Spain Trip

After my two weeks of school holidays I had the rotary bus trip to Spain. Wow, this was probably the coolest week of my life. It is amazing how well you get to know people after spending a week in a bus together! There was only one other girl who had also just arrived in January from Argentina, the rest of the people were from America, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Japan, Chile.. and yeah I think that was all! By the time it came to say goodbye we were all really sad as we had made some really good, most probably life long friends.

Day One
Paris. It was kinda dissapointing as it was raining and we hardly got off the bus to take photos. I am so pleased that I went with my host family the week before otherwise I think my impressions of Paris would not be very good. We just drove around on the bus and it was raining so all the photos through the windows aren't very good as there is water drops everywhere. We drove from Paris to the Futuroscope Hotel.

Day Two
We went to the futuroscope theme Park and it wasn't that great but it was something to do. The first ride we went on was the best as it is the newest. The other rides weren't that fun. We did this one ride and it was so dangerous I am surprised it is legal "it was like watching TV and getting beaten up at the same time" and "the only thing that would have made it more like a mugging would be if my handbag got stolen!" Haha those quotes pretty much sum the ride up I think!! It was also raining at the futuroscope which didn't help the situation. But lets put it this way- it was a day that I will never forget!

Day 3
We drove for ages (over 8hours) to Carcasonne which is this castle. We were also delayed for a couple of hours because we weren't allowed to drive anywhere due to that huge storm that killed 50 people, I don't know if you heard about it. Carcasonne was so pretty, we stayed in a youth hostel there which was really nice.

Day 4
Crossed the boarder to Spain! It was so nice and sunny! We were all so excited to be able to say the weather is hot! Nothing like the weather in France. We stopped for lunch in this amazing city called Géronne, lucky there were some spanish speakers in the group who could help us order our lunch!! We stayed in this hotel in Lloret de Mar which was not far from Barcelona and it was real nice with good breakfasts and dinners!

Day 5
Tour of Barcelona. It is truely an amazing city with awesome architecture. Theres this place from this movie ccalled Auberge d'Espagnol which I saw with my host families which we went to its where there are hundreds of mozaics everywhere and its called the "Serpentine Bench" We also did a bit of shopping in Bracelona which was nice.

Day 6
we visited the picasso museum which i really enjoyed it was raining a lot in Barcelona but we still had an awesome day. There was also this museum of this football stadium apparantly its the biggest in europe we went there it was pretty interesting. We did some more shopping and returned back to the hotel. That night we had a "soirée animée" and we all just went to the discotheque in the hotel it was a lot of fun and very tiring.

Day 7/8
Day 7 and 8 were pretty much just one huge day because no one really slept as we were travelling from Spain all the way back to paris. It was a long, uncomfortable ride! Our last stop in Spain was the Dali museum it was pretty cool but I was so tired from the night before that I didn't understand much. Me Lucy and Cassie (2 girls who I stayed with the whole time from America who are in my district) had the best lunch and it was nice to finish off in Spain with such great food! When we were back in Paris I took the TGV and arrived in Angers at around midday. I was so super tired that I ended up sleeping for almost 18hours once I had arrived home!

It was truely the week of a lifetime and I can't wait for the Eurotrip which is similar, if not better than the spain trip. It was definitely worth the money and I now have some of the most amazing memories and photos which will be with me forever. =)


everyone in the group =)


Carcasonne Castle


some of the group chilling at carcasonne


Lucy Cassie and I at the beach in Lloret de Mar


amazing cathedral


luisa and I at the serpetine bench place


i love Brazil =D

Paris

I know its been ages since my last post but I have been super busy!
On the 19th of Feb I finally got to see the city of my dreams. Paris. It was better than everything I had imagined. I went with my host parents and I also met up with Emily the other NZ girl who lives close to Paris and she came around with us for the day. Emily coming was only a last minute plan and I'm so pleased she came =) Its crazy to think that two girls from New Zealand can just spend the casual day in paris together. We went to Montmarte which is where the Sacré Coeur is and that was just amazing. It was a beautiful day in Paris with not a cloud in the sky, we couldn't have asked for a better day! Montmarte is where "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" has some scenes filmed. It was cool to be able to recognise that- Merci Monsieur Lynch! After Montmarte we had lunch at this restaurant by the notre dame and then we went to the Louvre museum which is where the painting of the mona lisa is, that was awesome to see. It was much smaller than I expected! The Louvre is huge and you need about 4 days to get around the whole thing, we were there for maybe 2 hours so didn't get to see much but it was still really cool. Next stop- le tour eiffel! We didnt climb up it but seeing it was enough, it is such a mindblowing monument and i took heaps of photos. It's something that you have to see in real life to understand the beauty of- the same with all of Paris really. After we had finished there Emily left and so Alain Veronique and I went to do some shopping at the Galerie Lafayette which might aswell be a museum itself because it is so huge with beautiful architecture. By the end of the day I was shattered we arrived back in Angers at 23h45 (that morning we left at 06h45!!). It was truely a day I will never forget and it was spent with a very good friend and my awesome host parents =)


me and emily at the eiffel tower


about to take the metro for the first time!


