it's wednesday afternoon and i have finished school! yes, this morning i stuffed my bag with tiny fuzzy koalas and bookmarks depicting random australiana and walked to my college for a final two hours of courses. first we had maths, which i've never really got, and they were correcting the big exams that everyone but me took before christmas, so i made a list of things i want to do after i get home:

• have a cup of tea with mum and dad (this is seriously just, like, all i want to do: sit down and talk to them and see their faces. i keep having dreams that we're just drinking tea together lol)
• sleep in, in my own bed, then spend the entire day in my house in my pyjamas
• play a record on my record player REALLY LOUD (cant do that here)
• watch Amelie for the bazillionth time to see if i understand the spoken french :D
• go outside of the house in thongs, boardies and a t-shirt. i cant even tell you how good thatd b
• laugh my ass off with friends. till my stomach feels like its going to melt
• adore pippa (and judes) = our two dogs. i hope they havent forgotten me :'(
• go to the beach; get sunburnt, sandrash and salt encrusted. OH GOD i have severe beach withdrawal
• straighten my hair
• wear my (utterly fantastic) grey tube jeans (that i bought a week before i left and was convinced by mother i would NEVER wear here, so they sit, skinny and gorgeous, barely worn in my wardrobe)
• get a surface piercing (since now i'm 16 i can without mum and dad's permission). i ALMOST ALMOST ALMOST got one here (they have the same age limits), i was so so close, literally at the door, but then i realised how much more expensive it was and so decided to wait till i got home. but i can hardly wait!
• take some time to realised that this is all over and be really proud of what i've done
• kiss mum and dad goodnight before i go to sleep... and good morning when i see them again, and then good mid-morning, and good 11:30 and basically just attach myself to them by means of an octopus strap.
  
• be reunited with my collection of belts/scarves/badges- oh how i have come to realise how much they enrich my life!! lol

and theres probably like a billion other things. 

anyways after lunch we had a break and i gathered millions of email addresses etc. then we had a last session of study before we could go home, and all these teachers appeared and a bag of presents and cake and drinks and some of the kids made a hilarious speech in french that they then tried to translate to english (it was actually really really sweet and touching, the hilarious part was their translation), and they did me a really nice farewell. i had a feeling they'd do something cos i'd heard them talking sometimes when they thought i didnt understand, but i didnt expect all that and was a little overwhelmed. they gave me a CD of a french stand up comedian, a big bag of french lollies and a couple of colour comic books cos the language is pretty simple. then i got really sad when i had to leave for the final time, and gave them all a gazillion kisses and hugs etc. i've been looking forward to finishing, but they were so nice in the end i didnt want to say goodbye!

but i really have found school so difficult to come back to since the holidays. because it is soooooooo loooooong, and i leave and come home in the dark (and sometimes rain, which is lovely NOT), i'm always exhausted during the week, which affects everything negatively- cos when i actually am at school i feel too tired to concentrate for that long, and when i'm at home i dont have enough time for homework/letters/emails/helping with dinner/sleeping enough/playing with charles and everything. but its all done now, and i have all of thursday and friday to pack up my bags, do some shopping and visit the city before we take the train to paris on friday evening. elisabeth and charles are staying there with me until sunday night, and then i'll be there (the appartement of an orthodontist friend of E's) until my flight home tuesday evening. so i want to really rest myself up to make the most of paris. its going to be so fantastic! i'll do a blog about it for sure, but maybe after i get home. or on a stopover during the flight.

HMMMM so what else has been going on? theres this tradition in france where the first sunday of the new year you get together with family and friends to eat a special tart-thing called Galette, which i think is mostly buttery pastry and sweet almond-meal paste, but they add little fèves (charms) and the person who gets it recieves a golden cardboard crown and is the king! so its kind of a derivative of our christmas pudding... or ours is a derivative of theirs. the first one we did (we ended up doing it four times!) was on the actual day, the first sunday, when we had lunch with the grandparents, monique (E's aunt) and her daughter, who is 8 months pregnant (it looked very uncomfortable). and we didnt actually eat galette, but just a whole lunch of desserts- including one called Flottant, i think, which is made of big clouds of meringuey stuff floating in a bowl of creamy sauce. it was weird and really sweet but not bad with the awesome fresh brioche that Monique had baked. the second time we did it was just E, C and I and we ate a galette that Isa had baked- i was recovering from being a bit sick so only nibbled a little. the third time was the next friday, in the canteen at school, which was fun cos all these little kids kept sprinting back to the counter to claim a crown which they then tried to give to someone else. and then we had a shop-bought one last weekend when some friends of Elisabeth's and their two children came over for dinner. 

