'ullo all, hows it goin? i'm feeling better, i am at school today and my flu is gone to be replaced by a throbbing ear ache and (throbbing-er?) very sore throat. but better. interesting to note that my accent has been very much improved by my illness- the raw throat makes it easy to r-r-r-roll the r-r-r-r-r's and having a blocked nose helps to sound nasal lol. perhaps that is how french developed in this cold climate full of colds.

another tricky thing about the language is that they don't have a verb that corresponds with 'to get'. and we use that for heaps of things- to get old, to get paid, to get angry, to get late, to get from a to b, to get to like someone, to get something done, to get drunk, to get 5/10, to get your hair cut... so all of these things in french are said with different verbs and its so hard to think of the right one when your minds going GET GET GET GET. bah, very annoying;

OK thats all i have time for, i am in the library at school again but today i picked a computer connected to a keyboard that doesnt sound like fireworks are exploding while you type, and it is the end of the session. ciao!

wow, i have made it to a month! i honestly can't believe it, but i'm so happy to be here and doing this, and also very very lucky. on friday it was exactly four weeks since i got here and sunday was a month cos i arrived on the 3rd of November. 

schools been pretty good, i'm working out whats going on and feeling more comfortable there. its still incredibly tiring though and usually thursdays and especially fridays its really hard concentrating in the afternoon.

on wednesday i went with Isa, Charles and his friend Timothy to a show called les zebres en pyjamas, which i thought might have cool costumes and stuff, but turned out to be two middle aged guys with guitars and a freaky man who played accordion. we had to take the metro and then a tram for about 30 minutes out of the city and it was absolutely packed, but funny cos the little boys just kept on swinging themselves around this pole and chasing each other- charles kept kissing timothy on the cheek to annoy him lol. anyway we ended up in the ugliest suburban hell, with a huge dirty freeway and sad little shops and it was just cold and grey and dry and desolate. we went to the theatre and sat through this hour long show which i didnt really understand much of, isa and i spent most of the time glaring behind us at the little girls who kept kicking the back of our seats and touching out hair... it was kind of insane, this whole hall (it was like the BARC auditorium) full of kids jumping and screaming. 

anyway it got suckier coming home cos we walked for about 10 minutes back through this cold ugly wasteland and then isa discovered she'd lost her phone so we had to walk back to the theatre to get it and then again to the tram stop, where we let a few trams go without getting on cos they were all packed full of people. we finally got on one and even managed to get seats after a while but charles decided he was feeling sick so we got off and sat at a stop for 10 minutes until he decided he felt better. when we got off again isa and the boys took the metro to the house but i walked home and looked at a few shops and stuff. it was dark by then so it was kind of annoying that i wasted my free afternoon with that. ah well.

on friday i went shopping after school and also got some cakey things and walked along the river... it was so cool. i always have these moments where i just think of myself standing on a river bank surrounded by cyclists and tall buildings and autumn leaves and realise that i'm in france and half a world away from everyone that i know and its incredible. but so exciting! 

saturday morning i slept in and had much coffee and a fresh chocolate brioche while i watched cartoons with charles once i woke up. then he went to gymnastics and i walked to the belle cour and bought some shiny shiny jewellery and blue nail polish and found the most awesome tall skinny shop that is full of hilarious Tshirts. 

i bummed around in the afternoon with Isa and Charles and eventually pumped myself up enough to go for a run and it was soooo good. i listened to a science podcast a while ago that said that running is one of the sports that gives you the best high cos its so rough to the body, making you produce all those groovy chemicals to counteract the stress ur suffering. but i felt so so good after, and came back and painted my toenails and had a scrubs marathon (on my ipod). 

that night i dont know what happened, charles woke up crying a bit and i just couldnt get to sleep, i ended up having about 3 hours i think. we left before nine on sunday morning to visit elisabeths friends who live in a little city an hour away, at the foot of where the alps begin. its just before grenoble and on the way to marseille. elisabeth met claire when they studied orthodontistry together, and i met her and her husband jacques (i find this so amusing, that his name is jacques; i also know a jean and 2 françois'!!), their two kids, Rèmi, whos 17 and another one we didnt see much whos 12. claire's mother and father were there as well. they were the nicest family, claire and her mum were so so kind, the clare's parents had been to australia and they showed me all their brochures and maps and everything. jacques was so cool too, he has the most expressive face i've ever seen and was really funny. he also says merde and putain (literally means whore, but french people use it for everything) all the time but in such a casual way its not offensive. 

