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Published: April 11th 2006
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Since the last (and only other!) entry I've been at home for a week and been in France for a week - and I'm going to be in france for the next 3 weeks or so. Hence I'm typing on my first (of this trip anyway) foreign keyboard - something I'm going to have to get used to. Still it means I have a good excuse for the didgy spalling and gremmer now... :o)
For my first month in France I'm in a town called Annecy studying French at a school called IFAlpes. The town is about an hour or two so away from Chamonix and has about 50 000 people in it according to one of the teachers and is incredibly pictureque - although having said that I can't put any pictures up here today for technical reasons...i.e. there isn't a little thingymebob for me to put my sd card into...don't think I'll be leaving my renowned technical-savy behind me in London afterall...
Anyway, very picturesque as I was saying with a big lake right beside the town centre - it's pretty much 42k around it and reasonably flat so good for those who like to do marathons
on their weekends... The town itself is full of cobbledy streets and a little river runs through it. There are loads of little shops selling all sorts of ridicuously tasty faire - although personal favourite has to be the chocolateres (sp?) which basically make these little (and huge) works of art out of chocolate. So, instead of the cadburys easter eggs you get at home you get little carved rabbits or birds (or whatever animal takes your fancy) made out of the tastiest chocolate imaginabale. 'Sweet monkeys' I hear you say!
There's a few museums and a castle and loads of stuff for tourists to do - which is probably why there are loads of tourists here. There are also tonnes of mountains around the area of which the biggest is about 2400m and absolutely covered in snow at the moment. Unfortunately I can't get up it as its too dangerous by yourself at the minute - although there's a possibility I might head up with my host family son at the end of the month. There is however another mountain out my back door which is about 1700m high so I'll probably be heading up it this week.
It's up through a forest for about 12km or more to get to the top so should be a nice little run - I've had the cold for the last few days since my last run so haven't been able to get out as much as I would have liked.
The school I'm attending (IFAlpes) is really good - its amazing how much French you can pick up in only a week, given that when I started I could barely say 'Bonjour' to anyone! Mr McSwarderator you should book yourself on a course! Basically when you turn up you do a level test, which is a written paper followed by a 10 minute oral to see which class they should put you in - classes 1 to 4. I got put put in class 2 (the one just above total beginner...) with about 15 other students and now we have 4 hours of class together each day.
All of the classes are done completely in French, as there are students there from every country in the world, so speaking in English just isn't an option. It's much easier than it sounds though and loads of body language, facial
expressions and judicious use of the english-french dictionary helps a lot. In my class there are quite a lot of Japenese and Chinese students as well as a few other english speakers which makes for an interesting group. We basically spend 4 hours a day butchering the french language and laughing along the way. The hardest bit is going home every night and trying to learn another 30 words that you seen that day in class. Although its only hard because I'm not used to doing homework anymore.
Hmmm this is taking longer to write about than I thought...
Anyway, speaking of homework - 'home' in this case is with a french family - the family Badins - about 3km from the centre of town, who again, are incredibly nice. They all speak really good English but they allow me to stammer my way through french everyday unless we get completely stuck. The mother and two of her 18 year old children (twins - one boy - Max, one girl - Juliette) live there as well while the father works in Morocco and the other 3 children have fled the nest - well not strictly true - one
of them (Antoine) is at uni in Chambery an hour or so up the road and he comes back every weekend. They are all ridicuously sporty as well doing every sport under the sun. The more bizarre ones being water-polo (which I've discovered is ludicrously violent) and mountain boarding/kite surfing/snow-board surfing etc.
I want to go and enjoy the sunshine today so I better wrap this up quickly with two other quick points:
1. The weather changes madly everyday - yesterday it snowed massively and was freezing, but on saturday it was 22°C and I was sunbathing.
2. The food is wicked - loads of cheesy dishses - Smiffers, you would love it!
Rightio, I'm off but I'll try to update this soon and get some pictures on here.
E-mail me and keep me sane with some english!
Oh al,ost forgot - 'Ou est Brian' is apparently a phrase all the french kids get taught at school so they all thing my name is hilarious as they have there own little Brian to play with...
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Mike Hayes
non-member comment
Where's Wally?
Hilarious! You're the 'Where's Wally?' of the French World ;o) I'm v jealous, sounds like you're having a great time! Its great that you've gone for the language class option, its such a good laugh! Enjoy all the chocolate, don't get trop gros! Mike