MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We have been sooo lucky. we had a fair bit of snow last night, about 3cm. I got some pictures, but they didnt turn out really well because it was night time. I hope it ends up snowing on christmas day!!! how exciting!!!

This was the snow 

 this was me in the snow

 This was me and sarah with sntoine dressed up as santa

 This was the snow from some time last week. And on the pool you can see that half of it was covered in Ice

The other day we ate this.

It was called Duck gizzard: which is: Quote,

"The gizzard, also referred to as the ventriculus, gastric mill, and gigerium, is an organ found in the digestive tract of some animals, including birds, earthworms, reptiles and some fish. This specialized stomach constructed of thick, muscular walls is used for grinding up food; often rocks are also instrumental in this process. In certain insects and molluscs the gizzard features chitinous, plates or teeth."
But surprisingly it was sooooo yum!!!!
Tomorrow we are going to see relatives of my host family, and we will be having heaps of nice meals with them; both on christmas eve lunch, christmas eve dinner, christmas day lunch, christmas day dinner, and the day after christmas lunch, and dinner also because it is the birthday of my host sister and host brother. And apparantly each meal is huge. we have had so many people telephoning us asking, do you like lobster, what cheese do you want, etc all week. It will be so nice though to see the differences in how france celebrates christmas. i am really looking forward to it.

So, i will be away until the 31st of december. And when i get back, i am sure ill have many wonderful photos to share!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Another blog

this is another blog of the same day i had with honey. i just couldnt fit all the videos on the one blog. tho this blog and the one below are the same thing pretty much!!!

So, that was such a great afternoon with honey. it will be the last time we will see each other this year (how scary is that), but then next year hopefully we will have some weekends together before we will have to go!!

tosya was the first day of holidays, and i went ice skating with another australian girl, and then we went shopping. and then i came hope and we went strait to a friends place to have dinner and play some poker. and i only just got home now (at 11:00 at night) so it looks like i will have another sleep in in the morning!!

What a fabulous surprise it was this morning...... THERE WAS SNOW!!!! how lucky is that for on the first day of the holidays to have had a big snowfal. it was much bigger than last time.

Well, i better get to bed... and i cant wait until christmas, im counting down the days. i also only have about 5 weeks left here in france... so sad... but i am also soo excited to come back to Australia to see everyone, the beach, the sun, the heat!!!! And most of all....... fresh food!!!!!!!

HOLIDAYS!!!!!!

YAY!!!!!!!! HOLIDAYS!!!!!! FINALLY!!!!! ABOUT TIME!!!!!!!!!! 

 this is my school

  this is the view from the Chateau

this is me videoing us trying to cross the roads and a bit of nantes

 

whilst at the chateau me and honey spent over 1 and a half hours there. we had some fun making videos. This one was helarios to make, because when i was getting towards the top of the starcase, there was a man just standing behind honey, looking at me thinking how wierd we must have been. it waas helarious!!!!!!!!

Junk food, and not long left!

Well... today was a pretty good day at school. We had a great lunch which they call 'le repas de Noel' (christmas meal). So that was very special. It consisted of a quiche for an entree; roast beef with special hot fried potato crisp things for the main meal; and then cheese with a nice bread roll; then a nice chocolate and vanilla ice cream and biscuit desert with custard; and then a very nice mandarine and a ferrero rocher. mmmmm. After that i was so full, i could barely stand up to leave the room!
I was taking to renee on video chat the other day, and she was eating the 'shapes' biscuits. I am dying for something savory like that. That is what i miss most over here, is just healthy-ish food. something without chocolate. Pretty much the only savoury food they have here is a baguette. What I found out a while ago was that their christmas is both christmas and easter at the same time (kind of!). They have the normal easter at the normal time in the year, but at christmas, they eat heaps of chocolate. i've been in the shops and there are just aisles of chocolates: chocolate reindeers, santas, present shape things, etc. They eat so much junk. The first thing i am going to buy when i get back to Australia is get a massive fruit salad... and then go to the beach.
I cant believe how close it is getting until i come back into Australia. It only seamed real when i got my ticket for the train to the airport today. I have only 6 weeks left i think.. or mabey less. I have less than 3 weeks left of school in france. My last day of school i think will be on my birthday. I am fairly unlucky though because the half yearly exams here are on the week before i leave, same as what happened in australia!
YAY!!!! Only one more day of school until the holidays!!! I'm so excited!!!