it was so incredible seeing the mountains, as we drove towards them through these very pretty little stone villages with churches and sheep etc, and they're just bigger than anything we got in australia. i remember it being like that in canada, i just couldnt believe how huge these things were. the whole day i kept getting reminded of lord of the rings, it started when i saw this massive mountain that was so tall the top was in the clouds, and between it and another huge mountain was nestled the city of grenoble, and it looked just like something from the film. 

anyway when we got there they were preparing lunch and i talked to claire's mother while she cooked. she's learnt english for 24 years and although she spoke to me in french she was very clear and slow and i had no problems understanding her. i played table tennis in the garden with charles and the sun was out for a bit- i kept getting distracted and just staring in awe at the mountains around us. we had an incredible lunch and i ate an estimated 5 times more than my stomach's maximum capacity. i wasnt even hungry when we started cos i was feeling a bit flu-ey that morning but they literally force fed me, i didnt have a choice. 

we had the apperitif of nuts, biscuits and little fresh pastries with vegetables and meat in them, then quiche with a huge bowl of lettuce, then a big platter of scalloped potatoes drenched in cream, meat with caramelised onions and a soup with pupmpkin, mushrooms, and other vegetables i didnt know in french. then after cheeses, vanilla flan, two fruit pies and coffee and sparkling wine to celebrate my one month anniversary. all with large amounts of fresh bread.

then elisabeth, charles, me, claire, jacques and their eldest son rèmi visited a monastery on the mountain. i went with rèmi and jacques in his new citröen, which was fun. jacques chatted a bit... rèmi bought his physics text book in the car ('nuff said). it was about a 40 minute drive passing through first the city, then the most beautiful little town that was all wasted, with really old buildings with flaking paint and crumbling stone and thatch and shutters and little narrow streets. i saw SO MANY church spires on the way, it was ridiculous, seriously i dont understand how there were so many.. there cannot possibly have been enough people in the area to fill them all. but they were very pretty. 

we then started climbing the mountain and i was stunned by what we saw, just all the little rivers and the forest and the stone and the drops, it was amazing. then jacques went 'oh putain, ROLLS!' and i was confused but what had been happened is that we had been passed by this vintage rolls royce which  he wanted to see, so we went speeding off after it and chased it at dizzying speeds for a while until it got bored of us i reckon and pulled away. 

we arrived and walked about two k's on up the mountain to the monastery. the path was so ridicuously european, with huge trees with massive roots on either side and beyong them green fields and mountain sides covered in more trees. usually there would be snow at that altitude but apparently the weathers been really weird for this time of year, more like spring than late autumn. we saw a patch that had been dug up by moles!!! but no moles :( 

i was kind of feeling really happy, possible a little drunk from the wine at dessert and lunch- jacques kept saying 'un petit goût!' (a little taste) and giving me more- and i was talking to him and claire and they gave me some french expressions and i told them that my friend had told me how to say ' i froze my ass off' after she went rock climbing. i was just joking around and laughing and they were very amused by me and kept saying 'elle est trop mignonne' which i thought was funnier. they said that the expression 'to have your feet in the water' is to live by the sea, which i liked. 

at this time charles was collecting masses of moss to leave out for the reindeer to eat at christmas time. we eventually got to the monastery which was amazing, it was very huge and all made of stone and built at the start of the 10th century so i cant even imagine how much effort it would have taken to build it there so high in the mountains. and how cold it would be!!! the monks all take a vow of silence and when you go in you dont come out. but there were a fair few people around, doing hikes or just tourist trips like us, outside the walls of the place, and we walked around the surrounding area a bit. the LOTR theme continued, there were trees with big roots like frodo and sam hide from the ring wraith under, and even- this was crazy- a hobbit house built in under the earth. i dont even know why it was there. we followed a track up along behind the monastery through the trees, and saw little mushrooms and stuff, and could hear the bells tolling from inside the walls. then we came down a wide green grassy slope alongside a river bed lined with white stones, and we could see the old stone monastery through the wood and all around us were huge peaks and white sky. it was unbelievable. 