at the Sacrée Coeur


me at the Louvre =)

As you can see it was an awesome day in paris and we saw a lot of things =) I can't wait to return one day soon hopefully!

my new life

Salut!
Everyone (yes you Arameh) has been telling me to write another blog, so here it is =)
I have been really busy these last few weeks, and have been getting real tired. The tiredness is a lot to do with the long days at school, but also concentrating on listening to people when they talk to me. It's hard to explain, but I can't just sit there and understand people talking, I actually have to listen really, really carefully and concentrate on what they are saying. At times it can be a bit frustrating with the language barrier at school and that, because I want to say something but don't know how to say it in French. That is quite hard for me because like most of you know I love to talk and talk and talk, but here it's a bit hard to do that haha. The amount I speak in NZ in one day is probably the equivalent to what I speak here in one week. Maybe not even that lol, you get the picture anyway.

Ahh fashion y'all want to know about the fashion ay? Well all I can say is wow. I'll put it this way, no one comes to school wearing trackies and a hoody. I'm pretty sure that most the girls who go to my school could be models if they wanted to. I was talking to my host mum and she said that the girls at David d'Angers are known to be "très chic." I will put some photos up on facebook or something soon enough and you can see for yourselves. I really love the clothes they wear though. It's strange for me to wear mufti everyday and I suddenly have realised I don't have much clothes! When you wear mufti everyday it gets hard to find stuff to wear! I would definitely prefer to wear uniform, such less preparation!

All the people in my class are really nice and I enjoy school and have finally figured out my timetable (it has only taken 3 weeks), although I still understand nothing in my lessons! On Thursday night I went to the theatre with my French class, and well that was an experience and a half!! I probably understood two sentences in the whole piece. I think it would have been boring in English to be honest, there were two characters and all they did was talk, fight, talk, fight. Then they started throwing rubbish everywhere, now that was just random. The whole time I thought that they were father and daughter and then in the end they started kissing lol, so I got that a bit wrong. It was definitely an experience.

I am now on holidays for 3 weeks =D well officially it's 2 weeks, but when everyone goes back to school I have a bus trip with other exchange students in France and we are going to Spain for the week. I can't wait it's going to be so much fun and I will meet heaps of new people. These holidays I am going to Paris for the day with Alain and Véronique (my host parents) and Lea who is a family friend, shes 16. I am also going to stay at her house for 2 nights, and I am looking forward to that. Her family lives in the country about half an hour away so she goes to a different school. When I was told we were going to Paris I was sooo excited, if you have ever been into my bedroom in NZ you will have seen my obsession with Paris, so this is actually a dream come true.

I was told before I arrived that it will start getting warmer, well that was lies! I swear everyday it gets colder, like this morning I woke up to find snow everywhere. It's like being out on the Kepler all over again... everyday! It's crazy, and I am so jealous to hear about people at the beach in NZ!

Last weekend I went with my friend Lucas to Nantes. Nantes is the closest city to Angers and it's where a lot of the other exchange students in my district live. So I met up with them and we had a really good afternoon. Lucas is the guy from Brazil. We took the TGV which is soo fast compared to the Auckland trains. It takes an hour to drive to Nantes by car, in the tgv it took us 35 minutes. From Pukekohe to Auckland is about 40 minutes when there is no traffic, and in the train it's over an hour... So you can see why I was so amazed!

Tonight we had crêpes for tea! And I made them! It was really fun because we flip it in the air and catch it with the frying pan again. I made a couple of bad ones but I didn't drop any on the floor so that was good! I was a bit worried that I would throw them too high and they would land on the roof aswell! Haha- Only in France.

To be completely honest I don't really miss home that much, only the sunshine. It's because I have been so busy here adjusting to a new life I haven't had time to think about it. I am sure the homesickness will come at some point.

Well I will put a couple of photos up for you. To the St Mary's class of 2009; good luck to all you heading off to University, I'm thinking of you! =)
Laura xoxo


me and lucas at the patinoir (ice skating)


the snow outside my house this morning


me and véronique at this super old village just out of Angers, the roads are all made out of rocks, and the houses are of stone. The town is right by the river and it floods often, we are standing beside a sign which shows how much this town floods. It is so bad everyone leaves by boat!


