Sponsor: Rodez-Espalion Rotary Club, District 1740, France

Host: Indian Rocks Beach Rotary Club, District 6950, Florida, USA

School: Seminole High School, Seminole, FL

Bio

Baptiste's Bio

Salut tout le monde (hi everybody), my name is Baptiste. I come from a small town from the southwest of France. It is named Rodez and it is a really beautiful place. I love my country because it has an important history and I love our food. I have two older brothers named Thomas (21 years old) and Maxime (23 years old) but also my very little sister named Louise (3 years old). I just lived with my parents and my sister because my brothers have their own flat.

I arrived in Tampa Bay's airport the seventh of August in the morning but I was supposed to arrive the sixth in the evening! Indeed, I missed my flight in Chicago so I had to spend the night in an awesome family. And I finally took a flight for Tampa (story of my quite long trip).

Florida is an amazing place for me. I am really enjoying it because I can practice my favorite sport at school everyday, and I love the beach and palm trees, it is like a postcard. Concerning school, I just can say that I love it because I met a lot new friends and I love to spend time with them. All the students are really nice with me and are interested by the Youth Exchange. I think it will be hard to tell them goodbye in 10 months. I am really enjoying my American life.

Finally, I want to tell thank you to all the people who make me get this fabulous experience .

Aurevoir et passez un bon echange (bye and have a nice exchange).

October 26 Journal

Hey everybody,

I do not know how to start with this journal, firstly because it is my first journal and secondly because I have been so busy during this period of almost three month. First, let's talk about school, where I spend most of my time! I mostly enjoy all my classes, my schedule was basketball, Spanish 3, marine biology and algebra 2. The only change is that I have American government instead of basketball now, it is really exciting because hopefully I will find out more about the elections coming really soon! Marine biology is just different, studying plankton's life is really special, but we still have fun activities like dissecting a squid (go on my facebook if you want to see it). Then, I really like the relationship between students and teachers. They do not put a real border, you can talk to them about everything. I would just say that generally school seems more casual in here.

Now I want to tell you about the amazing weekend I just had with the exchange students, our Rotex Leesa Froelich and our Chairman Laurie Froelich from the district 6950. Only Linus was missing because he had the homecoming weekend which I guess he really enjoyed as much as everybody did. First we all met at Laurie's house on Friday evening and watched a movie and talked about the exchange and everything, we were just resting after a tiring week and getting ready for both Busch Gardens and Howl-O-Scream in the same day!!! So, we stopped at International mall on our way during Saturday morning, shopping is never a bad thing, who don't like shopping in the United States? After having lunch all together, we arrived in Busch Gardens, I think we almost did all the roller coasters and haunted houses we could during the day, everybody had a lot of fun and it was a perfect day to stay together! Finally, around noon everyone went back home, with the same things I have in my mind which are thank you to Laurie and her family to have hosted us, a lot of fun souvenirs and looking forward to Disney World with everyone!

Hope you enjoyed my journal, and have fun everybody!