Siobhan Neyland's 2nd Report from France
Sun 17 May 2009
Siobhan from Victoria is now in the middle of her exchange to France. She recently sent us a 2nd update on what she’s been up to in France!
“Well. What's been happening? I think the last email I wrote was in the last school holidays, and since then 6 weeks of school have passed and now I have more holidays. In the short term of school that passed not a lot happened differently. I made some new friends in my art class. We started doing running in sport which has encouraged me to do my own running as well, and I've been fairly disciplined, I have a very nice path in the forest that I can run along. I bought some running shoes.
At school there was the carnival and basically that just involves everyone dressing up however they want and someone wins best costume. I went for 'hippy'. Here are some examples from my friends: Ugly Betty, 'disco', The Joker. So yeah, anything.
I went to a protest in Toulon with some friends from my class because there was a national strike and no school. We met in Central Square and then marched, and chanted, and at the end we ate at McDonalds and then took the boat home.
History is by far the most interesting class; we have been studying the First World War and watched a really good film called Paths to Glory. I also attempted to write an essay on the effect of the war on the civilians... in French of course... I still haven't got it back.
Another highlight was our very small trip to Nice! I went with Karine and Roland and it was only for a night. We got there in the afternoon; the drive takes about two hours. Nice was really, really lovely. We had a lovely little hotel in the centre of town, and went for a long walk after checking in, just to see the pebbly beach and shops and everything. We saw an awesome piano player busker and later a guitarist who did an acoustic rendition of 'I will Survive' with a very nice accent. We ate at a nice restaurant which ended up being full of English tourists and I had Arrabiata which is Italian, then lemon gelato. Nice is very close to Italy so I guess there's quite a lot of influence.
We left kind of early the next morning so we'd have time to visit Cannes and St Tropez on the way back. We walked all along the beach in Cannes and saw the big stadium where they show all the movies and had lunch by the beach and there were also heaps of buskers. Very pretty. St Tropez was good too but we didn't spend that much time there.
My favorite show here is 'La Nouvelle Star' which is French equivalent of Aus Idol. Even though I hate AusIdol I like it here because it’s easy to understand and I like to hear people sing in French or sing in English with French accents. My favorite is this guy called dalé who did a very nice version of Joe Cocker's 'beautiful to me'. I'm getting much better at understanding the TV.
We had Easter with Karine's sister and family, it was good we had a little Easter egg hunt then ate lunch outside because the weather was very nice. I got a Lindt bunny which is all I wanted.
The goat and sheep that have all this time been free range have now been closed into a smaller terrain. It’s still way big enough, but they eat absolutely everything so are locked up during summer so we can grow all the vegetables. This also means my flowers I planted can grow. The radishes we planted a little while are already ready to eat! I tried some yesterday, not too bad; we eat them raw with salt or bread and butter. We are still to plant lettuce, tomatoes and zucchinis.
This afternoon my German friend Robin is coming over with his parents and they were staying here till Thursday. He's a fellow exchange student from school. It should be interesting though because while Robin speaks German English and French, the two parents speak no English and no French. So hard work for Robin.”
Siobhan
To read Siobhan first report from France click here.
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