Toulouse and life of the late!

Bonjour tout le monde!
A dream of mine ever since I arrived 79 days ago was to go to Toulouse, and guess what.. it came true last weekend!
After actually missing 2 trains in Tarbes, long story I wont go into detail why but some advice to you.. whenever travelling in France always take identification with you! Haha. So I eventually caught a train to Toulouse by myself, where I got to look out the window at the Pyrenees mountains all breathtakingly covered in snow, and arrived about an hour and a half later. My host sister Loany met me at the train station and from there we went back to her apartment (where I was going to be staying). Being all French, we made Gratin which is a Potato and cheese dish, however her microwave oven actually burnt everything we tried to make.. even cookies! That was so disappointing and I swear we could have died from the toxic fumes they were releasing into her small apartment! Ahah.
Later we took the metro (yes, metro!) into the centre of Toulouse to go shopping. I must say that was such an exciting moment of my life, taking the metro for the first time.. another Frenchy thing to tick of my list! ;)

Toulouse was magical- the streets were full of people, everyone wrapped up in coats and scarves as Autumn here is proving to be extremely cold.. I can't wait to see what winter will be like haha. There were also crepe stalls, a Carousel and Christmas decorations going up already but not being lit yet. Loany and I have planned that I'm going to go back just before Christmas to see all the lights and the markets they have out front of the Capitole -which I saw! (I'll put a picture below). We did lots of shopping and walked around the streets, there I confirmed my thoughts that I can never go back to shopping in the Dunedin clothing stores after France, they have got nothing on them here!
The next day I had my second AFS chapter function, where all of us exchange students and a few sending students had lunch and went to a museum together. Seeing the other exchange students again was really nice, people who understand exactly what it means to be an exchange student and often have the same thoughts and feelings as you. Surprisingly we all spoke in French practically the whole time although all of us know English! That was a little difficult to do at our camp in Lyron 1 month ago, so our improvement in the language is definitely evident! Kato, my friend from Belgium on her exchange here, is sadly finishing her exchange in one week! I'm going to miss her a lot, we were all a little emotional that it would maybe be the last time we would see her. We've all been a part of each other's lives since we first arrived in Paris for the beginning of our exchanges as we all shared a room together. I didn't know that in coming to France I'd get to make not only friends from here, but also from all over the world. And I have AFS to thank for that!

So the day before I left for Toulouse I said goodbye to my host brother who'll be living in Lyon, about 6 hours away I believe. I already miss him a lot, he's so cheerful and fun and he's always been there when I've needed someone! But with him being there, maybe that will give me a reason to see Lyon too!! Thankfully one of my host sisters has been here recently and we've been having fun baking Macarons and Eclairs, so I'm not like an only child just yet. I'm thinking it'll be strange, I've never been an only child before! But I've got a lot of support from my host parents and we have a lot of fun too so I think it won't bad, just different.

Update on how the language is going lately: About a week ago some of my friends were talking beside me as we were walking to the cantine. Usually I don't bother trying to understand because with the noise of cars and other people it was almost impossible for me to. But this time, without even putting thought into it I understood their whole conversation! That was such an amazing moment for me, one of those eureka moments when you realise how far you've come!
It's also really wonderful to see that it's not only me who's benefiting from my exchange, but also others are too..some of my friends here often speak in English to me, I correct them and respond in French. In doing this I've seen them improve a lot over 2 and a half months and one of my good friends, Sarah, told me she can even understand everything that I write on my blog! (I'm so proud of you petite fleur!)

Like my host mum and I were talking about today, when us exchange students talk with others in our host country, it's like we're giving them the opportunity to travel themselves. We open their mind to what life is like from where we come from and probably give them something to laugh about with our accent! :p I never really thought about this but it's so true. I love that I'm able to give people the opportunity to have a connection to the other side of the world, the exotic and mysterious Islands of New Zealand ;).

But basically my life here, I'm loving it. I have days where I'm not so enthusiastic or thrilled about my school timetable (3 and a half hours of maths, but also the same of economics in one day!), and this gets me a little down. But the good outweighs the bad, I have a family, friends, hobbies, things to look forward to like Belgium in January, Spain at one point, seeing Florence and Holly, skiing in winter and experiencing a French Christmas! And also a new 'French' life here which always surprises me with more exciting new things. At the same time, I have amazing support from friends and family in New Zealand who I love so much! I've really been given such an incredible opportunity, so thank you again to everyone who's made it possible for me!

Bisous <3

Making Macarons!

The museum

A Kiwi in France.. ;)

Kato! Haha

War memorial

Toulouse view from Loany's apartment!

Capitole!!

Didn't buy one but they looked gooodd!

The metro aha ;)

She may kill me for putting this up, do it for the fans Loany ;)

2 MONTHS!

2 months ago today I left New Zealand to create a new life in France immersed into their culture. I guess I should delve into my feelings about my whole experience and share them with you since today is a pretty significant day for me!