i probably should've stayed at home yesterday and not gone out climbing mountains considering i was so sleep deprived on top of starting to get sick but i'm so glad i went. it was awesome. back at the house we found my house on google earth, you can even see a little white spot thats our volvo! then i watched a game show with clare's mother but i was so tired by then... we had cups of tea and 'clare's famous ham sanwhiches' which were just baguette with slabs of butter and slices of ham on... but really yummy. they made me drink some of this liquor that is made on the mountain close by (jacques had told me a bit about it when we drove past the factory) from 30 different herbs, but mainly sugar. i thought it was a 'fun' alchohol but its to help with digestion and is meant to be very good for your health. it was in this little glass bottle in a wooden case and they sprinkle a few drops on a sugar cube that you then crunch up. it tasted herbally... and alcoholly, it was 71%!

we eventually left and got home at about 7. i had a shower and pretty much went straight to bed. i still felt so full i didnt even want to think about food. i had weird feverish dreams last night that i think were in french but i cant remember properly, it might not have even made sense... when i woke up i was so overheated and thirsty and had a headache and felt sore and weak. i got up to have a shower thinking maybe itd be alright but it wasnt. when i was dressed i sat back down on my bed and didnt get up again. i felt so truly terrible and it was awful, i was trying to explain to elisabeth but i didnt know the words and i was crying cos it was so hard. anyway she gave me pills and i went back to sleep until 12. i still feel achy and drained but by tomorrow hopefully i'll be alright again. i'll put some photos up that i took yesterday as well. salut!

ok well i've decided to do a blog entry about the french language cos i havent done much about that and its kinda the point i'm here and all. i'm going pretty well with my conversation stuff, its getting really easy to learn new words, usually if i see them written down first and then hear someone say them and recognise them... i learnt really quickly when i got here things like sorry, i'm australian, please say that again, what did he say?, i'm late, i don't understand, stuff like that lol. i reckon i've learnt alot from elisabeth in the routine (train-train lol is what they call it) of the family, cos everything is repeated every day. elisabeth has said that she's surprised at how large my vocabulary is but also theres some gaps... like i somehow remembered debarrasser which is to clear the table but then other simple words i wouldnt know. and its no use knowing lots of words if you dont know how to put them together, which is what i've been learning so now i'm remembering more and more words and learning new ones. also often you can tell that some words will be understood if u try them with a french accent hahaha. this doesnt always work though, and its very annoying when you can think of 3, 5, 10 ways of saying what you're thinking in english, but just can't work it out in french. like the other day i was trying to talk about the interest charles has in the world in general and all of his wonder... awe... amazement... curiosity... fascination and i could think of all of these but not a french equivelant. i just looked it up in my dictionary and it turns out its respect mêlé de crainte so i'm not surprised.

at school the subjects are getting easier, french and history have always been pretty good cos stuff is written down alot.. physics i am so so happy about at the moment cos we started a new subject last week and i understood EVERYTHING, better than some of the other kids in the class!! so so exciting. maths also, today was the first class where i did any work. apart from the infamous test where i got 5%. i don't know if it was really infamous but it was pretty horrifying lol. anyway all the work the class was doing before was based around proving theorems with a lot of language, and now we are onto good old surds. i have never ever been so happy to see surds on a whiteboard! there are still days when its painful being at school but the teachers just let me sit and read or doodle. 

sometimes i realise i'm thinking things in french, making comments to myself in my head or thinking about what i'm going to do next, and i automatically react to things in french now, the other night i was in bed and half asleep and rolled over and stabbed myself in the eye and immediately said AI!!! and then got so ecstatic cos thats what french people say instead of ow. they also say meuh instead of moo (for a cow), cocorico instead of cockadoodledoo, toc toc for knock knock and sirens go pinpon... i dont know how the go in aus... wee-ooh? anyway most of these things i've picked up living with a little kid. theres other stuff i didnt get at the start where things dont translate literally from english... like they say to take a decision instead of to make a decision, or to walk under the rain instead of in the rain. other cute little things that french kids do is that they say cuckoo! like we'd use peekaboo, and hoopla! of something falls over or they jump or something... both of these things sound so cute in the accent. the first weekend i was here charles jumped down a whole flight of stairs going 'oopla, 'oopla! on every step and it was so adorable i nearly died lol. 

another thing i do in class when i'm really lost is go through my french dictionary highlighting useful words and stuff, and i've also found some that really amuse me... i'll put them here but i'm not so sure anyone else'll find it as interesting as i do!

