hullo world, hope you are well. i'm feeling good, fairly tired and a little frustrated cos the internet doesnt work so i am again typing this in wordpad to paste into the site later. hmm so what has happened to me since i last wrote... on the weekend i spoke to muttie and vati and jono in ausland and father had to dial 42 numbers to get through and it took him an hour and a half! i felt not so good when i started talking cos it made me homesick but it was bien and we spoke for about an hour. after that i went to la vogue which was fun, charles and i went on a ride that was this three storey house thing and it had floors that moved and spun and vibrated and a maze with all the walls clear and a tunnel that turned and stairs that moved in oposite directions and a corridor of padding that you had to charge through and all this crazy stuff and it was six times more fun cos i did it with charles and he enjoyed it so much. the next day i went to the outdoor market with elizabeth and charles and from there i waked around the city by myself for a bit over an hour and took photos and marvelled at how lucky and happy i was to be where i was.
the main part of Lyon is built in the middle of two rivers which join together to the south of the city. kind of like a Y, and  lyon sits in the triangle- well the main part, but it spreads for ages on either side (the actual part between the rivers can be crossed by foot in about 10-15 minutes). the river on the left is the seine and on the right is the rhone. we live about 3 blocks from the rhone, outside the triangle and directly opposite the biggest part of the city. its a very good location with not alot of noise but everything is within walking distance. so i crossed the river and walked around and crossed over and came back. i'll put up some of the pics i took. when i was coming back across the river i noticed a huge patch of colour spilling off the side of where the bridge touched land again. it was all graffiti  and very colourful so i took some pictures- quite alot of it was just overdone tagging but there were a few real designs. the light was really weird that day, very bright and then grey again and standing on the hard concrete next to the river but surrounded by all the colour felt very very surreal and i was listening to A Day In The Life and it was very cool and trippy. when i got back a bit before 12 we left to have lunch with a family who are friends with elizabeth. they have three girls who are 21, 18 and 14. also at the house was their grandfather, their cousin, also 14, and a girl friend of the eldest. all of us sat down together and had a really really nice lunch- some baked deliciousness, salad verte, cake, salade de fruits and cake coated in chocolate, then i went ten pin bowling with the girls. it was fun as, except i havent done it for ages and there were no bumpers and to start with i bowled four gutterballs straight. but it was ok after that and i managed to not lose by too much. we went back home and watched music videos and tennis and read magazines and it was so nice and i didnt want to leave but eventually we came home a bit after 6. i've been messaging sophie and i think shes going to take me shopping! huzzah! i could talk really well with them and we laughed alot and the whole family was just really really friendly and warm, so it was a very good day. on monday at school we had a day of talks and actiivties related to the second world war and i didnt understand all of it but what i did was very very heavy and so sad. we watched a video of the concentration camps and it was just too... i cant even find words for it.
on tuesday i walked home at lunch cos i wanted to be alone for a while and in franceland lots of kids do, so i came back and isa was here so i talked to her for a bit and watched a video and it was good.

also that day we had sport in a massive old hall covered in mats (on the floor, not on the bell tower or anything) that i think used to be a church that we have to walk (and by walk i mean run cos we're always late for it) about a billion blocks away from the school to get to. we're doing tumbling and human pyramids at the moment and on tuesday everyone was running around insanely and i was sitting against a wall with a girl called marie talking about the french harry potter and the german version of the da vinci code and we were watching a few boys trying to do cartwheels right in front of us. axle and harris are good at them and can even do roundoffs and they were trying to teach louie, and he was getting the hang of it pretty well but then he went into one really hard and his arm sort of crumpled away and when i think back to it i reckon i heard a crack but i doubt that i did- anyway we all shouted ça-va, ça va???? and he got up and ran away clutching his arm and a few minutes later the pompiers (ambulance men) came. and it was funny- elizabeth explained to me that night that the paramedics are really adored in franceland cos theyre all supposedly gorgeous an brave etc etc- so all the girls rushed to the doors and started shrieking and giggling while the men were looking at louie. anyway the poor boy has shattered his elbow and we havent seen him again this week.