The first word that comes into mind is 'wow'. Looking back now at the person that I was 2 months ago, what I was expecting for my life to be like, and how limited my French was, I can see that I've already grown and learnt so many new things already.
I don't mean I've grown as in height, I'm still short, also I haven't put on any weight! Haha, But my mind has definitely grown. Coming to France has opened my eyes to what the world is like beyond the little isolated and safe Islands of New Zealand. France is such a significant country in the world, even just thinking that I'm in the same country that PARIS is in, almost everyone's dream place to visit one day, makes me realise that I'm now living in a country that people at least know exists and where it's located! (unlike New Zealand). That reminds me, so many people I've met thought that New Zealand was a part of Asia, just below China or one of the tiny islands above Australia haha what..

Over the past 2 months I've become habituated to French culture. Now kissing people on the cheek when greeting them (la bise), baguettes with everything,  a cheese course and yoghurt after every meal and many other things are normal. I've even become used to all of the smoking here, I no longer look at them astonished like before because it's just so normal here. Although, I'd never ever do it myself. It's funny to think back to New Zealand and how smoking is a rare thing these days, when I tell people that at my school they can't believe it.

I remember how the French language sounded to me when I first arrived, I could pick out key words but a lot of things like the tense I would totally miss. It sounded like all the words had been fused together into one very long mumbled word. Class was a nightmare, I would try to hide my face so the teachers wouldn't see me falling asleep because I couldn't understand anything. Economics and Philosophy would have had to be the worst classes as I'd never taken them before and the teachers mostly talk the whole time. But just today I had Economics and for one whole hour I listened to the teacher and actually understood what she was saying! That was like a milestone for me, I think the next one will be understanding movies and television series properly, and then after that understanding my host dad when he talks to me! He talks very fast haha. I have Philosophy tomorrow morning for 2 hours, I'm hoping it will be similar to my experience in Economics today..

During the holidays I spoke a lot of English with Loany and Holly. It made me feel a little guilty like I was cheating myself, and I even thought I'd forgotten some French. So once the holidays finished and the month of November had begun I made a plan to avoid speaking English for this whole month in order to improve a lot more (writing English doesn't count haha). It's already been a few days and I'm surprised at how easy it's been.. I'm still able to have big conversations with people. Most of the time it's pretty easy but when I get a little stuck they are always willing to help me despite how annoying it must be :p. Something I've loved the most about being here in France is all of the people I've been able to meet. I've never experienced so much hospitality, everyone that I've talked to is so welcoming and they think New Zealand is just the coolest. That's helped me realise how awesome my country is, when I return home I wont take it for granted any more. There's going to be a rugby match between New Zealand and France soon, it's funny because when I was home I would support France (mainly just to annoy my brother), but this time I'll be country proud and support New Zealand who I'm pretty sure will win anyway ;).

à bientot! <3

Les Vacances! (Holidays)

Hey everyone!

Wow it's been a while since I wrote on my blog, so now i'll fill you in on some of the things I spent my holidays doing!

The last day at school before my 2 weeks of holidays was so awesome, I started to feel like I belonged there because of the activities I'm involving myself in and the friends I've made. So I was a little sad to go on holidays, most of my closest friends here were going away and I thought I'd be stuck in the house bored, but I wasn't!..

During the first week Loany my host sister came to stay. Her and I have SO much fun together. We're always laughing, being crazy and I feel like there's nothing that we haven't talked about! It's our mission to do really fun things together, some activities we're looking forward to doing are skiing, horse riding, mountain climbing and l'accrobranche (a confidence course thing high up in the trees).
Her and I went indoor rock climbing, she'd never done it before so it was a really funny experience but seeing her trying to work the rope underneath me I must admit made me a little scared for my life haha. But after that she did so well! She looked like a little monkey, you couldn't even tell it was her first time. I really enjoyed it, it uses so many muscles of your body and it's actually a pretty good workout. I'm thinking of doing it as a club at school! The man working there showed us other things like climbing up a wall which then turned horizontal, without harnesses or any help! So we attempted to do that too, but we laughed so much so it was difficult to keep my strength up!
Other things we did were shopping, a photo shoot ;), watched movies, went out for a big lunch with all the extended family too, and on lazy days at home we painted while talking and listening to music.

The day that Loany left Holly came to stay at mine and the day after I caught the train with her to stay at her place! Our time together consisted of shopping, so much talking and laughing, Skyping with other New Zealand AFSers on their exchanges, and definitely a lot of eating not so healthy French food. But I've been exercising almost every day here (my brother will be proud :p) and i've only got 8 months left so I should experience as much of the French culture as I can (within reason) haha. Oh and we rode a carousel! What a funny experience, people were watching us and giggling because It was for little kids but with the fact that we're foreign we feel like we have an excuse to do weird and crazy things :p.
Having Holly just a 20 minute train ride away is such a highlight of my exchange, I can't believe I didn't know her very well until we were both in France catching the train together down from Paris to meet our host families. It was on that train that I realised what an awesome person she is, I'm glad she's living so close and we're already organising things to do next time we hang out!