Lunch and an afternoon with honey!!

Honey and i had a great lunch together, and a great afternoon after school together. Some of these videos are a bit wierd!!! We had a great time despite the freezing cold!!

i also achieved a 19.5/20 for my english listning test!!!!!

this is honey enjoying her pizza

 this is me enjoying my pizza!

this is my delicious gelato



Another Video of Mont St Michelle

This is another video of Mont St Michelle. THis is a long(ish) video of Mont St Michelle. It is pretty much a tour Of the Whole Mountain. I hope you enjoy!!!!!

The Best Weekend ever!!!!

Sorry I haven't writtes a blog in a while. i have been quite busy with school work, getting together with honey etc. But i have lots to talk about!!
Firstly, i am so happy with all my marks and work in class. i have been getting 12 as an average for all  the tests. and the highest marks are about 14, so im really happy with that. I am also understandeing pretty much every word i hear now, which is fantastic, no-one needs to speek slowly to me now, they can just talk to me normally. The hardest thing i find, it to write, but speaking is easy and hard at the same time. I think what makes it hardest for everyone to understand me, is my accent. The australian accent is so "Slangish", that we blend in all our words together, so i guess i kind of do that a bit with my french, so they dont understand it. But other than that, all is good!
I have also had some great times with honey, walking around the streets, experiencing the french culture, and a little bit of the french cuisine. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite foods here so far are the mandarines. they are soo good!!!
I also had the final match of basketball, and we won that, which is fantastic. So we have won all the games so far, we havnt lost any. YAY!!!
This weekend Noel, Sarah, Antoine and me all got in the car headed for Mont St Michelle (MSM-it takes ages to write it each time!) So we left the house at about 11 on saturday morning, and after about a 2hr drive, we stopped for lunch at macdonalds.

 this is Sarah, Antoine and me just before we were about to eat lunch.

 We decided to have a little game of soccer on the table with coins!! that occupied us for a while

 This is me in the car driving towards MSM

After lunch, we had a litttle drive of about 45 minutes - 1 hr to MSM. It was such a nice drive and along the way, i took some pics

we finally arrived at the MSM and it was amazing. i have some videos and some pics.

This is the view from the top of the MSM

 This is sarah sitting on what used to be a toilet

 This was a beautiful little court yard we saw

 The wall that you can see going down the steep hill sort of thing, is what used to be used to lift food up to the people that lived up there. I have a video later of the wheel at the top, that was used to pull up the food.

 this was just another nice place..

 This is an model of the actual Saint Michelle

 This is us sitting down to some nice crepes for afternoon tea at the MSM. I think i cought Antoine at a bad time, haha

 This was a sign infront of the MSM telling you how dangerous it is to walk on the sand because it is all sinking sand.

 This is me on the sand with alot of sand in the background

 This is the MSM

 This is us in the cathedral part of MSM. In this video there is also the wheel to lift up the food that i was telling you about before. the men would get inside and run in the wheel. It is like a mouse running on its wheel!!!

 This is a very embarrasing video, but some of it is ok, so thats why i decided to put it on!!!



SNOW!!!!!!!

SNOW, SNOW AND MORE SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How lucky was I!!!! It has never ever snowed here in November before. So today, it was great. it started snowing at lunch. there wasnt a whole lot of snow that stayed on the ground because the ground was a bit wet before. But a little bit ended up staying there, and i took some videos and photos. later on in the afternood, me and sarah went down the street with these snow tooboggan things, and went down a snowyish hil with them. it was heaps of fun.

you cant really see that its snowing in this pic of me and sarah, but it was actually snowing heavily

A fabulous day with Honey, And the AUSSIES win!!!!!!!!

Well..what a great day!!!
Today i woke up fairly early and went to meet honey at her school at 9:00am after her class. After that we went to a big indoor shopping center, a massive shoe shop, and a massive sports shop. After we did just 'a bit' of shopping we went and had lunch at this buffay type restaurant. It was so so yum... We had nice salads, wraps, and some fries. There, i also saw 2 teachers from my school, and a nice family who came and sat neer us so we had a nice chat to them... in french of course. After that we went back on the tram and into the city, where we went strait to the 'Jardin Des Plants' and sook some photos and had a nice walk around.

