My Life In France (So Far)

Host Family & Home Life

I just changed host families this last weekend. I’m really enjoying my new family. I have a host Mum and Dad, 2 host brothers (16 and 10) and a host sister (4), and a host dog. I don’t have set chores around the house but I just help with everyday things e.g. clean my room, set the table, do the dishes. We have dinner together and talk while watching the news.
My French is much better now. I can join in on the conversation during dinner and when I listen, I don’t have to translate back into English.

Water Polo

I have joined a Water Polo team since arriving in France. We have training 2 times a week for a total of 4.5 hours. The team plays a game about 1 or 2 times a month. I don’t get to play yet but I am hoping that I can later in the year. I have to get permission from the French Water Polo Federation first. I am just about the youngest in the team. The rest of the players are about 23 years old or more.

School

School in France is very different to SKC. I go to “Lycee Jules Verne”. It’s a public school. I have trouble getting used to the ever changing timetable. We start and finish at a different time each day. Some days I will only have 2 hours of class and other days I will have 8 hours of class, and that’s not counting lunch time.
Lunchtime at school is extremely different. In NZ we just chill out, maybe play some sport and just have some fun. Here we have to wait 25 minutes before we can go into the canteen, then everyone eats the lunch and leaves. Most of the kids I’m friends with go home for lunch anyway so I have to sit with total randoms some times.
After lunch I go into the city which is 2 minutes walk from school.
The classes here are very different. At SKC we do every topic within a subject each year. E.g. For maths we do Number, Stats, Algebra, Geometry etc, each year. This year my class is just doing Stats and Geometry for the entire year. They do very advanced maths and I don’t understand anything in the class.
The class room itself is very boring here. There is a black board, chairs and desks. That’s it! No posters on the walls (Which are plain white) so I have nothing to look at when I get bored in class.
School here is just for learning. You come to school, go to class and go home. No assemblies, no houses, no co-curricular activities. It’s so boring but I think I’m getting used to it and it really makes me appreciate SKC so much more than I already did.

Spare Time

I have quite a lot of spare time here as I don’t get any homework, yet. Nromally I go into town and meet up with some of the other exchange students who are in Nantes, I think there are about 7 in the greater Nantes area.
We always meet outside FNAC (Like Sounds, Dicks Smith, Electronics Boutique, and Whitcoulls all mashed into one store) at the “Place du Commerce” because it is the most central place in Nantes and easy to find.
Normally we just walk around town and have fun. Sometimes we wills stay out for dinner and go to a bar afterwards. We always have a lot of fun together.
Sometimes I have spare time during school so I go into town and have a look around. I usually buy something to eat from the boulangerie. The bread here is amazing. They also have a special kind of bread called Brioche which is like a mix between bread and cake, it’s delicious.