today we finished at 12 and i bought a chocolat coffee hazlenut thing and was so immersed in trying to comprehend how good it tasted that i walked onto what i thought was a closed street, almost got run over and didnt even care. it was so weird cos today the weather was crazy, it was warm and there was very strong wind, so when your walking throught the city it comes straight down the sides of the tall buildings and then rshes up underneath you  and makes a willy willy from the lieaves and it was very strange and also exciting and funny. this afternoon i took the tube with isabelle and charles to another part of lyon near where elizabeth works and we looked in some shops and i bought TEA BAGS!!!!!!!!! and then charles' father came to pick him up and he gave isa and i a lift to a big department store in his very very nice mercedes. i went in the front and he drives like a crazy man and we were speeding through all these beautiful autumn leaves blown by the wind and he overtook a bus and there was a van coming the other way and i almost screamed cos i thought we were all gonna die. but it was cool and we spent an hour or two looking at clothes and boots but i didnt buy anything and we walked home together at six. so now i am enormously fatigued and i will depart. i really wanted to email lots of peoples cos i love you and want to hear from you but i've restricted myself to only using the computer on wednesday and the weekend cos otherwise i get obsessed. anyway i hope you are all happy and healthy and i will endeaour to continue with the blogging.

last weekend i went with charles and his grandma to la vogue which was on in the city, i think to celebrate rememberance day (11/11). all week i was trying to figure out from charles what a vogue was and he kept rabbitting on about fish for ducks which i found very confusing but its a carnival thing and thats one of the sideshows. we took the underground metro to get there and once the train took off i started finding it really difficult to stand up for some reason until we came out above ground and i realised we were going up at a 90° angle. it was a bit scary actually, we stopped at a station and then when we started again the lights flicked briefly and the train fell back down a bit and everything in the carriage that wasnt held onto or holding on moved south two metres and i got quite injured by a man in a leather jacket and his damn crossword. but anyway we made it there and walked around alot. it was like australian shows but the music the rides played- while still high pitched, too fast and with a disco beat- was sung in french. and also the food. OMG the food. on corners there were little stalls with signs saying marrons chaudes and 40gallon drums full of coals with chestnuts roasting on top. for a euro you get a cone full of them pulled out by a man with hands that are black from char and theyre really soft and hot and incredibly rustic and satisfying. theres also stalls which sell 30 flavours of fairy floss, which looked disgusting and had bizar flavours comme coke and pistachio and licorice. but what was truly awesome were the stalls that cooked churros and gaufres- OH MY GOD. churros are made from a dough that is squeezed in a long strip into hot oil and you get a dozen or so in a bag covered with nutella or sugar. but i had a gaufre and i can hardly even describe it it was so awesome. they squeeze batter into a waffle iron (but it was about twice as big as any waffle i'd ever seen) and then you get out a massive hot slab thats crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside. they spear this with a special forky thing and then dip one side into a huge vat of melted chocolate and then AND THEN  they pile about 5 cm of stiff whipped cream on top. writing about it has made me want another one so bad but i'd probably die before it finished it. please please please have one if you get the chance. while they were doing that i was also watching them making crepes which was beautiful- they had a huge flat circular hotplate, maybe 50cm across that was very very smooth, and they rubbed some butter on it and then poured a dollop of crepe batter on and smoothed it out really really thinly with a little flat rake-like thing and just kept spreading it and smoothing it as it got all golden and crispy and then they fold it up with yummy toppings. i'll have to try one next. 