(If some of these photos are a bit fuzzy, it's because we are freezing cold and laughing at the same time. That day, the forecast said it was going to snow, but it didnt quite snow, but the minimum temperature was -3 degrees and the maximum was about 4 or 5 degrees)

After the Jardin des Plantes, we went to a museum of art and then to this wonderful cathedral.

And this is us on the tram. Everyone was giving us really wierd looks, both because we were taking a photo on a tram, and also because we were speaking english.

Then after the historical features of Nantes, we went into the city and had a nice hot chocolate for afternoon tea and to get all warmed up. Then....we went shopping again!!! By the time we were finished shopping it was about 4:45 so we headed back down to the tram line. just before we went to the tram line, we stopped and had a look at 'Les Marches De Noel' (christmas markets) , and i bought a big lolly-pop for sarah, and then we got on the tram. I said goodbye to honey at her stop (by doing the 'kisses', 2 of them here in Nantes, but sometimes four), and then i continued for another 15 minutes to my stop, where i cought the bus back home. Then when i got home i got ready really quickly for a National game of wheelchair basketball. It was at a stadium only about 2 minutes away from our house, and it was between St Herblain, and A team from neer Paris. The game was so close, at full time the score was 41-41, so they had an extera 5 minutes, and we won 53-52. It was such a good game, its amazing the tactics and everything thay use, and also how ther just get strait back up if their wheelchair falls over.

So after that match, we raced back home, had dinner, and then sat infront of the tv for the rugby: Australia vs France. Before the match started we were making bets, like if australia wins, im sleeping in the garage, etc!!! So i had my australian flag, and the rest of the family had their french flag. It was the best game, we just kept scoring try after try!!! My cheecks were sore from smiling, and their eyes were sore from crying!!!!!!

I was so relieved, when we won. 59-16!!!! Im going to have alot of fun on monday, bragging about how good australia is!!!!!! Lucky we didnt loose, otherwise id be getting teased!!!!

This is me and sarah with our flags, during the National Anthem before the match.

That was such a great day!!! And only 3 more weeks of school until the Christmas Holidays!!! YAY!!!

The cold and my progress so far

well today it was freezing!! the temperature was officially in the minuses. We als woke up to a nice fog with only about 20m visibility. There was also a large frost i noticed as i was making my way to the bus stop. And then when i got to the bus stop, i couldnt read the times that the bus was coming because the sign was covered with thick ice! So now is the time when thermals are really coming in handy and also putting a few peart of tights under my jeans!
At the moment, I can understand pretty much all my subjects and the conversations i hear. I am nearly getting to the top of the class for some subjects (not including english!!!!!) and beating almost half the class, so that shows me im not too bad with my french. Also in the mathc test we had the other day, it was 1 point for every correct answer, and -0.5 for every wrong answer. so i was like freaking out when i didnt understand the questions, so i ended up getting a few marks taken off!!! I can also understand all my friends well which is harder because they speak faster and use slang. But what i think is really wierd, is that i can understand every single thing in a sentence someone tells me, but then they ask me to translate it into english and i dont know the meaning in english. So i know words in french that i dont know in english. Wierd!!!
I also think that when i get back home it will take me a while to get back into speaking english, because ummm, im starting to spell some words wrong and not make sense when i am talking. And i also hate it when i get my english tests back and most of my grammer is wrong. like i write 'whose' instead of 'who's', etc. The one thing i cant understand here, is how much swearing they do. There is hardly one sentance goes bye without hearing a swear word.
ive only got about 3 more weeks until the xmas holidays, yay. i cant wait to see how different the french christmasses are to the australian ones.
I only have a couple of months unitil i return back to Australia. I'll write you a list of just some of the things i am willing to see:

• Seeing all my friends, family and scruffy
• i cant wait till i get back to wearing a school uniform
• going to school and finishing school while the sun is still up
• breathing fresher, warmer and smoke free air
• eating cereal and healthy food for brekky
• im looking forward to a nice fruit salad- Thay eat hardly any fruit here
• Vegimite on toast
• A nice big brekky of bacon, sausages, eggs on toast. (i know i did say healthy food, but everyone loves a big hot breakfast like that!!!)
• The BEACH!!!!