Crêpe making!

La France, le première semaine. (France, the first week)

Okay its been a week since my last post and a lot has happened since then. It's been very busy, tiring, interesting, and I've also had heaps of fun. So here it is.

School
wow, school here is so different to St Marys! My school is called Lycée David D'Angers. Some mornings I start at 8, others at 9. And I finish either at 12pm, 4, or 5. My friends all finish at 6 on a tuesday because they have this study thing for the bac's which is kind of like our NCEA exams. The bac's are at the end of the school year which is June. It seems really stressful and the work looks really hard (not that I understand much) haha. The teachers speak sooooo fast and write nothing on the blackboard (yes blackboard, haha and I thought France was new age....) so I pretty much just end up sitting there doing nothing, sometimes I sleep, sometimes I try listen (it takes huge concentration though), and sometimes I copy what other people are writing. Oh and everyone here has neat as writing, its all kinda like caligraphy and linked, its really hard to read! So when the teacher does write the rare word on the board I can hardly tell what the letters are anyway. Everyone probs thinks my writing is messy as. We have 2 or 3 hours for lunch and we can do whatever we want. I have a card to eat at the canteen but the food isnt always that good. When we have 3 hours for lunch my friends go into town for lunch and then go shopping or something so we did that last week. Also people who live close to school return home and have lunch with their families. I went to Nicolas' last week for lunch and met his family which will soon be my family, I really enjoyed that. I am in the première grade which is the equivalent to 6th form, and after the summer holidays (july-ish) I will be in terminale (7th form). At my school they don't have options like we do but instead take either art subjects, science subjects, or social/economic subjects. I am in the social/economic group and I didn't get to choose it but its cool. The subjects I take are- Maths (i love maths because its stuff Ive done before and maths is universal), English, Advanced English (lol its either this or another maths),Economics (difficult- I do nothing), History/Geo (also impossible), PE (fun- we play volleyball), French, this thing like biology (equals sleepy time) and also this other subject and I have no idea what it is because I havent had it yet its on my time table as ECJS so whatever that is I'm sure it will be hard. Also if a teacher is away the class is cancelled- this has happened to me 3 times already. They don't have a morning tea break as such but instead there's 2 breaks during the day 15 mins each where we can leave if we want. Pretty much everyone goes outside the school for a smoke- everyone here smokes its crazy. I also have some lessonss that are 2hours long, those suck haha. When I tell people about the differences between school in NZ and here they are amazed especially at the fact that we wear a uniform and have no boys! (Schools like that dont exist here in France)


food/other stuff
Okay the food here is insane. Its so yum! But they never snack between meals so I am starving when the time comes to eat. Lunch and Dinner are both huge meals with like 4 courses. They have the best bread and cheese aswell!
Its really cold here ( sometimes in the minus degrees). To school I usually wear 5 layers and a scarf haha. But the houses/class rooms are warm enough, its just outside thats freezing. I went for a walk with my host Mum around the Lake in Angers called Lac de Maine its 5km around the lake and heaps of people go there for bike riding, running etc. It was really nice but cold as! Parts of the lake were completely frozen over it was really cool to see. Theres another rotary student at my school from Brazil but he arrived 6 months ago and will leave in june, he's really nice and we might be going to Nantes together this weekend. My house is real cool i love it here and I have a huge room, and they are renovating a bathroom that I will use. It will be finished in a week or so.

Anyway heres some photos for y'all. Enjoy and take care xx Laura



My school- its actually like a maze i never know where the class rooms are.



Inside the cathedral- amazing


me outside the cathedral


dinner at councillors house with all three sets of host parents and Nicolas


Me and my host mum at the Lake


My House- my room is at the very top where that window is =) its so nice!

Pics from my first day

I couldnt add photos before so heres a couple I took this morning after I woke up =)