Haha Loany! See my glass? That's a family joke to fill someone's glass right up. They got me..

We had a family lunch here, so picturesque!

Lunch

Me and Loany

Tarbes with Holly

Pau with Holly :)

Pau

Not the Carousel we rode sadly, but still cute!

Camp au Liron!

So 2 weekends ago we had our first local chapter camp! My chapter is the Toulouse one although it is almost two hours away from where I live. My chapter said that they're planning a soirée for us in Toulouse.. Ah I can't wait!! I really want to go there these holidays, my two host sisters live there so I'm really hoping I can!

After about an hour and a half of driving from my home I arrived at Liron where we were to have our camp. it was so picturesque! Farmland, beautiful trees and small villages. The place we stayed at was this big stone building with these cute tents that we slept in. It looked so inviting, got to love French architecture!
After everyone arrived we talked a lot together.. sometimes in English, but we would get told off by the volunteers haha. We actually spoke more French than I thought we would! It was so amazing to see the improvement in everyone's French in just one month. I sometimes worry that I wont ever become fluent, I just can't imagine myself being able to think freely in French. But I'm here for 10 months, it will come. I'm just impatient haha.
After some group sessions with the volunteers about our exchanges, we then had time to prepare for the Talent Show later on that night. We decided to do a strange dance, where the other 5 girls wore prom dresses and me.. well I wore this big freaky cloak thing, it was really flattering ;). Of course I couldn't take it seriously haha. 
We choreographed a dance 5 minutes before showing everyone, It was so funny and I did 'the worm' in my big cloak, it looked so strange later looking back on the video haha.
It was so great to see AFS students again that i'd met in Paris from USA, Belgium, Chile and also another New Zealander! For some reason our accents sounded so strange to each other, I guess I'm realising what us New Zealanders sound like! My chapter has more things planned for us in the future like going skiing together. Skiing in France.. I'm SO excited!

Bisous xx

Sabrina, me and Carissa

All of the students

1 Mois En France!

It marked exactly one month since I arrived while I was at Holly’s, I have reflected on how I feel, how it's been so far and what I’d like to change. 

I would like to be more active, positive and try new things such as sports here. Next week I’m going to begin playing Handball, I’ve never played in a team sport before so it’s an exciting thing for me! Also AFS students are known for getting fat (Another Fat Student) haha! I'm determined to defy this, I want to come back to New Zealand fitter than I was when I left! I know this is going to be difficult.. there are so many boulangeries (bakerys) here, lots of cheeses, lollies and even at school they've been selling chocolatines (pain du chocolat) so I can't get away from the temptations! 

I often don't pay attention when people are speaking in French around me (I think it’s a guilty pleasure of exchange students) haha. This month I’m going to try really hard to not do this, as a lot of people try to speak English to me so I've realised that I don’t end up hearing and translating that much French throughout my day as I thought I would. The process of becoming fluent will take so long if I don’t do this, and I hope to be getting there by Christmas so I have to try harder!

How do I feel that it's now been one month? There have been some difficult times but also some of the most exciting times of my life so the good outweigh the bad.
During my second and third weeks here I felt the most homesick. I felt as though I had experienced enough of France for now, I’d seen many things, tasted different foods, spoken French (improved a little too) and experienced what French school is like. I was feeling ready to go home. I think the main cause of this was because school feels like it goes on for one million hours every day, that’s ‘one million hours’ where I’m sitting there bored out of my mind not understanding the lesson and pretty much anything that is being said around me. This gets very frustrating, especially when i'm tired as all I want to do is sleep. But since then my French has improved even more and I’m able to understand some of the class if I try, and I’ve made some good friends here. I think that has helped me get over homesickness- having a social life! 

Now after school I don’t usually go home straight away, I often go to the centre of Bagnères (the town where my school is) and go to a café, or a friends house, or stay and play guitar with a group of people. After I’m done I take a bus home. As silly as it sounds, taking the bus makes me feel a lot more independent. It's not quite as exciting as having your own licence for sure, but I have the freedom to do things that I want to. Independence was something I was really hoping to build on over here.