GUESS WHAT????? I JUST LOOKED AT THE WEATHER FORECAST, AND WE ARE SCHEDUALED TO HAVE SNOW HERE IN NANTES ON THE WEEKEND. It is not even winter yet and we are in -2 degrees. I do hope that is snows here, what a wonderful surprise!!!!!

what a FABULOUS week

This has been such a great week. firstly, i had heaps of exams, so that wasnt too good, but i did pretty well in them, beat some other people in my class, so i was proud of that! then i got honeys phone number, and we were texting each other throughout the week. then on friday after school, i gave her a call and asked if we could meet up before my basketbal training. So i was on the tram, and then i got off the tram in the middle of the city. Everything was so busy, so many different tram lines and bus lines everywhere, and i was trying to find honey.
so i called her, and was like "where are you"
and shes like "im walking along the tram line".
so im like "which way are you walking",
and she goes, "down it"
and im like "which way is down the tram line".
and she's like, "um... its on a hill isnt it!!"
and im like.. "umm, we mustnt be walking along the same tramline then", so i just kept walking, and talking, saying, im walking past the orange shop, im walking past prada etc. and finally we must have walked strait past each other because, i turned around and she was rite there. so we ran up and gave each other a massive hug. It was the first hug i have had in three months, you wouldnt believe how good it felt, i had a little tear in my eye at the time. im also getting tears now, just typing about how great a moment it was.
So then for the next hour or 2 we walked around the city trying to find this good creperie my french teacher told me about. we kinda got lost, so we asked some random person on the street, and they said "its definately not in the direction you are heading in" so we turned around, and then i think it was it that we found, but it was closed, so we went in some nice chocolate chops, had a wonderful look around, and then on the way to the tram we bought a cookie for afternoon tea. So then i stayed with her at the 'Gare Maritime' while we waited for her host sister, and then she came, we went indoors with the warm heaters, and had a little chat, before it was time for her boat to leave and then i had another FABULOUS hug, and went off to basketball training.
After basketball training, i went to the pool with sarah and sandra untill 10:00pm and then when we got home we had some friends over from another city in france, and they stayed with us for the week-end. 
So then on saturday, we had a nice lunch and then i cought the bus to the basketball match, and we won, yay 36-32. then after that, i cought the bus home, and as soon as i got home, we had to go to this concert of music, comedy, drama etc. And you wouldnt believe what time it finished. it finished at 2:00 or later in the morning. So by the time i got home, got changed, got ready for bed, did some talking, it was nearly 3:00am. So today i had a really big sleep in, 'till a bit after 11am, and had brekky. then an hour later we had lunch. then after lunch, i went to meet honey. so again we went in the center of the city, and had a nice afternoon tea. then at 4:00 we met up with her host sister and a friend of hers, to see a movie. the movie we were originally going to see was sold out, so we had to choose another one and it was "social networking". i was surprised that it was in english with french sub-titles. Normally english movies have the voices changed to french. so me and honey were relieved about that!!!
Then after the movie, i had to run to the tram, and lucky i got on that tram, because if i didnt, at the end of the tram ride i catch a bus, and if i was 1 minute later i would have missed the latest bus to run on a sunday!
So this week has been so enjoyable, and i am looking forward to next week!!!!

Just an ordinary week

Well. nothing much exciting has happened this week. It has been pouring rain and really windy pretty much all this month so far. Apparantly november is the month of rain.
On monday, we started doing gymnastics for sport which is pretty fun.
Then on thursday it was rememberance day so a public holiday, so we were at home all day. and because it was christelles birthday we had a big part for her with 4 or so familys that came over. we had lunch, some familys put on performances that were helarious, and then we played poker. In France everyone is so into board games and card games. everytime they are together with friends they just play board games and talk. So since i have been here, ive learnt to play poker, and surprisingly i get 2nd nearly every time out of about 8 people who play.
then on saturday, i had a match of basketball again, and we won. it was the most important game of the season because the other team was really good. but thankfully we won. I was so unlucky on the way home from basketball, because i was walking to the bus stop along the path on the side of the road. and there is heaps of water on the road, and there was this car that drove in the puddle of water, and the water sprayed up and drenched me from head to toe!!
Then today i cleaned up my room, and at the moment i am studying for two tests i have tomorrow. Uh Oh!! actually, i am actually improving heaps at the moment. i can understand heaps of conversations and what all the teachers are saying in class. In one of the tests for science and life on earth, i got 6/20 which i was happy about, because i looked at the marks that the other kids got in my class and they were only 7, 8, and 9 out of 20. so i was Stoked!!!