during the last few days of the holidays i did alot of walking around the city, taking photos but mostly just looking. i went to an art market in old lyon, which was really cool- there was alot of stuff i liked, and more stuff that i disliked, so it was interesting. it was also raining really hard and everyone was walking through the narrow gaps between the stalls with massive umbrellas- kind of impossible. another time i found another big graffiti patch, this time on a narrow strip of concrete down below the street right next to the river- i saw all the colours from the other bank and had to go and look closer, but the whole time i was down there i was so scared, cos it was kind of isolated and it reeked of piss and there were lots of broken bottles, and i just felt entirely unsafe. but it was alright, and i got some cool photos. there'll be new pics in the folders 'lyon' 'street art' and 'ma vie'. after i finished i kept walking along the road cos i'd see a shop or a church or a tree that i wanted to get closer to, and just kept going and going and then thought 'ok i'll go home now' and found myself incredibly lost. i didnt panic, not for about 45 minutes, cos i was in an area with a few universities and lots of young people, tiny streets, hills, bars, grotty buildings and all that interesting city stuff. i was almost out of my mind with joy at some of the big patches of old and new posters i found, and just kept walking up massive hills and down them again, following some people sometimes for a bit and looking for a main road, but it was just all these tiny little alleys. but eventually i got to a fairly wide rue, and picked a direction and kept walking, keeping an eye on all the roadsigns for something i recognised. nothing... and then VERY LUCKILY i found a metro station, which i understand, and when i looked at which station i was at... i dont have any idea how i got there. it was so far away from where i started and where i thought i was that it could only be by way of a tear in the space time continuum that i arrived there. but it was all good, i just took the metro home and was ecstatic about my photos.

i've pretty much got the hang of the system of met/trams/bus's here now. although the other day, cos a class wasnt on when the teacher was away, i had a really long lunch and decided to take the metro home cos i was tired. i'd never done it before but was pretty sure i could manage... i didnt have coins to buy a ticket and had to ask a billion people to get change for a 5€ note, then i went the wrong way, swapped lines, went back to where i started and on one station, tried to find the tram stop and ended up walking in a massive circle back to where i started and found it right around the corner, got back to appartement and found it had taken me about 15 minutes longer than it would have if i'd walked... but at least i didnt end up in Marseilles :D. and i saw alot more cool grungy city life on the tram too.

ok thats about it... any questions? leave some comments... and until another time. love you all!

check out the pics

ok. on the morning of the 24th i took a walk around the city to get picks of all the christmas decorations like i'd promised to do... i only put them online last night though! it was very humid and very cold, and it just felt so strange to be out and walking around, cos the streets were nearly deserted in all the places where theres ALWAYS crowds... i couldnt help thinking of all the people inside in the warm with their families, and me out on the street with my camera and my ipod... all alone. i was texting dad who was at home with all my extended family eating home made pizzas. it was just weird. not particuarly sad, but i felt really isolated... and kind of isolated from my isolation, cos it didnt make me feel anything, it was just observed. i walked for about 2 hours and then found my way back to elisabeth's parents appartement for lunch. my face didnt move properly cos it was too cold, but we ate hot stuff and it was ok.