My family here have been absolutely great, always helping, making me laugh, taking me places, speaking with me and just accepting me into their family like I’ve always been there. It’s definitely not their fault I was feeling homesick, it’s something that is almost inevitable for every exchange student. You can be having so much fun but there's still that thought in the back of your mind that you're missing out on things back home. So far I think that the feeling doesn't completely go away for a while, it just gets a little smaller each day as you immerse yourself more into your new life on your exchange.
I still miss my family, friends and New Zealand like crazy, but I’ve realized recently how short the time is left that I have here. I’m only here for 9 more months.. The first month went so quickly, I want to make the most of my time here as I know it’s going to go quickly and I’ll never get an opportunity quite like this again! After my exchange I know I’ll be returning to New Zealand and seeing everyone again, but I don’t know when I’ll come back to France and see everyone again here.
It's strange thinking back to when I first arrived at my host family's home. It's like i've been here for a long time, yet I still remember home in New Zealand like it was just yesterday. I'm contradicting myself, but the time here goes quickly and slowly at the same time! haha that's France for you I guess ;)
Here are some random photos from throughout my time here, enjoy.

à tout à l'heure! xx

Dinner outside (when it was warm). Typical French- Wine, Baguettes, Crepe with cheese

Dans le matin (in the morning)

Inside my school!

The jet stream, there are so many here! The sky usually has 4 or more all the time

Hiis

Skype with my mum! <3

Skype with Bekkie! <3

Weekend in Pau with an AFSer!

Two weeks ago I took a train to Pau, a beautiful city not far from where I live, to stay with an AFS New Zealand student (Holly) who I met this year on our camp in Wellington!
It was the first train ride I had taken by myself, I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t realise where to get off and find myself lost in France.. but it was easy!
It only took about 25 minutes by train from Lourdes to Pau! So I’m hoping to go again sometime, and for Holly to come stay with me!

Holly and I took the train from Paris to meet our host families together on September 8th, but we hadn't seen each other since! we greeted each other with ‘la bise’ as we’re now such French students ;), but it felt funny to do it to another New Zealander.
That day we went to the Castle of Pau.. the first castle I've walked around here in France! King Henry the fourth was born in the castle in 1553. Something very famous about this was that his cradle was made out of turtle shell and was preserved so you can still see it at the castle today! Also the castle was used by Napoleon as a summer residence!
Later we went shopping! One street that I remember in particular had so many shops that I’d heard of before but never been to. It was so exciting, I hadn’t been in so many awesome clothing shops at one time in my life, it was hard to decide what to buy! We went to H&M, Zara, Jennifer, Birshka and a few more.. we don’t have them in New Zealand (well in Dunedin anyway) so you can imagine how excited I was!
Holly told me about ice cream that she had bought in Pau which was the best she had ever had, apparently you can’t call it ‘just ice cream’ it’s far more than that. So while we were waiting for the store to open to buy some it started to rain very faintly. We thought it was okay, we’d keep waiting under the limited shelter that the tree gave us from above. However, within 1 minute it began to pour. When I say that, I mean POUR. It was crazy how fast it came, we decided to skip the ice cream (despite our disappointment) and find some better shelter and somewhere to eat. We got absolutely drenched running through the rain, every few minutes we would find a bar type place where people were sitting outside and stop for a second. They looked at us like we were crazy, like wild foreigners, as they were dry and calm sitting under cover while we were laughing, screaming and dripping wet. We eventually found a café to eat at, and again, people looked at us funny but that just made it more fun for us ;). This was the second time i've experienced crazy heavy rain here. The first time was while I was at school one day, it was really magnificent. Maybe it happens a lot here in this area of France?

I bought a few things in Pau but not as much as I thought I would. My parents will be happy at least!

Chez Holly (at Holly’s house) I found her family to be quite like mine here. For dinner everyone eats at the table and bread (baguettes of course) and water is with everything. There was a cheese course at the end also, but it was better for me because they didn’t have many really strange cheeses like my host father likes such as ‘Roquefort’ I suggest you look it up, the sight of it alone I think is enough to put you off but the smell.. that adds another reason to stay away haha.
The next day we made oreo cheesecake, we were both excited to bake again.. we hadn’t since we left New Zealand. It turned out well, but there were complications at the supermarket trying to find what ‘Cream cheese’ and ‘Sour cream’ were in French (story of my life). Luckily we found the right ones in the end and our cheesecake was good!

Later that day I took the train back home. It was so great to spend time with Holly! There are some things only a New Zealander can understand and only an AFS Student can understand. Holly is both, so we shared lots of our experiences together and laughed A LOT. I came back feeling refreshed and ready to speak French again.
We both have school holidays in one week so we're planning to see each other again. This time Holly will come stay with me and i'll show her my small village of Hiis, Tarbes, Lourdes and maybe even Bagnères where my school is. I really can't wait to see her again,
she's become a good friend of mine!

Holly, we were so excited about to ride that up a hill to get to the shops.. Just a normal thing in Pau!

Pau is so pretty!

The Castle of Pau!

Inside the castle courtyard

At the castle

At the cafe, this was pretty good

Some of the shops

A carousel in Pau

The Oreo Cheesecake!

Going home, the sky looked beautiful

Again