• theres a verb (one word!) for to rest one's elbows on/against. see, this is neat and time conserving (and just maybe possibly a little useless) but in other ways french takes alot of effort, for egsample they don't have to nod, they have to make a sign with the head.
• to say the beard!!! means damn it
• they call fire hydrants the mouths of fire
• brouhaha means hubbub. i love those two words lol.
• to play cache-cache is hide and seek
• they call mufflers hide-noses
• to have the cockroach is to be down in the dumps
• theres a verb for burnt to ashes
• caoutchouc means rubber. i reckon its an awesome word and i will never ever be able to pronounce it.
• theres a verb for to sing to oneself
• lol, i love this.. to say hat! means well done!
• they call apple turnover a slipper of apples.
• ATTENTION EVERYONE this made me laugh for about a week cos it is so fabuously ridiculous and weird: their word for bat is simply bald-monkey. is that not the most fantastic thing you have every learnt? it amuses me so much.
• cliqueter is to jangle/jingle (whichever floats your boat)
• theres also lots of words which mean completely different things depending on the context but still have the same spelling and gender, such as:
• circus/chaos
• ankle/peg/plug
• air (like we breath)/tune (music)
  
• chopstick/baguette (of bread)
• dumkit/pots and pans- i love that they don't differentiate
• badger/shaving brush... that could be very confusing
• bang/party