christmas eve frenchies spend with friends, so we went to a dinner party with Karen, her husband, their little son Timothy, and her sister and brother in law, and their two children, a girl my age and a boy who was about 10. before dinner we went to a childrens mass at a very large stern grey church, but it was pretty entertaining cos they had lots of kids involved setting up the nativity scene and doing readings and stuff throughout the service. walking thru the streets to get from the appartement was shockingly cold, it was FREEZING. for dinner we were fed 4 courses but i was full after the appetiser. they had these massive oysters, the biggest i'v seen; but i dont like them. there was also this awesome fruity meringuey (????) cake with lots of cream. the people we ate with were so nice though, and i understood nearly everything which was so fantastic i cant even explain the feeling. karens husband, mark, lived in america for ages from when he was like 20 and had the best sense of humour and taste in music- he went to see dylan and neil young live, and played the doors and supertramp for me while we ate. he also demonstrated for me his texan and scottish accents which was so funny. i cant hear the difference between accents in french... apparently i speak close to a marseilles dialect (!), someone at school said, and parisian is really different... but i cant tell. i'd expect my french accent to be a little bizarre anyway since we were taught by a lady who was born in russia, learnt french and then english... anyway we stayed @ Karen's until after 12, and then walked home. on the street i realised that it was christmas day, which was kind of a goal i'd set myself to get to here, but couldnt imagine really reaching... so when i realised i was there already it was another great feeling. when we got home we did the christmas traditions of putting out moss for the reindeer and chocolate, fruit and milk for santa. and also putting our shoes under the tree! then i didnt get to sleep till about two cos i was on such a high and texting lots of aussies to say merry christmas and stuff. then the next morning, surprisingly charles slept in until nearly 8:30... i woke up just a few seconds before he burst into my room demanding i get up. i sort of sat up and was rubbing my eyes for about 10 seconds and it was enough time for him to get really angry and start yelling at me to hurry up lol. yeah so lots of presents were opened, elisabeth gave me a beautiful illustrated book about Lyon, a pair of over the knee socks, a desk calender with cool french photos and a BEATLES DVD :D:D:D. which was really nice, since the parcels sent from australia containing my xmas and bday presents didnt arrive until the next year. we had a breakfast of Panatona (i dont think thats how its spelt), a hard italian sponge cake that you dip in hot chocolate, and little plates of dates, nuts and chocolate. i spoke to mum and dad, and it felt like normal. i really thought it would be the hardest part at christmas, my first one without my family when its so centered around that kind of thing, but it was fine, i didnt even really think about it. we had elisabeths parents, josette and daniel, and josette's sister monique (who came over another time) for lunch. before we ate there was lots of gifts given, they all gave me more stuff , and told me 'ofcourse, you're our family', it was SO NICE. then we spent 4 hours at the table having lunch, but i didnt eat TOO much... we had roast lamb which was really nice, and also la buche, literally the log, which is like chocolate ripple cake but 4000 times more awesome, the traditional french xmas dessert. i love it. charles kept dragging me away to play his new games with him, but he has the attention span of a gnat and was being really annoying.. i ended up having a fight with him about a monkey game. which was actually a relief, cos kids dont hold grudges and it was sort of a chance to let out a bit of the annoyance its impossible not to build up towards spoilt five year olds at christmas time. in the late afternoon i went to bed for a bit cos i was really tired... then in the evening i cant remember what we did, but it didnt involve eating anything else!! it was a pretty good christmas, but it didnt feel really special... not like i thought. i wish we had've had some snow :(

@ the football match there were full on riot police with helmets and padded armour stuff and the shields, which was cool to see, but i was told that there is hardly ever ever ever any violence at games played in lyon. i dont think i mentioned the opposing team, by the way- it was monaco. their colours are red and white and they had one block of supporters in the stands and they were all wearing santa hats :D

at the restaurant we had a pissy waiter which was awesome!!! he was snobby and impatient and dismissive and also very efficient and good at doing his job and i was really glad that my dining experience included the alltogether necessary stereotype french waiter. another thing i forgot to mention was that at the table beside us where these two old very elegant classy women in fur and pearls and gold and tights and gloves with neatly curled hair and careful lipstick etc., who i could imagine having been there in the 1920's or the 1940's or even the 1960's, and they probably were. they ordered their mains and desserts without a menu and the waiters seemed to know them... it was such a classic nice thing to see these two old friends doing their weekend thing.

what else.. oh yeah i dont know how i forgot this, the night after the dance concert on the way home we stopped to get a christmas tree. i can see how it would normally be a really cool thing cos they had what seemed like hundreds of them in all different sizes set up next to the road and it would be nice to wander through and smell them all and everything but it was FREEZING and the rain was torrential so i huddled under and umbrella clutching charles while elisabeth got in there amongst it and picked a very fine tree. ooooh and i just remembered that one of the guys working there, not the one that helped us cos he was old and wizened, another guy that i saw was THE PERFECT FRENCH MAN he was tall and slim with A BERET and a little black beard and a fine arty face and dark eyes. very beau :D anyways we somehow got the tree home and up in the elevator and then spent the night decorating it and setting up the christmas nativity scene in the living room. it was really fun seeing charles getting all excited and asking him to explain everything to me. 

another thing that happened the other night is i had this really big dream. before i came i remember that i was really looking forward to dreaming in french and thinking how cool it would be the first time and stuff, but really it just occured gradually and it doesnt seem so amazing its just an obvious thing to happen when i'm speaking, and to an extent thinking, french all day every day. so thats been going on for a while but the other night i had this colossal weird dream where everything like completely collided and mixed together. i'm talking about what seemed like everyone i've met and everything i've done here, and people from school in aus, and extended family, everyone was there together and we were everywhere, not in france or australia but a mix , and i think everyone was speaking french but i'm not quite sure, it was probably both french and english. but it was incredibly realistic and rich and deep and i think a big subconcious step of realisation and acceptance of my life here and my australian life together.