on sunday, the day after lunch with E's mother and father, we went together to a fresh food market a couple of blocks from where the appartement is. it was so so so cool. all these surly, scruffy, angry looking men with tonnes of colourful fruits et legumes in stainless steel bowls- you pick the bowl you want and they dump it in a paper bag, cough some tabacco on top of it and throw it back at you. people set up tables covered with mountains of breads and pastries and also cabinets on wheels that were full of cuts of meat, hundreds of differently shaped cheeses and fresh eggs. there were about a million people there and so much produce- we went at about 10am and i asked elizabeth what time the market starts and she told me 5!!!! thats well before sunrise and it would be so so cold. as elizabeth was buying some cactus fruit (which is very much disgusting, i discovered), i was watching a man behind us who was blow torching away the frost that was forming on some gas tanks sitting in the back of a tall trailer. it seemed to me not a terribly safe thing to do- anyway we walked around to the other side of it and it was a portable chicken rotisserie thing sitting on the trailer consisting of a wall covered in hot wires and spinning in front of it about 50 chickens on spits. elizabeth asked for un poulet plus gras which is more fatty/greasy and so the man took one of them off and dumped it in the tray at the bottom which was full of all the juices and chunks of lemon and garlic that run down. we had it for lunch and it was so freakin gooooood i could hardly believe it!!! we went to the market again this sunday and it was still really really cool, this time i saw an olive stall that also had bouteilles de huil and stuff but the olives looked amazing- they were on a very large trestle table in trays and there was about 25 big shining mounds of them in all different colours and sizes. I took a blurry photo but then i think the man started yelling at me and he was very large and angry looking so i excused myself and left. darn it!
 

ok so this first meal with elizabeths parents i thought was a special weekend-family/welcome-the-exchange-student-to-french-culture meal but i have since realised that its just how they eat all the time. that day we had i think whats called a salad niçoise, wtih beans, tomatoe and egg in a creamy sauce, then the meat we had just bought along with potatoes (PUREED father, how very french), then tangerines, then dates, then cheese and then coffee. and then boiled sweets for charles and i. and every course is bought out serperately and then cleared away before the next one, except the awesome crusty bread which is always on the table. i'm used to it now and eat slower but before i would pretty much be finished before anyone had even started. 

the other day i saw the funniest thing- i should explain first that in lyon (probably alot of big citys) everyone rides bikes and scooters (or rollerblades, though not as often) cos the streets are so tiny and the parking availability so appalling. its very amusing- i see business men zipping around in their suits on little fold up scooters, and middle aged women in high heels weaving through the traffic on their bikes, plus little kids everywhere who are horribly, insanely fearless when it comes to crossing a four lane street during rush hour. but on the first sunday that i was here we were driving along a main road that dips down to go under a bridge, and i saw this bony little man, i reckon about 60 or more, with his bermuda shorts, long socks, rollerblades, helmet, and massive pads wrapped around his knees and elbows, zooming down the hill along with all these other cars- it was SO FUNNY but i was really scared for him. i hope he's ok :D

anyways back to the transport stuff, the day before that (my very first full day in lyon), the three of us went for a ride around the city on these bikes you can rent from bike vending machines that are on alot of street corners in lyon. the bikes lock into stands in the concrete and you use a card and a password to get them out. so we rode around lyon through the streets running very french errands like buying little cuts of meat and different cheeses and posting letters and stuff, and the whole time i was staring around me at everything and it was insanely french. like, maximum possible saturation. if you pounded up a round of cheese, a baguette,a beret and a poodle and then boiled the pulp for seven hours until it had reduced to a lump the size of a sugarcube that would still not be the level of frenchness that i saw on my first day here. there was all these shops selling fruit and vegetables displayed on tables and florists with heaps of fresh flowers and women with stockings and little dogs and men on bikes with scarves and hats and moustaches and baguettes and there were tiny streets with tiny cars and huge green trees and the beautiful river and gorgeous old buildings and yummy smells and it. was. deadly. and then we went to have lunch with elizabeths parents who live in a little apartment on the fifth floor (which in franceland means its 6th from the ground, like we live on the fourth floor but are 5th from the ground), and elizabeth explained to me that she was really old and she had over 100 years and i thought WOAH your mother is going to be like the oldest person i have ever met but then i realised she was talking about the building. so we had lunch there and i'll put that in the food part of the blog cos it was also very frenchy.  

