Karen Heyer - NSW to France

Fri 01 Feb 2008

Karen Heyer, from Karabar High School in NSW, is due home soon after participating on our semester program to France. Here's her latest news.

My host family are lovely. They've all been really nice since the day I arrived, helping me with my French, and taking me to visit different places. They live in a double storey house in the suburb of Chartres. There are the 2 parents: Christine & Philippe, 3 kids: Nicolas (14), Laetitia (19) and Aurélie (22), and the cat 'Choupette'. The girls are studying and don't live at home anymore, but Laetitia usually comes home for the weekends and it's great being able to talk to her, because she did a year long exchange to Germany last year so she knows what it's like. Being an only child, it has been a great experience for me to live in a bigger family and have host siblings.

I don't really have any chores here, but I try and help out whenever I can. The food here is great - lots of pasta and such, so not too much of a change from what I used to eat in Australia. Except of course that there's a baguette on the table at every mealtime, and there are always lots of cheeses and yoghurt for dessert! I still haven't tried frogs legs or escargot... but I have discovered takeaway crepes and roasted chestnuts, mmm. It took me a while to get used to the idea of eating in the school canteen - I'm not a fan of the 30 min queue to get served, but you end up really appreciating being indoors and eating something warm in winter!

Most weekends I stay home with the family, but I've been really lucky that they've also taken me to visit Paris and Bretagne, and I also got to spend a week in Tours with the grandparents during the holidays, where they took me to see some chateaux which was awesome. The French exchange organisation PIE organised a weekend trip to Strasbourg in December that I also went on - it was fantastic. I loved seeing the Christmas markets, and it was fun getting to meet some of the other exchange students.

My coordinator is nice too. She came over in the evening and introduced herself to me and the family, but because there aren't any problems I haven't really had to talk to her.

At school I'm in 'première litterature' (year 11, literature) - I've finished school in Australia, but apparently they never put exchange students in year 12 in France, because the students are all really focused on their bac (HSC) and have to work too hard. My school here is like double the size of my old school in Australia - it has about 2000 students, and some of them board there during the week because they live too far away to travel to school every morning. It's non uniform which was an interesting change for me... instead of just grabbing my uniform I have to decide what to wear everyday! And the school days are loong - sometimes from 8am to 6pm! Luckily I get Wednesday afternoon off, and there's no school on Saturday (apparently there is in some French schools). On the other hand I have lots of free periods in between my classes, so it's not really that bad.

I do Maths, French, History/Geography, Sport, TPE (a research project done in groups), Science, Physics/Chemistry, 2 English classes, and German. History/Geography and German are my favourite classes. French is the hardest because we study stuff like La Fontaine's fables and Voltaire, where there's a lot of difficult old fashioned poetic language, but it's comforting that pretty much everyone else in my class also has trouble understanding it! Maths here is fairly easy for me because I've already done most of the stuff, and English obviously isn't a problem either - usually I just help out the others, but the teacher often also gets me to do all the exercises writing the answers in French. Sport has been pretty random - so far we've done weights, followed by ping pong!

Students here take school much more seriously than in Australia - I was surprised at first when I asked people what they were going to do Wednesday afternoon to hear them reply 'study'! The teachers dictate all the time in class too which was impossible for me at first. I had to copy all the notes off the person next to me. But it's getting easier to understand, and I can take some of my own notes now. Most of the teachers are really understanding, and explain everything that I have trouble with. Both my English teachers were really excited to have an Australian in their class - one of them got me to do a mini presentation on Australia for the class. I haven't been asked too many weird questions about Australia, except that everyone seems to think we love the Bee Gees... I didn't even know they were Australian!

All the people in my class have been really nice, showing me around the school, and explaining all the words I don't understand. At first it was really difficult to follow their conversations, they seemed so fast, but now it's much better, and I finally get most of the jokes! I have a group of friends that I always eat lunch with, and one of my friends catches the same bus as me too.

My host dad is letting me use his guitar, so outside of school I'm also taking guitar lessons here. I started teaching myself the guitar in Australia, but I've never taken lessons, so it has been really interesting learning to play the notes and all... but also really frustrating because it took me ages to get used to the French system of calling the notes 'do ré mi fa sol la si' instead of 'C D E F G A B'!

I'm having a great time here. I love Chartres, especially the centre with all the old stone buildings with shutters, the narrow paved streets, and the beautiful Cathedral. I was all prepared for the 'culture shock' stuff we were told about, but I haven't had any problems adapting. I can't believe how quickly 4 months have gone - I'm only here for another month now. I miss my friends and family in Australia and it'll be great to see them again, but it'll also be sad to leave everyone here behind. I'll definitely have to come back to visit!

Bisous! Karen.