hello everyone!!
Last week was a bit on and off with school and public holidays. If you remember a few posts back I had to decide whether or not I was to stay 3 months or extend my exchange to 8 months. After a lot of thinking and chats with my host family and actual family back in New Zealand, I ended up deciding that I would only stay 3 months and afterward am planning on doing some traveling. I had to make a list with the pros and cons for each, and after carefully deliberating, I decided that I would be likely to make better use of my time and gain more knowledge if I were to travel and see a bit of Europe by myself. Another option that came up during the deciding process was that I could stay with the same host family if I decided to extend to 8 months, although I could change my exchange from a school type one, to one where I would tutor the family 15 hours per week. Although this was super appealing and made my choice difficult, I overall decided that again traveling would be more suited to me right now.
Part of me feels a bit like a failure for only staying 3 months as I was really hoping to be fluent (which would only happen after 8 months of immersion), although the prospect of traveling is very exciting and I will see so much. At this stage, I don't have a set itinerary, although my mum has been in touch with some friends and family who live in Europe. Therefore I think I am going to try visit them, and I am also looking into doing a Contiki tour or something similar with Topdeck Travel. Now the problem is that there are so many different expeditions to choose from and I am the most indecisive person ever. I am rather glad I decided to do my exchange during a gap year and not while I was still at high school because it has given me the opportunity to travel after, and puts your mind at ease because there is no need to worry about internals or prep for exams at home. I definitely would have been super stressed had I gone last year, and I think that the opportunity couldn't have come at a better time.
Anyway, because I have decided to only do my exchange for 3 months, my exchange officially ends on the 30th of June this year. This lowkey makes me a little bit sad because I definitely know that it'll be incredibly difficult saying goodbye to my host family who are so kind and made me feel at home so quickly. This is now lowkey turning into a sappy story about how grateful I am for them. But seriously, I appreciate all the things they have done for me and helped me with so so much. Right, so let's get onto the weekly review.
On Monday I had to go back to school again after the much appreciated two-week break which you can read about in this post or this post. School was short and started at 9:10am and finished at 12:10pm which meant that I had the afternoon to relax, although TBH as soon as I got home I literally went to my room and almost fell asleep because you know, a 3 hour day is tough. I think my host fam could tell I was so not looking forward to school because in the car on the way there my host mum said "just think about the pastries and the French breakfast we are going to have tomorrow and it'll be so nice" so she took my mind off school a bit and gave me something to look forward to.
Now, I don't know about everyone reading this but I feel like nobody ever LOVES school. I mean, maybe when you look back at the past you think "school was so good", but there are also other times when you think "thank god I don't have to go through that again", etc. While I wasn't the biggest fan of high school in New Zealand, I actually do find myself missing the familiarity of the buildings and the teachers and speaking English and actually knowing what is going on and not feeling like an outsider. Over here school is extremely different - teachers, buildings, people, the whole lot. That doesn't necessarily mean that I don't like it. It is just incredibly difficult at times with the language barrier and most of all when we are not in class and the conversations move quickly about topics I don't understand and vocabulary I haven't learned yet. At times I will admit I get lost in class, but when the work is in front of you it is easy to get the gist of it because you know the topic and therefore you can kind of guess what the teachers are saying. That's the case for I'd say most of my subjects except French class. Yikes, French class I genuinely have no clue whats going on 99% of the time.
Flowers we bought to the family-friends' dinner party 💐
On Monday evening we went to a family friends house for dinner and hung out till pretty late there, like 11pm. I felt so French and here's why: I wore a long trench coat, had wine and lastly, ate real French cheese on a fresh baguette. I swear the only things missing were a beret and snails. Despite being not the biggest cheese lover or wine connoisseur, I really enjoy trying these things. One of my worries, when I return to New Zealand, is that all the cheeses and wines won't live up to what I've been having over here 😨.
On Tuesday, it was a public holiday, which meant the whole family had the day off. We had a real French breakfast with pain au chocolat, croissants and pain aux raisins in the morning. It was so good waking up to the scent of warm pastries 😍. 🤗After that, we got to work - painting the house - because my host family is currently in the middle of renovating. So that was a fair amount of work, we all did our bit painting different walls different colours with different brushes and paint rollers. After that, we had lunch and cider to celebrate finishing the dining room fully. Then I went again to the forest of Fontainebleau with my host family to walk their big fluffy dog.