ok here i am in the school library typing on the noisiest keyboard in the world. i have a study session in while the rest of the class has german and it is just me and the librarian in here and she is very nervous looking and i'm concerned i may startle her with the banging of the keys. um alrighty yesterday afternoon i ended up not going to school cos it seemed fairly pointless considering the uninspiring range of subjects on my timetable that afternoon and instead lay on the couch and ate bread with cream-cheese and butter dipped in large quantities of coffee and watched the lion king in french. it was really cool and funny and crazy and my favourite bit was when the monkey said "suivez vieil rafiki, il connaît le chemin", quite hilarious in any language that line. anyway it ended up being a day for sickies... elisabeth wasnt at the house that afternoon cos she had to go to the hospital to get scans on her foot cos its been hurting and when she got back mid afternoon she bought charles with her cos he had gastro and had been vomiting. she told me to stay away from him cos he was contagious and of course he just wanted to play and be cuddled. i was reading on the couch and he started slithering up beside me and up along the back of it and under my legs and humming this really random tune that had a note every 5 seconds. lol it was so cute and so i stuffed him into a crack between the sitee and the couch and piled all the cushions i could find in the house onto him. i thought he'd suffocate (that was the plane... joke) but he loved it. i went out for a bit to find a post box and got a chance to swagger around in my big black pirate boots that i bought last thursday at lunchtime in a little chinese shop. they only cost me 20 € and they're all buckly and cool. anyway early nights (7.30) for all but i didnt get to sleep for a while cos i'd slept so late in the morning and charles got sicker and woke up crying and i think vomiting about every hour until i went to sleep at 12. i finished on the road by kerouac and listened to podcasts from the philosophy show on abc radio while sucking on strepsils for my throat and my head was absolutely spinning with crazy thoughts. this morning my throat was muchly better and i went to school. it was all just normal school stuff but at lunchtime i went back to that crazy big park. it is so so so awesome! when i went there the first time i said to someone that there were lions and tigers and bears and i was just joking cos there were meercats and bison things BUT SERIOUSLY THERE IS LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS!!!!!! this is literally across the road from the school! and also giraffes, elephants, mini leopards, full size leopards, zebras, lamas, geese (ooh are they fierce), flamingos, pelicans (who i think might have been getting funky with the flamingoes cos there are PINK PELICANS with purple and yellow beaks), those bisony oxy big beasties that have horns longer than my arm and about four times as thick, millions of turtles covering rocks and logs and huge tortoises under heat lamps, bat eared foxes, marmosets, tamarins, capucins, lemurs, gibbons, mangabeys, poneys and sheep! and wildlife photographers with telephoto lenses. and you can just wander in off the street and wonder. i watched the elephants the most they were so incredibly gorgeous and grand and coordinated and WEIRD and the more i looked at them the more they looked like crazily carved old stone statues that had come to life. i also saw a man in a red jumper riding a bike and singing opera at the top of his voice and a 45 year old woman running in a sports bra and lycra underwear looking in about the most amount of pain i have ever seen on a human face. when i walked into the park i was in the botanic section and went past the cactus garden and the greenhouses to a little groto that was so pretty and private with this beautifully coloured ducks and i liked it so much i got naked... JOKE but seriously i did. cos i was wearing my jeans and wanted to put on the trackies i had in my bag for sport and the toilets were... i cannot even begin to describe the smell that acosted me from 15 metres away. so i sat on these little steps behind some bushes with the friendly ducks and QUICKLY QUICKLY changed and it was all groovy and i was free to ramble. the sky was all blue and it was clear and fresh and beautiful and i went past a park of deer which were so cool to the zoo bit and spent a while there and then walked around the lake, through an autumn forest that had all these sculptures set up of warped bent figures made of iron and a house made of leaves and a big ball with little statues climbing up it and poles covered with coloured feathers and all this other stuff and i ALSO found a cafe that sells GAUFRES with CHANTILLY and CHOCOLATE like i had at la vogue and i will most certainly be returning. the other side of the lake changed again and was like an oriental garden with not so many people running and biking and more old couples sitting holding hands or business people eating out of packets or women in boots and coats carrying their bags of shopping along. the trees were smaller and more delicate and leant out over the water and i wish i had camera today cos it was so pretty with the sun shining through. theres also this big grey stone island in the centre of the lake and i couldnt see how you could get to it without a boat but i really wanted to go over there cos it looked very cool and mysterious. then i walked past what i thought was a staircase going down into the water and realised was a tunnell under the lake to the island so i went down it and it freaked me out being there so i sprinted through under all the water and came out on the other side and it was a memorial thing for the french soldiers with big statues and fountains and walls of carved names and flowers and i was the only one on it and walked all over it and it was beautiful and serene and sad. then i had to get back to school so i walked back through all this and got changed in a cubicle at school and ran up to the third floor of one building to our home room and down again and then up another three storeys of another building to arts/plastiques which is my favourite class and the one we have the least of, along with music. its so dodgy, france is meant to be all beautiful and artistic but in the school curriculum (or my school curriculum) they have 5 or 6 sessions of french, maths, science, LOTE every week and 1 each of music and art. i was talking about it with elisabeth and then i suddenly realised how happy i was that i could discuss art and music over dinner with a french person!! but i enjoy it when we have it and did a watercolour for the first time since i was like 7 of an australian sunset and all of the kids in the class nearly had a fit and tried to steal it. i think i'll give it to elisabeth cos shes been so generous to me. well thats my day sorry about the lack of spaces and full stops but i was fairly excited about discovering the wonderland across the street and amazed that i covered probably a third of everything that is there. i cant wait to see it in winter and what happens to the giraffes then.. i hope they have very very very long scarves.

love to everyone and especially YOU lol xoxox

yesterday, sunday, i went with elisabeth and her mother to old lyon, one of the compulsory tourist activities if you visit here. E and i walked to her mothers appartement and then across the river and down into the met and took the train from there under the Saône, the river on the other side of the Rhône, to the deepest station in the city and came up the longest, highest escalator i have EVER seen to catch the to the funicular top of the hill that can be seen everywhere in Lyon. on it is a huge white pointed church built two centuries ago after a cholera epidemic was stopped by god. or whatever. we looked out over lyon and it was very beautiful but unfortunately a little foggy so pics arent so great. we walked through the church and the chapel and the crypt, the ceilings and the windows and the carvings and the mosaics where all very beautiful. then we went back down to the little streets of old lyon and elisabeths mother went home while we continued wandering along the streets, looking at jewellery stores and silk stores and postcard stores and buskers and artists and eating crepes with chocolate in them. it was very pretty and i want to go back there next weekend to see more. 