 the morning that we arrived in paris (at 5:45) it was very cold and i think a bit foggy. the first thing that i said in french to a french person in franceland was a very excited "POUVONS-NOUS VOIR LA TOUR EIFFEL ICI???": close enough to can we see the eiffel tower from here that i got the reply 'not today'. :( we were vraiment triste but i will maybe see it when we leave. anyway we were standing around in the airport with the people from the french exchange company who got us to the train station and put us on the TGV, waiting for a bus to take to the train station. and i was looking outside at all the people and trying to judge how different the crfowd at  franceland airport looked from any other airport crowd and i noticed that everyone was smoking. chaque personne that i saw was blowing out smoke and i was a little alarmed until we went outside as well and my face nearly fell off cos it was so cold. of course we all immediately started breathing out thick white steam as well. so i have since discovered that not as many people here are 'fumers' as i thought would be- certainly more than in australia but only very few in my class at school. its certainly alot easier to be a smoker, you can buy cigarettes at 16 and people smoke EVERYWHERE. theres signs up to say that it is INTERDITES but people ignore them- in the underground,  in shopping centres, in the bowling alley i went to, in restaurant bathrooms everyone just keeps on smoking. however it is disgusting and dangerous and selfish and i myself will never take it up despite the numerous offers i have had of marijuana (not certain how reliable these are anyway).

it seems a little strange i know to devote an entire entry to converse but i am quite obsessed with them and so, i have discovered, are the français. as soon as i walked off the plane (in my all stars) i started noticing them in the airport on everyone from 2 year olds to middle aged men. anyway if you ever come to france i advise you to bring a pair cos they're a major status symbol here as for some reason they are very expensive. 70€ or more for a pair. and for some reason its not ,ore expensive to get low tops versus high tops but the paler colours like white or light blue are cheaper than red or black. people keep coming up and grabbing my feet when i'm sitting in the yard and then they smile and nod and say 'all starzzz!' when they see the logo. lots of kids wear leather ones and a few have really high top boot-like ones that they wear over their jeans. i was going to try and find a pair to buy here that was different from the ones in australia but i dont know if i can afford them!

bonsoiree mes amis i have just spent over an hour adding photos with descriptions to the site so you should go toute suite to look at them and comment on them so i know that you are out there. but some of the ones from my farewell party will take ages to load cos they are very large and DADDY SHOULD RELOAD THEM WITH LESS PIXELS hint hint. 

so i'm just going to type about today cos it was a good un and i have little time before elizabeth will want to go to sleep (the comp is in her room) or i fall asleep on the keyboard.

ok so i woke up feeling the most depressed i have ever been in france, which isn't heaps but i was worried that maybe the 'honeymoon phase' of arriving in a new country where everything is new and awesome was wearing off but i had an extra bowl of coffee and by the time i got to school for the first time by myself i felt alot better. it was not too cold today and the sun was out again which was nice. 

lunch at school today i really, really enjoyed cos it suddeny felt like some barrier has been passed and i talked very easily with everyone and laughed and it was alot of fun. our class stays together in one, sometimes two big group/s, not like at our school where theres four or five little ones, so there are many people to talk to. they asked me about the massive spiders (even the boys screamed when i told them how big huntsmens are), poisonous snakes, leg taking sharks and man eating crocodiles in australia and i was shocked to find they hadnt heard of steve irwin. i dont think though that i will enlighten them.

eating at lunchtime is fun also, the food (today we had the best apple tart) but also the conversation: it is so, so french. they get really into it and bang the table and throw down their forks and snort at people and i sit there and marvel and laugh.

after lunch we had my first physique-chimie class and i discovered that the only thing harder than coming into a physics chemistry lesson halfway through the year when you have never studied either subject before is coming into a physics chemistry lesson halfway through the year when IT IS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE. maths and science are by far the most difficult cos they have an entire different vocabulary that doesnt exist in the everyday and therfor is utterly foreign. so i do no work for those subjects (chem,bio,maths,physics) and instead finish the meagre amounts of homework the teachers who dont feel too sorry for me give to me. 

