Siobhan Neyland - VIC to France

Mon 09 Feb 2009

Siobhan Neyland, from Port Melbourne VIC, recently provided us with an update of her experience thus far:

Hello!

The mornings are very dark and cold and start off when I get a hot cup of milk and put chocolate cereal in it. Karine (my host mum) makes a little glass of fresh OJ and then I drink a small black coffee with strange bread and some biscuits. That’s my breakfast.

I walk in the dark for about ten minutes to get to the bus terminal and the bus is normally sitting there so I don’t have to wait in the cold. The bus ride to school is about half an hour and sometimes my classmates are on the same bus as me. School mostly starts at 8am but sometimes it doesn’t start til 12! And sometimes it even finishes at 12! I don’t have too many sessions, but its enough! I’m mostly friends with the people in my class, they are all find me very intriguing and either speak to me slowly in French or they practice their English with me.

English class is a nice bludge yet interesting, and the other classes are all good. French is quite hard but in history I get the general picture. The other day we analysed a ‘Tintin in the Congo’ comic, because we are doing colonialism. Luckily science is only once a week and so is maths. I also get 3 hours of free French grammar tutoring from one of the French teachers who has lots of free time it seems. She does that with a few exchange students. All the English teachers have American accents. As does the German exchange student in my class who spent the last 4 months in Texas. He’s really funny. I have a few friends now! And I’m learning how to get around on the buses by myself... its awesome because I have a bus card which is a bit expensive but its unlimited bus trips for a month on any bus AND on boats, and there’s a boat which goes across the bay to Toulon, the city.

I’ve been watching a lot of dubbed episodes of ‘Friends’, they usually show about 3 episode per night. The Simpsons is dubbed as well, and it’s pretty funny because they don’t get Homer’s voice right at all. But whatever I watch it’s good, it’s all helping my French.

In my host family’s house there is a rabbit who lives indoors called La Pinnou. He also runs around outside during the day in the cold with his wild rabbit friends and with the goat and sheep and donkeys. It’s very cute!

My two host parents are really great! They always give me my space but they are also always there to talk to me, play cards, watch TV together or even go walking. Although I also like going walking by myself. They also have lots of bikes which is good, so I can ride places as well if I want to.

I bought some boots last weekend which have been very good for the cold. Things are very very expensive here today. Today I had a latte and it ended up being the equivalent of about 7 bucks! I'll stick to black coffee at home. They have a great little machine anyway. The food here has been great, baguettes with every meal, and all sorts of interesting dishes. Lunches at school are also quite good, especially the desserts and yoghurts and stuff.

I’m giving my host mother Karine some English lessons and both her and Roland are very helpful with my French which we speak all the time. They speak slower for me, but it’s getting easier to understand them already.

In French class we are just about to start Hamlet. Even though it’s cold here it’s mostly been sunny and clear and not too windy either. There is no school today because of a national strike; my classmates said its just 'comme d'habitude' and Roland said that it’s the French national sport.

At the moment I’m trying to read Le Petit Prince and today I bought Le Monde (a newspaper similar to the Australian but it was a bit too hard for me!

Some of my friends have similar taste of music, and they like a lot of American stuff. They also love Twilight, House and Angel. Karine owns a little snack bar place which mainly serves a junior high school (collège) and she makes these killer toasted baguettes and she sells sour strips which are my favourite lollies.

I guess I’m pretty lucky to be missing the extreme heat wave but I do miss Australia, and of course I miss everyone. I hope I've given you a bit of an idea of my new and very different life!

Siobhan

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