a funny thing that happened last night, when we were at a dinner party (which i'm not going to write all about at the moment), i was talking to some people about the problem of getting english thoughts in your head out into spoken french, and i tried to say 'often i start to say something and halfway through realise i dont know the words to finish' and sure enough halfway through i realised i didnt know the word for realise which was very ironic and i found it amusing. i managed to finish, not very succinctly, and then realised 5 seconds later i could have said FIND the words which is super easy but its hard to think on ur feet.

ok what i think is the last thing i can be bothered typing about OH APART FROM THIS:

james brown is dead :( and i am very much saddened cos he made me laugh and he was a champion and i will listen to sex machine tonight and do some mad dancing in memory of him

but truly the last thing that i wanted to say is that i have developed this strange and abnormal but very strong affection and attraction for anyone that i hear speaking english. like proper english, and it doesnt matter if its british or americain (i've only seen one other aussie, that girl from the same exchange program) but if i catch a bit of someone talking on the street or in a shop i'll concentrate on that and listen as hard as i can just for a bit of familiarity and it makes me feel happy and relaxed. its just so so so EASY to understand english!!! and to respond descriptively and quickly. i love it lol and i've realised how much i enjoy my language, written and spoken. maybe one day i'll know and love french like that but at the moment i think thats a bit too far away.

after that we all got into various cars and drove into lyon to view a DANCE SPECTACLE. which sounds cooler in a french accent. we waited in the freezing rain in a long line of umbrellas to get into the building, which was ultra cool. it was designed by the guy who did the eiffel tower and its very classic carved stone on the outside and inside they have this alazing huge open space perfect for concerts. just this month they had ben harper, placebo and muse there! but the show that we saw was called Lord of the Dance and it was so so so good. it was based around river dance, but the music was this incredible mix of funk and rock and tribal beats and disco and opera and celctic folky stuff. they had a very strange weak storyline running through it but it didnt matter that nothing made sense or was in any way connected, cos it was all just so fantastic. there was some people leaping around on stage playing mind numbingly good violin and a very nimble jumping girl who played a recorder thing, but the best stuff was the dancing. it gave me goosebumps, all the lines of people riverdancing so fast, but the best bit was the guys tapdancing when they had this kind of gang war between two groups and it got really heavy and the beat was just so strong and it kept building and building past the point that you thought it could get any better and i was so close to full on crying cos it was so GOOD. also the costumes were awesome. i cant even describe it properly but the music absolutely got me emotionally.

this week instead of finishing school my year level at the college have all been doing thier 'stage' which is synchronised work experience. cos it was easier i went with elisabeth to her orthodontist practice. but monday she doesnt work, although she was out of the house, so i had a day to do what i wanted. i did a bit of necessary shopping in the morning, for oranges, teabags, a chocolate donut etc. and then came back for lunch and was literally walking out the door again when my ipod went flat, so i came back to plug it into the computer and the phone rang, and i let it go to messages and almost left again when i heard dads voice so ran to pick it up and had a good long talk with the parentals. after that i left, with my by then fully charge ipod, and went to the musée des beaux arts (museum of beautiful art) the third largest gallery in france. its another very awesome building, a big stone one in the city centre like alot of the others but you walk in thru the doors and instead of a room theres a beautiful garden with a fountain and big trees and scuptures and old people and couple kissing etc. very pretty stuff, and the museum is built in a ractangle around it, so as you walk through the exhibition your also circling the garden. its all free to go into (well for students at least) and has just so much stuff!!! the pieces date from 2000BC things from greece and egypt thru to the middle of the 20th century. there was sarcophagi and chunks of heiroglyphics, bronze statues of very athletic gods, weathered quartz statues of one armed women, turquoise jewellery, masses of coins and medals, rickety keys on ancient keyrings, wooden beads, paper puppets, glass, ceramics, engraved suits of armour, tiles, vases, tapestries, hundreds of paintings- wall sized religious tableaus, beautiful 17th century dutch portraits, impressionist stuff with thick oil paint in bright colours... it was alot to take in, and nearly too much when its all so close together. i was standing in front of a wooden coffin that someone had made THOUSANDS of years ago and then within an hour a nylon installation in fluorescent colours from 50 years ago. anyway i loved it all and i think its definetly worth a second visit. afterwards i was planning to walk around the city a bit and get some photos of all the christmas decorations but literally as soon as i stepped out of the garden my camera batteries died. i will have to try to get that done tomorrow afternoon.