when we got back i watched some music videos, normally pretty hopeless but last night i saw RHCP and Stereophonics clips so it was good.  i picked up a bit of paper from a pile where charles had been colouring on the table and started drawing a design on it that i was going to cover the page with, and charles came along and started drawing on the piece with me. he did little squares and flowers which were quite cute and charming, and then a massive murderous rockets ship, then took the paper away and cut out my design from the middle of it and gave it back to me so i couldnt really keep going with that idea anymore. i got another sheet and started something else and he immediately tried to start drawing on that one as well but i said a very firm 'NO CHARLES, there is paper there for you to use.' sigh. he is so tiring especially in a different language. 

this morning when i woke up i had a sore throat and elisabeth set me up with flu pills, sleeping pills, pain killer pills, chest balm, nose clearing spray and throat numbing spray. i sprayed some stuff in my throat and went to sleep again until 11.30. and now i've just been blogging and trying to decide whether to go to school at lunchtime or not. ho hum. let me know how ur all doing.

this week i saw the very maddest thing that i have ever ever seen. 

elisabeth has asked that i walk home a different way from now on as it gets darker earlier, on the rue parrallel to the one i normally take cos theres heaps of shops and more people. so i went along and was looking at all the different shops, most of which are very expensive. this week theres been massive amounts du vent and leaves just everywhere cos all the streets are tree lined. the shops and appartment buildings that have their doors or foyers open end up full of the feuilles, and yesterday when i went walking past a park there were big piles up to about chest height beside the road. anyway, some of the shops on this street are so tiny you could touch both of the walls at the same time if you stood in the middle, little coiffures and lingerie stores. but the one that i want to write about, the most awesome store dans le monde entier, its closer to the house where the shops start thinning out and it completely took me by surprise and i didnt understand what i was seeing and it just spun me right out. it's a shop that sells staircases and its just a big room with the store front entirely in glass and its full of staircases that spiral and loop around each other and morph into different colours and materials and then end up nowhere and its completely insane and froody and i stared at it for ever. the concept of it is so funny and the way it looks is just so cool. i cant imagine anyone seeing this the way i do but it is just really fantastic.

so anyway apart from that... i have a massive lumpy yellow and purple bruise on my shin from hockey on thursday which we played in the last class of the day in the schoolyard while it got darker and darker and peoples faces started disappearing and squares of light flicked on in the 8 storey appartement buildings that stand over the school. i got whacked really hard and couldnt stand for a few minutes but all was well and good after that. 

friday i was so tired the whole day i could have fallen asleep at any time and it was about 4 times harder than normal to translate what i wanted to say or what was being said to me. i got home and went to bed, woke up for dinner and then went back to bed. the next morning i woke up still tired and bummed around the house in the morning until i roused myself enough to get out and go for a run along the river. i didnt feel very good, kinda heart sick and missing being at home, just aching in my chest. i ran up until the path was blocked by construction work and then climbed up the stone wall to the road and sat on top of it for a while and looked at the river. looking back up the track there was big gusts of wind throwing millions of autumn leaves over the wall and they were hanging in the air and rolling up towards me in huge clouds and i sat in this storm of craziness and listened to The Grates. then i walked back home and felt like sleeping, i watched some TV until sophie and alexandra, the girls that i met a few weeks ago at lunch who i went bowling with, called me and told me to come meet them at the part dieu, which is a huge shopping mall about 10  minutes from the house by foot. i went and visited them and we looked around and then took the metro under the river to the belle cour, the main street of lyon with hundreds of shops and walked up and down there. we crossed the path of a womens rights protest and went to a store where we ate some goooooood ice cream. when we were waiting to get the icecream i was looking up the street, which is all paved and about 20 metres wide but packed with people. there was heaps of jeunes like us and buskers with guitar cases and dread locks and tourists with cameras and ofcourse lots of people on bikes and i could hear a brass band playing. when we got our food and continued walking up the street i saw that it was actually just three guys sitting under a tree with an speaker box that had backing music that they played over the top of. there was a trombone, trumpet and a tuba and they were so beat up and bent but they had a really good sound. further up from them is the square of the republic with a fountain that was all lit up cos it was getting darker and next to it a merry go round with lights and music. there was also ropes of lights in bizarre loopy shapes strung between the buildings and the trees have got all these pieces of silver paper tied in the branches. it was very cool. i desperatley need new adjectives. sophie and alex come from a sports made family and they took me to the store of the soccer club of lyon which has heaps of merchandise- evrything from baby booties to bikinis (i didnt mean that alliteration) to toffees to binder folders to keys you can get cut with the teams logo on them... everything! we then took the met back to part dieu, it was fairly exhilirating as there were billions of people lining up to get into the underground through gatres you have to validate a ticket in to open. soph and alex got through and before i could put my ticket in two guys roghly pushed past and through the gate without tickets, and i dont know if it was cos of them but the machine stopped working and started beeping and the gates locked. this was with me at the front of a huge crowd, bashing at the gates and being abused in french... then the other one stopped working too and in the end a girl on the other side opened one of the gates that operates in the other direction and stood in it to keep it up while a hundred people shoved themselves through. we sprinted along this huge underground passage and straight onto the train. once we got back to the part dieu we looked in more shops and walked home at about 6.30.