Angers day one

Well I arrived in my host town last night at 9.30pm after a 10 and a half hour flite to Frankfurt, Germany. Then a 1 hour flight to Lyon, France. Then from there I had a 2hr flight into Nantes, France. Then I had to drive 1 hour to get to Angers. I am satying with my councilor and his wife for one week before I go to my host family because they live closer to school and it will be easier for me to go to school for the first couple of days living closer. Its really cool here, the appartment is real old and this huge cathedral is just across the road!! If you look up Angers on google you will see it. The bells from the clock however woke me up at 7 o'clock am. It was weird coz it rung 7 times at 7 then at 7.30 it rung more than 100 times (I counted) The appartment Im in is really tall and skinny. I have to climb 57 steps to get to my bedroom and the whole house is like 12 steps wide. I slept for 14 hours and I woke up and no one was home. But when I got out of the whower Thérèse (councillors wife) was home for lunch and she had cooked me lunch which is practically like dinner and so I had to eat like meat and stuff for breakfast! But it was yum. I can speak lots of French and so far have probably only said about 5 sentences in English. I have a huge advantage having learnt French before, umlike others who are goin to countries where the language is really rare. Evern when my hosts speak to me in English I try answer in French. Its monday and I am starting school on Weds. School is Mon-Fri but only the morning on a thursday. I am looking forwrd to school more now I found out that my 3rd host bro named Nicholas will be coming to school with me. Dominique (my councilor) will drop me at his house and we will walk to school together. Dominique is also organising a dinner witha all 3 host families, I don't know when I didn't really understand what he was saying. But Nicholas is going to USA next year and will be at the rotary meeting that I'm going to tonite. We are going bowling for the rotary meeting. The flight from LA tro germany was crap. Tiny seats, no leg space, no TV's and crap food. I didn't sleep much I felt real sick as that morning I woke up and vomitted in the hotel toilet. I think I was just really exhausted. I had my first real french meal last night when I arrived which consisted of chicken, salad, this salmon cake thing, and baguette, and red wine. Then for desert we had cheese and fruit haha. Its not too cold here, but when we arrived in Germany it was snowing and the flight was delayed to land because the snow had made the runway too slippery. We were only in Frankfurt for like 1hr because our flight was the first to leave and we had to rush and catch a train and a bus to get to our terminal! It was so strange to be in such a huge airport, I was so happy I had someone with me. The boy who I came into Nantes with is called Andrew he is not in Angers but very close, his host dad is like the youth exchange officer I think and we are going to have lunch together soon. It was good that me and Andrew could meet our families together it made it was less awkward. into Nantes, France. Then I had to drive 1 hour to get to Angers. I am currently at home by myself watching TV even though I understand nothing haha and its really dark but I can't find the light switch, I am going to look up in my dictionary in a moment how to say "where is the light switch?" hahah =b I am allowed to go out aswell so I might go for a little walk soon but it's kind of scary I have never been for a walk by myself in a strange town before!

LA baby

Disneyland was so awesome today, it rained heaps, and we got hail aswell, but because of the rain there was no queues for the rides so we went strait onto everything and so we saw everything. I went around with Alex and Kim from my district and also two other girls Laura and Emily who are both going to France and whoa were in thesame hotel room with me. Me emiy and Laura all get on real good and we are planning a shopping trip in Paris haha, Laura was in 5th form last year and Emily in 6th. We went on the swinging gondala at California adventure and when we got to the top there was hail and all you are in is a cage we got so soaked! I wore my chucks and they had puddles in them, it was so fun though. Disneyland was so much mopre exciting than last time I went because we did so much compared to last time. Graham the chaperone bought us all Ponchos so that was really good and we wore them pretty much all day. Aparantly it hadnt rained for a year in LA but it just happened to when we arrived, and the day we left it was so sunny. The next day we went to Universla studios and after we went to see some sites of LA like the hollywood sign on Hollywood Blvd and rodeo drive and some of the celebrity houses it was weet as! Universal was alright but not as good in the rain, the best ride (Jurassic Park) was shut due to the rain and some of the shows werent going. We still did the backlot tour which is when you go on a tram ride around all the sets. We didn't go down Wisteria Lane though because they were filming but we saw the end of it haha that was pretty cool. The other exchange students are really cool and its kinda like we have been friends for ages. The LA stopover was really worth it as we have now established friends who are all in the same position as eachother. There are 5 people in France this year from NZ and we will all be on the same Eurotour so that will be awesome. Hers some pics for y'all.
Laura x

Leaving Tomorrow

Wow, i can't believe that this time in 24hours i will be in the car on the way to the airport! I have a few mixed emotions at the moment. It hasn't entirely hit me yet that I will be leaving all that I have ever known for something which I have no idea what to expect. This is kind of a test post aswell just so I can figure out how to use this thing before I actually get over there and have something exciting to tell you all! Well my bags are packed, and hopefully are not over weight! I've had an awesome summer which is cool because soon I will be in the snow. From the moment i finished my last exam i have been so busy preparing for this, it feels strange to think that all the work I've put in, in between school, study, Duke of Ed, New Year etc. is about to all pay off. Well thats it from little old Pukekohe, my next post will be all the way on the other side of the world in Angers, France.
Au revoir mes amies!!
xxxLaura