after that i had work for the rest of the week with elisabeth which i mostly enjoyed. it was certainly very interesting seeing how things work behind the scenes in an orthodontists, stuff like all the sterilisation precesses, how they make moulds of teeth, x-rays and things. they x-rayed my head for me which was a bit scary cos you stand with things in both ears and your mouth, centered by laser lights, while this enormous white machine spins around your head. but its also cool to see inside my skull!!! elisabeth told me casually the next day that she looked at it and immediately saw that i'm going to have to get my wisdom teeth out. damn it! i asked her if it would be soon and she was like 'oh yes, it must be done as soon as possible, how about tomorrow morning?' but she was joking THANK GOD. apart from watching and a few little jobs there wasnt alot for me to do so there was much sitting around. i went out a bit sometimes- just across the square outside the office is the Lumiere brothers museum. if u dont know they invented cinema and they lived in lyon. the museum was cool, all the old equipment is super gorgeous and they had a few quirky little interactive things. my favourite part though was a little cinema where they showed heaps of the first films that the brothers filmed, all silent, black and white and lasting 50 seconds, but i found it fascinating. i stayed there for an hour before i realised it. the subjects ranged widely, there were observations of people on the street, set up gags, films of customs in countries the brothers travelled to, gymnasts, animals, dancers. lots of them are very funny and its just so cool to see a snapshot of life, what was important etc. also the composition of lots of the films is really interesting and i'd like to do the same sort of thing myself. anyway i found a copy of the tape in the gift shop and bought it even though it was a little expensive cos its so damn cool. another good thing about doing the stage was i got to spend more time with elisabeth and i feel like it really made a difference between us. some of the stuff i saw was so disturbing though! the pain that people have to go through with their braces going on and coming off, casts of peoples insanely deformed teeth, lots of bleeding gums... makes me feel squeamish thinking back to it.

this morning i went with elisabeth to the part dieu (enormous mall 10 minutes from here by foot) which i expected to be horrifically crowded seeing as everytime i've been in the past month has been worse and worse and everytime i come back i have to take a longer shower to rinse off the crowdedness. but no it was ok, at least at the start cos we got there pretty early. elisabeth had to do christmas shopping and after 2 hours we had 4 MASSIVE bags stuffed with presents. the exit that we went out was opposite where i was picked up the first day i arrived in lyon, and i thought a bit about how i felt standing there 7 weeks ago and wondered how i would have felt if i saw myself walking out the doors with elisabeth and armfuls of shopping and a new coat and boots and feeling so happy and most importantly understanding everything. its truly surprising to realise how far i've come in what seems like such a short time. 

