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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

love to everyone and especially YOU lol xoxox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

love and grosse bisous to all

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.

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!