That was Tuesday, and then on Wednesday, I relaxed because my timetable works so that I don't have classes on Wednesday at all. My host siblings did have classes, however, but just in the morning. So when my host sister came home at lunchtime we cooked up a feast of sausages and potatoes, then watched Nanny McPhee, an episode of The End of the F***ing World and Mean Girls. All in French too, with French subtitles because there weren't English ones. So that was actually cool, I was expecting to have absolutely no clue what was going on but actually could follow the majority of dialogue which was mint. Then, my host-sisters math tutor came around and I had a wee bit of a chat with him. At the end, he said that I've progressed heaps with my French since the last time he came round a few weeks ago and that I hold a conversation like a real French person 😏. Yeah guys, so I'm basically French now. haha, I wish.
Thursday I had a full day of school from 8:10am until 5:35pm. We had a test in biology which was cooked off it's chops because just my luck I didn't even know we had it, and I couldn't translate the keywords that it was about. HAHAH. But the biology teacher was super super lovely and said to just do what I can. I think she could tell I was struggling when I hadn't written anything for the first half hour so she said I could have a look in the textbook. Not that it helped much either, but I wrote down a solid 25 words in the hour and a bit that I spent on it, before she told me I could read a book if I wanted. I think I've learned something new about myself - I really dislike crowds. I don't know if you would call it claustrophobia, or if it's something entirely different. When we line up for the canteen I get so so anxious, and the same thing happens when I'm waiting for the bus and know that it's gonna be super full. So that sort of sucks.
On Friday school was also a long day, again from 8:10am til 5:35pm. I had physics-chemistry in the morning followed by biology, and both classes were actually pretty good and I could understand heaps more than I could during my first initial days at school. So that makes me feel super good about myself, honestly. In physics-chemistry, we did some super easy stuff on organic chem, which I could do with my eyes closed I bet, and it was even better because the topic is the same in any country. Anyway, then in biology, we had a wee surprise waiting for us which was to dissect a fish eye, which I almost vomited at but pushed through and tried not to faint hahaha. Lunchtime was a particular highlight because we had hot chips as part of the main meal! I was absolutely stoked, downed it all a tad too quickly and then spent the rest of lunchtime wishing I savoured the taste 😆 but that was mint, then the rest of the day was a bit less exciting with classes I understood a whole lot less of. Bussed home at the end of the day with another girl in my year group and she spoke English to me while I spoke French to her. It's honestly so heartwarming when people speak English, I don't even know what it is, like it's almost a novelty 😅 and again like many times this week she told me "you're basically fluent and your accent is really good" and I was smiling from ear to ear, bless up. Literally, whenever someone tells me something like that it reassures me so much.
So that was essentially my school week, and on Friday when I came home from school my host family told me that we were going to a castle on Saturday. So on Saturday, we set off to the castle with a picnic of sandwiches and chips. The weather was so nice, like not too hot but not too cold either. Mid-twenties I would say. Honestly, I've said this twice but I'll say it again because these castles blow my mind everytime I go to one and it's just mental to think about all the work and effort that gets put into them. And imagine how expensive it would've been to build - especially at the time! We went to the Château of Vaux le Vicomte which has a fair bit of history concerning what happened there, back in the back there. Basically, I'll sum it up by saying this: back in 1661 there was a lad called Fouquet and he was 26 when he bought the castle. Then, the king, Louis XIV, got super jealous because Fouquet threw a massive party and it was too impressive and lavish. And so Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned for life. Just because the king was THAT jealous. That's obviously a very brief recount of the history, but if you want to read more click here. The castles here absolutely blow my mind. Probably because of the fact that we don't have any in New Zealand...
Below are a few photos I took while there 💝
Sunday I just relaxed and went to a wee market thing in the afternoon with my host mum. Sunday was so hot, like 28 degrees and just a dry heat. It's so frustrating being so far in land because when it's hot like this there is nothing to do, you can't just hop in your car or on the bus and go to the beach which isn't even half an hour away. Here, the nearest beach is a 3 hour drive away which is sooo gutting, I know that when I get back to New Zealand I'll be visiting the beach extra often to make up for the time spent away from it...
Anyway that is my week in review, I have to mention that these posts keep getting pushed back and I am so slack with actually writing them straight after they happen...the next post for sure is going to be the differences post, I just have a heck of a lot of things to put in there and am a bit overwhelmed to begin it 😧 but I am hoping that will be up very shortly...of course you'll hear from me on social media when that post is up 😛
So seya for now,
Michelle xx
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