after we got home we went out again with charles and isa for a special lunch together for christmas at a typical french restaurant. it was very big and very warm and very golden and very shiny and very plush and i liked it alot. the decor was pretty awesome, it was done by some famous frenchman in the 1920s in original art deco and was very impressive. the reason we went there, apart from the lyonnaise-ness (hmmm sounds like mayonnaise), is that they do a favourite dish of charles's (and isa's, i think), CHOUXCROUTE, or sauerkraut (is that how its spelt???) and IN FACT the restaurant holds the guinnes world record for the largest plate of sauerkraut ever made!!! and also the largest ommelette! i didnt actualy know what sauerkraut was, just that it had to do with cabbage, and when elisabeth explained to me that it was served with charcuterie i didnt realise that she means THE ENTIRE CHARCUTERIE STORE. they put a little stand with tealight candles underneath it on the table and on top of that a platter heaped with shredded cabbage, potatoes, and, i dont know, about a decent sized farms worth of meat. i dont want to think about how many different individual animals
i ate but it was hot and delicious and very filling. we had a really nice white wine with it and also a dessert of vanilla icecream (with actual vanilla beans in it) on a cakey base covered in blow-torched meringue which arrived ON FIRE. pretty awesome. and a numblingly strong, scaldingly hot, very enjoyable shot of coffee. it was really freezing outside, there was salt everywhere to stop ice from forming (but still no snoooowwww falling), and we went to the christmas market again cos charles hadnt seen it yet. i had to go though cos i realised i was late to get back to be picked up by Sophie and Amelie, so i caught the tram and sprinted to the appartement and up all the stairs cos i didnt want to wait for the elevator and put on a thick singlet, a tshirt, a thermal top, a turtleneck, another turtleneck, another jumper given to me by elisabeth that i believe is made from an entire merino, knee high woolen socks, thermal leggings, cord pants, boots, a trench coat and polarfleece head/ear band. lol it was hilarious i could hardly sit down and i quickly went on the computer to type an email and i couldnt see the keyboard properly or get my hands in front of me. but i needed it cos it was -3°. YAY. we took the metro to the stadium, which was cool on one hands as there were lots of people in lyon scarves etc. going to the game, and uncool on the other cos i couldnt breathe there was so many of them. when we got off we were carried up the stairs and along the street in this enormous tide of people heading to the stadium. you could hear roaring from inside it and when we finally got throught the entrance and into the ground it was incredible! we were at an end behind one of the goals and the other end was full of what i guess was the lyonnaise cheer squad, cos they were all holding thousands and thousands of white balloons, the colour of the team uniform, and one of the four sections had big coloured pieces of paper that made the shape of the mascot. the sound too was fantastic, the whole way through the match there was singing and chanting and clapping and foot stomping. a few times there was a call and response thing between our end and the crazy supporter's end, which was awesome. there was a guy close-ish to us who spent the whole match standing on an amplifier on his seat yelling into a microphone to rile up the crowd and he didnt wear a shirt... i have no idea how he did not die. my chin, about the only thing not covered, nearly froze until i started blowing bubble gum bubbles to move my mouth around a bit (the air was so cold the bubbles visibly steamed before they popped). in the match sadly there was no score, although 3 very near misses. one of them was so close that the supporters got excited enough to let off a flare, which was deadly! it was straight away confiscated and you could see the officials carrying it away and trying to figure out how to put it out. people kept letting off coloured smoke bombs too, and it was really foggy, and there were the usual billion smokers. very atmospheric. there was actually only a bit over 38,000 there, but because its a smaller field (than AFL) its a smaller stadium and so it was nearly full and it felt like there was alot of people there. i prefer AFL though cos you get a chance to get happy more cos theres a thousand times more scoring. and also more violence!!! it got a bit annoying seeing the soccer players collapsing flat on the ground. so it was a pity that it felt a little like there was no point to the game when there was no winner, but the rest of the fans didnt seem to mind. walking back to the metro we crossed paths with of delightedly singing groups of young men. a few of them would gently grab me and try and persuade me to go with them but it was funny and they were very good natured. another suffocating ride home on the met and i got home to unxrap myself like an onion and eat a hearty meal. and now i have spent nearly 2 hours writing this, and also talked to daddy a bit on the phone, and it is 10.30 and i am very ready for bed. in case i have another bout of laziness over the next few days (its highly likely considering i will probably for the most part be comatose from overeating :D ) and dont blog i would like to say a huge MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone reading and send my love and hugs and kisses to you all. good night!

ok so what else. friday it got very very cold and has pretty much stayed that way. i am sorting of starting to understand now but last week i couldnt even comprehend how freezing it was. yesterday was probably the coldest day i have literally ever experienced in my life, with an average forecast temperature of -3°. alas still no snow in the forseeable future, at least in Lyon. its doing pretty well in the Alps and i'm getting very excited about our trip there after Christmas!