as we arrived we saw karen, who i went shopping with last weekend, ahead of us bringing back charles who had spent the day playing with her little son timothy. about an hour later so and alex's parentals arrived and we all had dinner together. i was horrifically tired by 8.30 when we started eating and by 10 when everyone left i felt like i couldnt stand up anymore.

i'm sure theres more that i could tell you but i'm so tired still. its 3.30 in the afternoon on sunday and i've been reading On The Road, drinking coffee and talking on msn all day. oh yeah katherine (my cousin whos spending 5 months in poland at a nunnery after finishing year 12 last year) is going to come and stay for a few days after she spend new years in paris, so that'll be very good. theres an offer to go to paris for 3 days and 2 nights before the flight home for all the kids but i'm not sure if i want to go. its very expensive and you dont do alot of stuff.... elizabeth has said that she has a really nice friend who lives in inner paris i could stay with for a while instead, but at the moment she's in madagascar so we have to wait a bit to ask her.

gosh what excitement. yesterday i went jogging and after i got back i didnt have any lunch and then went out for an intensive afternoon of shopping. by the time we stopped to get some food i was starving and it was lucky cos what i ended up ordering was immense. the place we were at is some swiss chain store that sells gaufrés et glace et crêpes: yum. i got a cookies and cream thing, thinking it'd just be a bit of ice cream and maaaybe some sprinkles if i was lucky, and what i recieved was a bucket, with massive scoops of cookies and cream ice cream, chunks of biscuit with big pieces of melted chocolate inside, whipped cream, hot fudge sauce and chocolate sprinkles all piled together. it was so so cool!!! alexandra had something chocolatey and delicious as well and sophie got a crepe that they spread with nutella while it was still on the hotplate and then neatly folded up and handed to her in a little plate all melted and warm. safe to see we all felt tremendously full and satisfied after. i must return.

hmmm. so what has happened since? on saturday i was home alone and spent a long time on the computer having email convos with callum and then harry and also went out for a bit on charles's scooter to visit a park near my school. its insanely huge and unlike any park that i know in australia- theres little buildings and a police station and cafes and animals like buffalo (i think...) and raccoons and stuff behind a moat and a really cool old ooden roundabout thats all colourful and golden and plays freaky music and all of the leaves are the most beautiful colours and theres long long green lawns and millions of different paths and a lake and boats and just alot of things to do and see. but i didnt, i came home cos a friend of elisabeths was coming to take me shopping. she arrived with her niece who was my age but honestly we couldnt have been more different. her face looked like it was plastic and she didnt talk and just scowled the whole time, only getting excited when we went into shops resembling suprè or when she saw a bridal store, when she started shrieking and swooning. but karen was nice and only talked french and i understood a fair bit. i didnt buy much but we went to heaps of stores and this afternoon i want to go back. in the city centre there is ofcourse lots of very different shops and we looked at some very expensive ones as well as normal ones, like louis vuitton and cartier. cartier was SOOOOOO SHINY and cool and they had really normal looking watches that cost like 17000 €!