leaving me free in the evenings (with the whole three hours i have to myself after i get home @ 6!) to do what i want. tonight i got a bit lost again (but with a pretty good idea of where i was going) coming home cos i changed the route to check out a very good looking pastrie shop and a bright little bookshop, and kept going past the street where i was meant to turn. but i only got a little bit out of my way cos i hit the Rhone river which is about 1km from the house. the stree that runs along the edge of it it has alot of very expensive shops that are open late and i was happy to walk along and look at the furniture, shoes, jewellery etc. while it got darker and the lamp posts lit up, and then i also found a Papeterie, which not only sounds awesome but is filled with all the things that i love like notebooks and expensive glossy postcards and art supplies. 

so i remembered that address and got myself home to find Isabelle (the young women who looks after charles and sometimes cooks and cleans) and charels and a baby aho she also looks after called thomas. he's 8 months old and he is fat and warm and so so cute and he laughs really easily if you throw him round a bit. so i played with him for a while as C and I went through carles's homework. it was a bit difficult cos he apparently has at the moment a neurosis about being put down. so hes happy and smiling in your arms and then the moment he even touches a bed he goes rigid and starts crying. i wanted to get changed and so i had to put him down, grab my top and then quickly pick him i again. put him down to lay it it and then grab him again. but he was so cute it made up for it. 

when E got home Isabelle took thomas home and i played football (soccer) w charles for a while. it turns out that with the internet apparently we also got cable so now we have 300 channels instead of 5 but its more fun to play with charles and cook with E than to try and understand the french. 

hmm i think thats just about it... i have a new mobile no. on the local server, to text me dial +0679010687. but sorry if i dont reply cos i think i have used all my credit (IT COST ME  30 EURO (why doesnt this keyboard have a euro key!! how i detest it!!!) and i only got 4.5 euro credit!!) but i dont really understand the french message that the phone company keeps sending me telling me whats going on, but i can tell that the verbs are in the negation- its not good. no, it will be resolved so send away and i will get back to you eventually. oh i have spotted the €€€€€€€ key WHY IS IT THERE ah yes cos its on the letter EEEEEeeeeEEeEeeeee okey dokey.

NOTE FOR MUTTI AND VATI: sorry to put it here but i am too tired to write a seperate email. apparently in france they have only one national phone comp, orange, and they are very aware that they have control. something about the phone companies in australia shits them and so therfore it is one of the few countries that doesn't get substantially reduced rates per minute with a phone card. in fact it is even more expensive than calling internationally from the landline in the house if you buy the card (thats how stupid the situation is) and anyway the cards are only valid for 15 minutes. this is how i understand it as explained to me in french by isabelle. it is a little annoying considering how easy it was for us to talk from canada but i think with email and sms its not too bad. elizabeth has said anyway that its perfectly fine for me to call you for 15 or so each week and i really think thatll be enough. it'll be easier emotionally too. anyways i will aim to call you i think on sunday morning here, saturday night en australie. alrighty? (also its possible that you can still get a card thing in australia and just call me instead). and jono thanks so much for your message it was awesome and very very sweet. CONGRATULATIONS MORGAN i honestly cant believe that it is over for you. thats very exciting. how is the hangover after a few days? 

ok so tomorrow is my last day of school for the week and also the end of my first 7 days in france!!! fantastic. 

i am so happy.

and fatigued. now i go to slumber without proof reading this cos it is about an hour and a half past my bedime and if i work it out... the longest possible time that i have for sleeping is SEVEN HOURS omg that is really quite harsh. ok but anyway grosses bisous (many/fat kisses) for all and bonne nuuit!!

I'm typing this (slowly) on the computer in elizabeth's office. it isn't connected to the internet yet so this is at the moment just in notepad and i will paste it to my blog site when we are connected. alrighty, where was i? 

oh yeah, i want to say sorry, harry, i got cut off in the middle (actually very early stages) of our convo and i was sad but it was good to talk to you. to console myself i wandered up the street and bought a chocolate covered thing at a bakery that i bit into to discover yet more chooclatey stuff and it was pretty much awesome, and did a fair bit to make me feel better :D. the sun was out too and i was able to unwrap myself to just 3 layers while i walked along and looked at all the shops and people and graffitti and fruit and vegetables and frenchness. 

