Trés bien!

Ok, so I've been in France for three weeks. I suppose a blog is a good idea so I'll never have to send out group emails... yeah. How bout I start with everything I've done since I left 24 days ago? That'll be fun.

Well, on the sixth of Feb we made the trip to Melbourne Airport for the flight out. It was pretty damn exciting - you'd think you'd cry, leaving everything and everyone you know behind for a year, but none of us did... too much adrenaline I suppose. The worst bit was my 36 kilo luggage! I'm a fool, yeah... I really didn't think it'd be 36 kilos. I was pretty lucky they let me through!

Awesome Aidan and Krafty Claire came to see me off at the airport, as well as my family.
Here they are pictured in an Irish pub situated conveniently in the international departures lounge. Hmm.

So, we walked through that departure door and oh my god, it was time to go. The flight to Bangkok was a looonnnggg nine hours, but at least we had those personal TVs... gotta love 'em. I played poker on mine and watched Hairspray in french as well as a movie called Ensemble, C'est Tout, which I highly recommend.

We arrived in Bangkok at some really early time and walked into the extreme humidity! Was pretty crazy. We checked into our hotel which was quite niiice. I managed a whole two hours sleep. Here's the view from the hotel room window. Sorry it's sideways, I can't work out how to rotate photos on this thing. There was a bar in that pool which I found pretty cool... didn't actually go in cos I forgot my bathers!

At midnight, it was time to go to Paris! We were all as excited as fish and the twelve hour flight went really quickly. In Paris, we had to part! I was sad. Got to hang with Charlotte for a while cos her host mum got the flight time wrong and didn't turn up. Could have been a disaster but it turned out fine. I took my flight to Bordeaux, all by myself, sitting next to an old Spanish man who used to be a PE teacher and was obsessed with rugby. Luckily that flight was only an hour long. It was daytime so I saw the Eiffel Tower from the plane! Well, I found it exciting.

Alain from my Rotary club came to pick me up from the airport and took me to lunch at a portugese restaurant... it was awesome. He told me alll about the different kinds of cars in France and also the speed limits. One of my favourite topics of conversation, personally. It was in English though, and he told blonde jokes which was hilarious.

Next I arrived at my first host family! When I arrived, only 11 year old Léa was home. She's the coolest girl in the world - you can see her dancing the Tecktonik which is immensely popular in France. Look up the video clip for Alive by Mondotek. I love it!

Yeah, so, Léa showed me around the house, offered me some champagne. I had water. The house is really nice. It's big and has lots of phones and is kind of a terrace house and here's the view from my window:

and also the cat on my bed. I love the big European square pillows. Sorry, these photos are sideways as well... I don't have the software for my camera and the computer is in French!

My host mum arrived home next - she's really nice and never cooks anything with avocado in it. After her, Marie Charlotte, my other host sister, got home. She's gorgeous and really cool. I think I spent a lot of that night in my room, tired to the extreme after being awake for sixty or so hours, except for a few naps. My host father got home and gave me a giant Australian flag which was nice of him.

On my first day here we drove to see the sea. It's really nice but of course it's winter so no beach for me!

The best part is the boats. There are also some really pretty islands around here which I can't wait to go to one day.

I happened to arrive on the very last day of term, so my first two weeks here were school holidays. That sounds good but I actually got pretty bored by the end of it because we did a lot of staying at home. I did go out with Marie Charlotte and her friends a few times, that was good cos I got to meet people. Unfortunately a lot of them were boys with bikes and cigarettes who thought they were really cool... yeah. One day we started playing basketball with a stranger, that was fun.

That's Marie Charlotte, my host sister. She has relatively good taste in music, except for Simple Plan.

In my first week here we went with some friends to La Rochelle, a gorgeous nearby town. I bought the best black trench coat (only 50 €!) and a cute purse. We met up with an american guy called William and it was so nice to speak english! My french struggles.

La Rochelle is pretty pretty. Go there.

In the next week of the holidays I did not much. Lots of phone calls and emails and msn and myspace and even letters & postcards... was good. I did almost order raw meat at a restaurant, that could have been a disaster. It's served with a raw egg - I know cos my host mother ate it. Eew! Luckily the food in general here is pretty good. Like, normally I hate paté and blue cheese but here they're ok! The bread is of course great, and the desserts and the everything.

School started on Monday but my first day was Wednesday. I have good subjects: french, advanced english, maths, physics/chem, history/geography (half in english cos my class is so smart!) biology, german and PE. They're all pretty damn difficult, especially maths and physics. And German. Luckily my class isn't too crash hot in German so I might learn something. There are really nice people in my class so that's good... if only the food at school wasn't so revolting. They served us sauerkraut! Eeeeew.

So, that's my last three weeks made short. Well not that short, but I probably could have written a novel. Thanks for listening... à bientôt! Bisous!