Sunday, September 13, 2009

I'm in France!!!!!




Bonjour tout le monde! (Hello everyone)

I've only been here for 2 weeks yet it feels so much longer!! I'm missing my family and friends in NZ a lot!! BUT I'm settling in well here now. It's a beautiful town, way greener than I thought. All the Frenchies have been really friendly and helpful, and most of the time I'm managing to make myself understood.
(That's my bedroom).

The trip over was LONG but otherwise fine. I had to catch a train from Lyon airport to Chambery, then another to Albert
ville. I managed to buy a ticket no problem. Then just wait for the train. Decided I should answer a call of nature before the train came, and while I was so engaged, I heard them announce that the train was coming. So I hurried as fast as possible to the platform - with my 30kg of baggage, + my 7kg cabin bag. Whew! Made it before the train left, yay. But then I realised that I was in a 1st class carriage but had only paid for a 2nd class ticket!!! "Man, they're gonna throw me off" I thought. And none of the carriages are interconnected. As I got off I saw a conductor and he asked me what was wrong. So I wanted to say that I was on the wrong carriage. But actually I said "the carriage is bad". He probably t
hought, "This is as good as it gets." Anyway I showed him my ticket and he told me to follow him. So we were going as fast as along the platform... still with my 37kg of luggage!! And it was like 30deg so I was boiling! Finally we made it to my carriage. Then he said that my seat was actually upstairs and I must've given him an overwhelmed look, cos he said "you can just stay there." Once at Chambery someone told me what platform I needed to be on to catch the train to Albertville so that was easy. And that train wasn't as flash so I just sat whereever. Well, now I know a bit more about the trains in Franc
e...

There's about 40 students here at the school, mostly Americans but also 4 Dutch, 2 other kiwis (yay), 2 Aussies, 1 Ugandan, 1 Irish, 1 English, 1 Spanish, & 1 Italian. Lots of people having trouble understanding my accent!! Sometimes it's my pronounciation; sometimes it's the words I use. But most of the time we communicate fine. I'm in the intermediate class, and there's only 9 of us in that which is sweet. Our teacher, Valerie, is really nice. We only have 20h of class a week, with Wednesdays as well as Saturdays and Sundays off!! Apparently most businesses have Wednesdays off b
ecause of the recession. Suits me! 20h of class doesn't sound like a lot, but it is. She teaches us the grammar in French; no English allowed. A couple of people in our class sometimes use English to clarify something, but we're meant to only use French. That's what we're here for after all! So those of us in the intermediate or advanced class are to use French all the time while on campus. But we do get some reprieve when we speak to the students in the beginning class! Yay for beginners!! I realised that I can't write and listen to my teacher at the same time, & I have to be really deliberate about listening all the time.

Apart from class, we're strongly encouraged t
o join a club to get to know people and parlez en francais. There are 265 clubs/associations in Albertville. Quite a lot for a town of 20,000 residents! I'm going to check out handball this week and maybe volleyball too. And of course there's church too. I've been going to a nice church about 10mins walk away, & most of the time I can catch the gist of what's going on. The singing is great practice for my pronounciation as well as learning new vocab. I now know how to say 'bend your knees' : "Fleche ses genous" Never know when you might need to say that!! Other handy words I've learned: Accro
branche = obstacle course in a forest; Faire de la randonee = go tramping; mere au foyer = stay-at-home-mum; les feuilles jaunissent = the leaves turn yellow. We're entering into autumn, but it doesn't feel like it yet to me. The temp since I got here has been in the 20s, really
nice. Rained once or twice, but only at night.

Last w
eekend about 10 of us went for a walk up a mountain. (Well, we did drive some of the way up). It's called "La belle etoile", the beautiful star. Pretty steep going but so worth it!!!! It took us 2h to climb up
and not long to get down. Check out some of the pics! The one on the left is of the valley in which Albertville is, then the group photo (with Mont Blanc obscured by clouds), and then a view overlooking Annecy, a town just to the north of Albertville.