the next day we had lunch here with elisabeths parents and her aunt. that morning E and C went to the market before i woke up cos i slept in heaps- i was exhausted- and i still wasnt awake when they got back. E finally had to get me up when Dad rang and i talked to the parentals for about an hour. we had pot au feu (is that how its spelt?) and all the bread and cheese and apertifs and fruit etc etc. i went for a ride that afternoon on one of the rented bikes and it was so fun- i crossed the Rhône (ôh ÿêäh î hävê fïgûrëd ôüt hôw tö pût ïn thêsë thîngs!!!) and cycled up the bank and then back through the middle of the city. i was looking out for these posters i'd seen nailed to trees the afternoon before, when i was there with karen and angry-barbie, for the new beatles album that were really cool. i wanted to steal one but it had rained in the night or other beatlemaniacs had seen their chance and none were left :(

after i crossed over the river again i went along that side cos theres a track with lots of cyclists and joggers and it started spitting but it was still nice and then it started raining so i stopped under a bridge and put my raincoat on and then it just started DUMPING kilolitres of water and i cycled as fast as i could home and it was so fun. i couldnt see anything cos of my hood and my hair and all the water and it was nearly dark anyway cos of all the clouds and there was droplets of water bouncing up everywhere off the stone and lights shining and reflecting on it all. it took a while to locate the place i had to return the bike and then i sprinted home and had to wring out my hair before i came inside. lol it was so cool. 

school has been pretty boring so far this week. yesterday i left at lunch (we're allowed to if we want) and went back to the shopping centre that Isa took me to last week and then coming out i went the wrong way for about ten minutes and when i figured out where i was on a map i found i had 20 minutes left to walk what would normally take me 40 so i ended up having to sprint through all these tiny little streets, straight into the school and up three flights of stairs to my desk in time to sit down with the rest of the class. it was so scary but also very exhilirating. then i had a really really tedious hour and a half cos the teacher for my favourite class, art, which we only have once a week, was away and instead we had DOUBLE GERMAN!!!! which equals about 4x the confusion. i'm meant to have CDI (study sessions) when the class has german but i went down to the room and it was closed only for that day for some really annoying reason. grrrr. :(

today i'm timetabled to go to school late, missing the first german class and then i have maths, an hour of CDI and then two hours of some chapel i think, which i havent had yet and am not sure if i have to go to... so cos it seemed i would only be going for maths which i dont do any work in elisabeth said it would be ok if i stayed home. so i slept in and then helped E and C compose a letter to père nöel and drank coffee and then went shopping and bought much and it was fun. 

on monday night charles did the cutest thing- he'd just gotten home and he had a new toy and he was sitting at my feet showing me it and then he looks up at me and goes 'maman a dit que tu es comme ma grande soeur...' (mummy said that you're like my big sister) and he looked so hopeful and excited. it was really gorgeous.

love and grosse bisous to all

the other day at lunch with some people before we started they all said 'bon appétit' and then asked me what we said in australia before we started our meal. i replied 'err... bon appétit' and they all thought that it was really, really funny. i don't get why.

on the first weekend Elizabeth and I drove to my school so I could see where it was. We then we went to a big homewares store that seemed to have EVERYTHING in it. not just heaps of DIY stuff and plants and furniture but also a massive pet shop with the cutest rabbits and teeny tiny fluffy hamster things and electric coloured fish and puppys and stuff. and there was also this insane section full of Noel stuff- it was massive and it was like a  theme park or something cos inside the store they set up little houses and each one had a theme- like ice and snow which was covered in kilometres of frosty blue and white baubles and clear decorations, or one that was all gold and yellow and so bright that it hurt my eyes. they also had mountains of different foods- bags of chocolates and walls built from slabs of fruit cake- and big bins full of packets of fake snow, which i got really excited about! but it was all so pretty and unreal and i spent ages looking at it. there were also little figurines which are called santons i think, we learnt about them in french (right harry?!), that people buy and use to set up nativity scenes, but they're really really detailed and very expensive. it was very very cool and i'm really reallt looking forward to spending christmas here if thats how into it everyone gets. maybe cos it gets so dark they go to any extreme to make it still seem optimistic and bright. elizabeth also said that soon the decorative lights go up around the town which will be just amazing- its insanely lit up after dark here already, since we are so near to the city centre, so i am very excited about seeing some if the christmas things.