elizabeth was back with charles and another little boy (marie's little bro i think) when i got home and now les petits garçons are screaming around the place with planes and rockets and cushions. elizabeth has gone to her office and isabelle, the housekeeper, is here and she's going to take me shopping soon!!! 

ok, so i was describing school. i go to a private catholic school in a very expensive housing area of lyon, near to the river and a huge park. there are 4 year levels, i think, and i am in the top one, troisième (prèmière is year 12, deuxième year 11 etc. but those levels are at a seperate school in france) which is the equivalent of year ten, but most of the kids in my year (about a hundred, i think) are 14- about a quarter are my age. i am with the same group of kids all day everyday, and they're all really nice and enjoy speaking english at me (badly)... its quite frightening hearing them do that cos i realise that i must sound really awful to them! school is from 8.00-5.00 except wednesdays when we have the afternoon off. it is absolutely exhausting at the moment but it most likely has a bit to do with the jet lag still aswell. we have about a billion subjects (to give you a rough estimate)- the ones that we have taken already this week or that i know the translation for are: maths, french, english; latin, german, biology, technologie (i'm not sure if this is actually with computers), history, geography, music (but crap music with recorders and elton john songs), P.E., art, some sort of team building class for an hour a week, physics and chemistry. i'll leave you to figure out which ones are the most difficult. ok, ALL OF THEM. 

no, english obviously is like... i don't know, it's like walking into a centrally heated room after an hour spent outside when it's two degrees. french is actually quite good also, the teacher reminds me heaps of mr west (he even carries his stuff around in a plastic bag lol). We're reading this book, which i can understand most of- spoken french is twice as hard as written for me cos of their pronounciation- so it's good to read instead. The teacher stops us all the time to put vocabulary words on the board for us to learn, and he explains their meaning as he does this and it's pretty easy for me to follow cos again its written and also (like mr west) he says the same thing again and again, but paraphrasing, so i comprend bien! the rest of the kids get really sick of it though! everything else is very very difficult and i have to concentrate really hard- except for art, which is awesome. i completely zoned out for about half an hour while i was drawing and then i woke up and felt really happy and relaxed. german is impossible, which is a shame cos we have the best teacher. he speaks german, french and english really well and he's so relaxed and warm and funny. he makes comments to the class in english for my benefit and then winks at me- today he was telling one of the boys "come on baby, get in to it!" and i was laughing heaps but then everyone wanted to know what he'd said so i had to look up 'untranslatable' in my dictionary. in the first class we were chatting away in english and then the girl next to me asked what we were talking about and it was really weird to realise how natural it is to speak in english, when since i arrived here i've had to think before i say anything. 

people point me out in the yard and i can hear them saying "anglais!" "c'est l'australienne!" ( there's the australian). on monday there were all these little boys running up to me saying "je t'aime!" and on tuesday morning everyone that i had met the day before kissed me on both cheeks... it's a little strange to see 2 11 year old boys stop in the corridor just to say hi and kiss each other before keeping going. that's all i can think to say about school, if u want to ask me something leave a comment. 

which reminds me of what poppy asked about the little boy- no he is not terrible he is so unbelievably cute i can't believe it! i'll try and work out how to put some photos up but he is tiny and crazy and talks ALOT. when i arrived i couldn' understand ANYTHING that he said, and after a day i had understood maybe two setences, and the next day five, and the next day 10 and now alot! it was frustrating seeing how easily he can talk when i struggle to communicate some really simple things but as i understand more of what he says i see that he uses simple language but he talks ALOT about EVERYTHING, which is good for me! elizabeth speaks a little english, enough for her to explain things that are a bit too complex for me in french, and we talk both, but mostly french. 

sometimes its a pain at school cos someone will say something to me really fast and then cos i don't understand it spend ages working out the english for it where if they had have repeated it a little slower i would have gotten it easily. one thing that everyone uses all the time is ça va. it means literally "this:that goes" but it's substituted for everything. pretty ,uch any gap in a conversation can be filled with it. they say it as a question to ask how are you, what you up to, i'm here, nice to meet you, are you finished, does it work, are things ok now, do you understand, will that be ok etc? and as a statement it means all of that and more. i'm already massively into the habit of saying it, i've gone to put it in texts, emails and msn convos with aussies so when i come home it will be weird. 

