Blake Riley - VIC to France

Tue 25 Nov 2008

Hi there!

The first thing I have to say about my journey was that the plane trip was incredibly long. 21 hours of flying, 5 hours on the TGV (yay, fast train!), not to mention the endless hours of waiting (most of which were spent trying to catch up on lost sleep). Finally though, I was picked up from Gare St. Jean in Bordeaux by Olivier, Claire and Paul: my host father, mother and brother; my family for the next five months.

I wasn't allowed any time to sleep the day after, instead we went out on the Bassin d'Arcachon (west of Bordeaux), sailing on the family's boat. It was awesome fun, except for the fact that I was pretty weak-stomached after my flight, and there were big waves for the five minutes where we were outside of the bay, which lead to the inevitable. I felt better after though.

Bordeaux is a large French city (population over 750,000), the capital of Aquitaine, in the south-west of France. It's built on a river, la Garonne, which has a nice cool breeze on hot days. The temperature while I've been here has been mainly between 15-25, though we're starting to get into winter now, and some mornings are quite cold.

School, of course, is an everyday part of my exchange. I'm in 1eS8, which means I'm in premiere (the equivalent of Year 11), scientific stream, Class 8, at Lycée Michel Montaigne. My subjects are Maths, French, Latin, Physics/Chemistry, Earth and Life Sciences, History/Geography, English and Sport. Montaigne, as it's called, is one of Bordeaux's major lycées (high schools) and there are 1000 students here, just from Year 10 to 12! Not to mention that it's also the major school for preparatory classes for university in Bordeaux, which means there's another 1500 students here. It's pretty huge.

My first day at school was difficult as I found that despite having done three and a half years of French, up to Year 12 back home, I simply couldn't speak in French. I knew what I wanted to say, but I lacked the vocabulary to express myself. Nor could I understand this French that they were speaking, which made it scarier. It was simply twice as fast as any listening test that I'd ever done. (Even then Paul - my host brother - speaks faster than everyone else, even faster than the guy that does the "Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra" ads). This meant that my first day was spent mainly nodding, trying really hard to understand, and saying "Pardon?" lots. Now, however, I can speak as fast as everyone else in my class does normally, and have a constantly expanding vocabulary.

My class is awesome, everyone is really friendly. They often ask me about Australia, though they seem to be fascinated by sharks more than kangaroos and koalas. The teachers are kind, and understanding that sometimes I don't understand; and if we didn't have school on Saturday mornings and 10 hour days Mondays and Fridays (8 till 6), I'd call school in France pretty perfect. It's also more formal than in Australia. I got a test back in one of my classes with a lower mark than I was expecting; I said 'that sucks!' (in French of course, more specifically, a Bordelaise expression), and the teacher turned around and was about to give me a stern reprimand for speaking like that in her class before she realised I was the Aussie exchange student who had learned some local slang, which made her laugh!

The canteen serves good food, considering it has to make 1000 lunches a day and it's pretty cheap as well, working out at something like 2.66 Euros per lunch, which is around $A5. However, the canteen's always packed, which makes finding a table big enough for eight people to eat at the same time difficult enough.

Just two days ago, the entire Premiere level had to do the 'Bac Blanc', which is a practice-run of their big end-of-year French exam that they'll all have to sit. For the Frenchies, that went for four hours non-stop, but the Chinese exchange student in my class and I were lucky, and got an easier subject that only went for three hours. Tough enough though.

More exciting than exams though was the Earth and Life Sciences camp to the Pyrnes. While we were there primarily to study rocks, it just so happens that sites of geological importance also tend to be very picturesque. The teachers have been doing the same camp for a while now, so they know where the best spots are.
Right. That's enough about school. Apart from Bordeaux and the Bassin d'Arcachon, I've also been to Landiras quite a few times, where my host family owns a country house. It has a backyard big enough to kick a footy in, which I've done a few times with my host brother, and a nearby forest which you can ride bikes in.

I checked out Nantes for a day (a bit further up the French west coast), it was yet another pretty city, and very interesting, especially the block of houses which was built on an island, but now the rivers have been diverted and the soil's shifted, so there's a row of crooked houses with crooked chimneys there! I have also been mushroom hunting in the Massif Central mountain range for one weekend which was good fun, and very picturesque as well (and of course we cooked and ate our mushrooms afterwards).

Last night, my host father got the tape measure out and started sizing up my head. This means that we'll be going beret shopping pretty soon, which is a major step in my Gallicisation!

Well, that pretty much sums it up for what I've been doing here on the other side of the world. Paul, my host brother, has just come downstairs and told me to "get ready, we'll be leaving in five minutes". We're going to a soirée with some of his friends in the centre-ville (city), and then to the Garonne. Should be good fun, but I'd better put on some warmer clothes.

Till the next time,

Blake

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