back at school

well. on thursday last week, we started back at school for the term. it was great to see all my friends, some of the teacher, and that it wasnt another blockade!
this has been a pretty good weekend. firstly on saturday morning i went to the basketball presentation of all the teams from our club. we all got our team photos taken, and also got to meet proffesional players. then i went strait home, had lunch, and then went back to the staduim for our match in the afternoon. It was the toughest game we had played so far. all up, in the whole game there were over 40 fouls. Thankfully we won 56-54, with a shot in the last 4 seconds.
then on sunday, i had a bit of a sleep-in, talked to my family on skype, had a nice lunch, then we had visitors over. and then in the afternoon, i helped Antoine change his room around. And i finally finished all my homework, and i have my alarm set for a 6:00am wake up. thankfully in the morning for sport, we dont do running anymore, i think we are doing gymnastics or something, but at least it is inside, and not cold!
I have only 5 more weeks of school left for this term and then the christmas holidays!!!

PARIS AND A GREAT HOLIDAY

OK. we were away for a week, so im going to write about my holiday in each individual day. (its going to be a very long blog!!!)

Wednesday
First up today, we went to the city of LE MANS. There we visited two families of noels sisters and saw a very nice cathedral

 Then in the afternoon, we went to the house of noels parents at Conge-sur-orme and stayed there that night. it is such a nice little house, in a little village of 300 people. This is a photo of their backyard and a part of their house.

Thursday
We woke up, had a nice dinner, and then Me, antoine and sarah rode to another house of noels parents and saw it.  We had lunch there and then headed for Meziere-sur-seine. on the way we stopped at another family of Noel's.

At Meziere-Sur-Seine, we stayed with a family who are good friends of Noel's. we stayed there for two nights. In the family there is a 13 year old boy, 16 and 19 year old girl, so i got along well with them.Firstly when we got there we had some little snacks, then went for a nice walk around the town with their dog. along the way we saw this in the ground. They are all over france, and mark however many km away from where the troops landed in Normandy in 1944.  

Friday
Today, we had a nice sleep-in, and a nice lunch and morning just chilling out by the fire and playing a few games. then in the afternoon, Andrea (the 16 year old) had a friend come over, and all us kids went ice scating in the nearest city 'Mantes'. then we came home and had another dinner of those big platters of cheese and hams. mmmmmm.

Saturday
Well, this morning we had to wake up early because we were leaving and going to PARIS. YAY!!!!!!!! It was a 40km drive from Their place to paris. First up we went to the eiffel tower, and went up it. We could only got to the 2nd level, because the top one was closed. It was so amazing. the view was spectacular. Then after that, we went for a boat cruise alont the Seine River and saw some wonderful sights of paris. Then after that, weh went for a drive around paris, drove down the Champs-Elysee, the arc de triumph, and then after that, we stopped at the notre dame. we had afternoon tea there, and then went in the notre dame. After the Notre dame, it was dark, so we went back to the Eiffel tower and saw it with the lights on it. It was the best day ever. So then we drove back to Le Mans, and on the way, we had dinner at a nice chinese restaurant, and then stayed at a house of noels sister.

this is a video of us driving into paris. you can see the Seine River, The Eiffel Tower, and a Statue of Liberty.

this is a video of us going down the Eiffel Tower in a Lift.

 this is a video of part of the boat cruise

this is the wonderful view fron on the eiffel tower

This is looking up the Eiffel tower

this is the wonderful view from on the eiffel tower. In the middle of the picture if you look carefully you can see the Arc De Triumph. And the Champs Elysee runs to the right of that, but its hard to see.

this is me and sarah on the eiffel tower

The Eiffel tower

The Arc De Triumph

Loking down the Champs Elysee

The Notre Dame

The Eiffel tower at night. My camera doesnt really take good night photos.

Sunday

Today, we drove back home. but along the way we stopped at Christelles Mothers house, and had lunch with her.

When we got home, it was dark, and its Halloween. So we got strait in our halloween outfits, and went around the streets, and we each hava a bag full of lollies. mmmmmmmm.