i've told you about charles, but not about elizabeth. she has been really really good. she's very warm and supportive and organsied and helpful, she explains things to me so i know whats going on and translates and jokes around and is very good to have around.she's also a doctor (of orthodontistry or whatever the word is) so she is very intelligent too! 

thats another thing thats annoying here, being unable to be smart! you just seem so stupid when you don't have the languageskills to communicate your ideas or comprehend what is being tqlked about. i am looking forward to a few weeks when it starts making more sense. elizabeth said something that i thought didn't make ,uch sense on my first ay, that i would be learning the music of the language rather than the language, but now i think she was right. i understood twice as much now as when i arrived and its not cos i've learnt more words but cos i've learnt the pattern of speaking and the way that they say the words. once i understand that pattern it's easy to start picking up new words and expressions. okay i reckon i've typed about enough, not all of it but enough for a while. 

i want to say hello to everyone in australia and thanks for reading all of this boring rambling writing and i love you. especially my friends at school, i've been dreaming of just hanging out and having fun with you guys and i wish i could just sit with you all on the grass in our hats for a few hours! text me if you want (i think for most phones the cost is 75c) and if you really want a postcard email me your address. 

à bientot-with-a-circonflexe-accent-on-the-o-cos-i-can-see-the-bloody-thing-on-the-keyboard-but-i-dont -know-how-to-push-the-button-to-mke-it-appear-on-the-screen!

Bonjour tout le monde (=all the world=all of you reading this 'ere blog).

How fabulous that i can finally inform you of my safe arrival and some subsequent occurences in my life in france!

it has been an insanely long 6 days (ONLY SIX?!?!?!) and there is much to tell but it may take me a few entries to get up to date cos the keyboard is freakin INSANE and i understand it not at all. i literally spent about 3 minutes staring at it trying to locate the !!!!!- obviously i found it eventually but YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE ME IF I TOLD YOU WHERE. seriously, it would blow your mind. or maybe not.

i would like to say before i begin MERCI BEAUCOUP to the people who left comments, it is very comforting to see your little messages of love and amusements please do continue.

well, i am typing this in a petit boulangerie surrounde by cigarettes and poodles and coffee and i can barely move for all the croissants and little men w. beards and stripy tops. i jest- i am in a very globalised internet cafe but outside there is all of that and more. it is 11:30 wed morning and school has finished for today! it finished at 10 in fact and happily for me i found my way home sans problem, only to spend 15 minutes trying to open the appartment door with no success. so i came here. but nontheless it is enough that i even found the door in the first place- last night i walked home alone and got horribly, incredibly lost and confused in the tiniest streets in the world with the most cars and the most bloodthirsty drivers. but i resolved the situation fairly calmly and made it back to watch a disney cartoon in french with charles. i found it quite hilarious.

i will describe for you a typical day for hannah in franceland (for those of you who don't  know, zat iz wat we call zee land zat is... 'ow you zay... france). i wake at 6.45 to much darkness and cold at my window while inside it is warm and yellow and after showering and packing my bag i make my way to the kitchen, kissing whoever i come across on the way (a grandmother, the child, a housekeeper...) and there consume bread w jam or cereal avec Elizabeth and sometimes petit Charles. after that we add coffee to the milk left in the bowls- it. is. awesome.

i leave at the leisurely hour of 7:15, a good half hour before the sun rises and walk about 20 minutes, through tiny streets and alot of traffic, with a frozen face and an adorable little girl called marie who i understand well cos shes about the only person my age who speaks slower than the tgv. that was a stupid similie to use- the tgv is the train service that crosses france and goes at 200-300 kmph (we caught it to Lyon).

i'm just going to correct and save this now cos i've nearly run out of time but i think tonight someone is going to come and install internet at the house so hopefully more will follow soon.

Au revoir!