last weekend on saturday morning Sophie came and picked me up and i spent the rest of the weekend at their house in  a little village out of Lyon. Their youngest daughter Alex, whos in my year level although at a different school, had her 15th birthday party on Saturday night and so we spent the afternoon cooking food, putting up christmas decorations and cleaning and organising the house. alex showed me how to make a quiche thats a specialty of Lyon, its the first proper thing i've cooked here. it was pretty funny, i think that she kind of underestimated my cooking ability a little and explained to me how to do everything in minute detail, even taking my hand to show me how to beat eggs together :S. i mean how can you go wrong mashing two liquids together???? i had fun decorating the christmas tree too, sophie put on an original copy of The Wall and i sort of got more interested in looking at the album sleeve and reading all the lyrics for a bit, but it was very groovy with the music. i love being at their house, it's absolutely massive, kind of 3 and a half stories and about a billion rooms... every time they opened a door to what i assumed was a cupboard there was another room! the house has 4 bathrooms, and a pool outside, and another two seperate buildings with i dont know what inside them. and everyone is so nice and funny and constantly tries to make me eat. it was also fun watching while Amelie, the eldest whos 21, helped Alex pick out her clothes for the night and then do her hair and makeup for her. the actual party was alright, most of the kids were a bit younger and still in the tadpole stage of adolescence before they develop a personality, i hung around with Dom, the girls mother, in the kitchen helping her send out tons and tons of food, and sophie, stealing tons of food before the guests could eat it, and amelie while she got ready to go out to another party. that was fun, she has this tiny tiny bathroom and i sat on the heater for ages and talked to her about heaps of stuff like school and jobs and boys and parents. i think the party went pretty late but So and i climbed up 5billion steps to the top floor and went to sleep at about 10.30. in the morning i chose to go to her basketball match so after a breakfast of a chocolate muffin with chocolate chips and a piece of bread piled with nutella (and good STRONG coffee) we drove to a very cold empty parking lot to wait for the rest of her team to show up so we could follow the coach to where the match was being held, about 50 minutes away. it was kind of funny cos every time someone showed up they kissed everyone already there on the cheek... i didnt think that everyone would bother with this, but everyone there, probably about 16 of us, kissed everyone else... twice, one for each kiss, so thats like, i cant remember how to work it out. 16 x 15 x 14 etc is it? and then by 2 = LOTS OF LOVE lol. the match was ok, a bit cold in the stands (we were inside though, and jean, sophies dad, told me that when he used to play they had to do it outside, sometimes in the snow!!!), there was a freaky girl with crazy eyes on the other team whos family where near us yelling constantly at her (abuse or encouragement i dont know, but they were the closest thing to a french bogan clan i have so far seen). i have to go now but i'll finish this up in the next few days. bisou!

school has been ok this week, Thursday and Friday are our last days (school doesn't officially finish until the end of next week but all of my year level is spending five days doing work experience) and are taken up by 3 hour exams for french, maths and history. so this week has been mostly revision which is mostly pretty boring for me. today after we finished @ 12 i went to the park and visited the elephants and ate an orange and it was very groovy. the sun was out but it was absolutely freezing. all this week its been very very cold, very wintery weather with crystal clear blue skies and loads of sun but no warmth. it feels like the air is too thin to hold onto any of the heat, or the cold concrete just sucks it all up, cos you can feel the rays on your skin but it doesn't go any deeper. but anyway i had my lovely coat and my converse so all was good. i came back to eat lunch with Isa and Charles and then a bit later i got a call from a girl, a patient of Elisabeth's, who spent a month in Australia this year. when she found this out E asked if she'd mind doing something with me. her names scarlett and she's 16 and so so so nice. but before i met her i had to arrange when and where over phone, and i truly detest talking on the phone cos its really hard, but somehow i understood what she said and managed to convey to her that i would be wearing a green jumper and i left to meet up with her. it was really weird waiting at the spot we'd agreed on, like a blind date i guess, and i was intensly studying everone that went past and hoping it would be some of them or that it wouldnt be others. anyway once she arrived with her sister, kim, whos 14, we spent the afternoon at the belle cour and also met up with her boyfriend who has very impressive dreadlocks. i understood her perfectly and she was very impressed with my french so it was truly excellent and we were able to joke around and discuss being an exchange student etc. also this really really weird thing happened, in a store i heard someone say 'excuse me but are you an australian?' and i thought so many things in the space of about 1 second cos i realised that they were talking to me, that they had spoken in english and that they had an australian accent, and turned around to see that i recognised the person behind me as another SCCE kid! i cant even imagine the coincedence of her being there (she lives 30 mins from lyon) in that crowded shop on the packed street at that time and recognising me. it was so so bizarre talking to her, i was too shocked and confused to use french and it was the first time i've had a conversation with an australian, face to face, in 6 weeks! it felt very familiar and releiving but unnatural there the shop. anyway we only talked for a bit but i got her mobile number. i cant remember if i wrote about it already but a few weeks after i got here elisabeth was given the numbers of a few other exchange students who are around lyon by the local coordinator. she rang one of them for me, we only talked for about 10 minutes, and it turns out it was the girl that i saw in the shop! strangely though i really dont feel the urge to hang around with other aussie kids or even have alot of contact with them. i speak on msn to a exchange students that i arrived with who live much further away now and again and its very interesting to hear about how different their experiences have been from mine. anyway we eventually made our way to the christmas market where i went on sunday and it was getting quite freezing. we took the tram to la part dieu where i was going to meet Scarlett and Kim's mother but then i realised the time and thought i better get back home cos it was pretty late. scarlett has invited me to go out with her and her friends on new years eve which i have a feeling would be deadly so i'll ask elisabeth if thats alright. when i got home i drank tea (aaaaah TEA i love you so) and had a really cool long conversation with isa and she said how much shes noticed my french improve and so i'm just fully elated. 

i hope everything is going swimmingly in oz-land and that noone is suffering the effects of excessive smoke inhalation. love to all

• coing means quince. i just find it a fun word to say.
• coquelicot means poppy; how pretty is it?!
• the word for ace is crack
• débarbouiller is to wash (why WHY do they make it so hard???!)
• déboutonner is to unbutton. this just makes sense. and its cute!
• démangeaison means itching... again with the overcomplication
• double-cliquer means simply to click something twice. could there be a more perfect verb? if you asked me i would say NEVER.
• éclabousser is to splash
• embobiner is to get round.so so cute in pretty much every way!!!
• emmitoufler is to wrap oneself up warmly. doesnt it just sound cosy?
• époustouflant/e means mind-boggling. i find it époustouflant how 100% awesome the word époustouflant is.
• esquimau/esquimaude/esquimaux are the male/feminine/plural forms of eskimo. lol.
• dactylographier means to type (yes, what the.)

theres also weird ways they have of saying things if you translate it literally:

• to say threadbare they say used until the string/rope
• cornemuse, meaning horn and i think muzzle is their word for bagpipes. (?????)
• sunburn is blow/shock of sun
• shock of telephone is a phone call
• shock of head is a sudden impulse
• theres a verb, creuser, meaning to tunnel/to dig a hole in and to say that creuses means that gives you an appetite. also to be hungry is literally said as to have a hollow
• to trip someone up is to make a fang in the leg of someone (????ultra confusing and nonsensical but thats the word for word translation)
• ahahaha this is fantastic, their word for scalp is literally long haired leather
• thimble is dice of the finger
• to take off (eg. in a plane) is to unstick oneself
• their word for heart attack is cardiac blackout
• a roar of laughter translates to a brightness/brilliance of laughter
• to graze one's knee is to peel the knee
• to lose ones way is to mislay oneself
• to fall flat on ones face is to spread oneself out (on the ground)
• one way of saying that 'he died' is to say he turned himself off
• rolling armchair is their way of saying wheelchair
• the word for brandy is literally water of life

more weird double meanings:

• the adjective fâché/e can mean either angry or sorry. (oh god confusingness)
• i'm not quite sure how this works but to say 'i'm taking my shoes off' and 'my tooth is working itself lose' you say the same thing. don't believe i'll ever be able to master the use of that verb.
• this is also horribly confusing: theres one verb which means alternatively to smash in/down, to work like a dog, and to get high :s
• éclair means both a delicious pastry thing (like the fresh ones we had on the weekend for lunch :D YUM)  and also a flash of lightning
• as harry and i discovered to much amusement ages ago in french they use the same verb for to dredge as for to pick up (a girl/boy etc.) OH MY GOD THAT REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING harry check your emails il faut que je te dis d'un truc SUPER-MARRANT
  
• they have the same word for shell and misprint
• dément/e means either mad/crazy, or fantastic. i think i will introduce this concept to australia when i get home and just call everything demented.
• they have the same word for manure as for a variety of little round cheeses (i'm guessing this has something to do with the shape)
• they have the same word for bread crust, cheese rind and scab (YUCK, so all around france there are mothers telling their children literally to eat their scabs.)

ok and lastly, i think i said in the last entry on french that for some things french can take more time, but i've found some verbs that are just unequalled in english (which is a pity, cos it would be incredibly useful to be able to say "he is becoming middle class" with just one word. think of all the time that would be saved!!!!) SO all of these phrases require just one word in french:

• to rub shoulders with
• to mess up someones hair
• to sort things out for oneself (haha the actual word is démerder but i don't know if that roughly translates to 'getting rid of all the shit going on' cos our coordinator used it in class today)
• to hurtle down
• ahahahahaha they have a verb for to blind in one eye. seriously, you would get to use that, maybe, two times tops in your life.
• they have 2 different verbs for to shout oneself hoarse!!
• to get stuck in the mud
• to become middle class
• to open ones heart
• to get out of breath
• to use/wear for the first time

alrighty lol and a few nice violent ones that make me a little concerned about the bloodthirstyness of the french!!! but they're also funny.

• to flog oneself to death. quite quite strange
• to cut the throat of. sure this comes in real handy day to day.
• to put on a spit
• be covered with blood

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!

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!

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

love to everyone and especially YOU lol xoxox

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.

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.