comments about France from a young Australian.

I've loved reading bits of her adventure...

I'm off to do a semseter at Université Robert Schuman in Strasbourg next year

Uni exchange ffy?

Strasbourg III - studying law?

yes uni exchange... between Bond Uni and URS.

not for law (fingers crossed I'll be off to Duke in NC, USA for that), for french - part of my BA in International Relations and French. So I'll probably pick up some IR subjects and get credit for both IR and french - yeehaw!

I have a Canadian friend studying IR or at least something similar in Canada.

Big cultural/climate shift from Brisvegas.

Is Nat or Sally looking after you?

to confuse matters further... I'm a scottish international student over here! So I'm kinda looking forward to getting back to europe and a northern hemisphere climate!



and no.... the irony of going to the other side of the world, to study languages and get sent back to europe for a semester isn't lost on me!!! hehehe

PS - who are Nat and Sally?

This sounds like a very attractive course you got onto.

How useful is it?

Ooh, King Ubu! Have to read that again! Used to love it in high school.

I love my course... love my uni as well! and a law degree will hopefully still be useful by the time I graduate (although with all these semesters abroad who knows!! heheheh)!!!

I'm doing a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and a Bachelor of Arts (BA IR/FRNL) with double major in International Relations & French at Bond University on Australia's Gold Coast. Semester abroad in Strsabourg is compulsory for the French language major; and a semester abroad during the law degree is encouraged by the faculty.

homework is also encouraged by the faculty - so I'm off to do mine!!!!!

Aussie student wrote

.....in a fantastic mood for my end of year maths exam. I actually did not go too badly, I got 14.5/20 which is about my average and bet quite a few of the lovely French children at their own game. French maths isn't actually all that complicated in the Literature stream once you grasp the basic concept of things. After maths I headed off to the music shop to have a look at the mute for my horn. I walked in just as the main shopkeeper was leaving and he said to his assistant "Do you know how to work the mute for this young lady?" the shop assistant replied "Non" and the shopkeeper said "I'll just leave you to it then." Very professional. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing. The mute itself is actually quite good except it costs 170€, a little too much considering I will never be a professional player nor have a career in it I don't think.

Went and did some other things and posted off the envelope of things from Perpignan plus Dad's birthday card. How much would it have cost to send it express? 50€. No way. An hour of music ensued and I started the Calais/London adventure with Jacob, Michael and April (the Americans) and our French friends Flavie and Sophie. I shall type to you a direct extract from my written diary:

We all got out of class early to head off to Calais, a French seaside town, in Flavie's Dad (Dominique)'s minibus. Dominique's house is amazing! It is a very beautiful series of rustic ivy-coloured farm buildings in a country setting. AND it is situated right near the cliffs. We deposited our things and went on a beach walk together, which involved inspecting the rocks, shells and war relics as we wound our way between the beach and the tall grassy embankment. My mood from that morning lifted considerably. Back at the house we got our rooms sorted upstairs and Dominique cooked as Croque-Monsieurs (French grilled cheese sandwiches). It is probably the first time we have all relaxed and eaten dinner away from school.

After dinner we all sat outside on the lawn talking, meditating and playing with a large beachball. The topics of conversation were quite philosophical actually, ranging from world religion, to quantam physics, to the future of humanity, history (Aztecs) etc, all of which I am developing an intense interest in. My tastes are now wandering towards international politics, history, geography, religious studies, world literature etc which is interesting since none of those interested me greatly before I decided to see the world. On impulse, we all decided to take a long walk in a nearby crop field. France is amazing in the sense that there is nothing dangerous here, no snakes, spiders, nothing. It frees you up to enjoy the great outdoors a little more.

We got to bed at 1:30am and then got up at 5:30am for a ferry to London. The English ticket officer at the port was really angsty and he asked for our billets (the French word for ticket which is usually pronounced ?'bee-yay') which he pronounced the way it was spelt. Hopeless. In our opinion if you a working in another country you should at least learn vocabulary which you use everyday! Two hours later the vrai white cliffs of Dover loomed towards us.

Us six youngsters caught the train into central London and went to some of the places my drama class visited earlier in the year including The National Gallery and The London Eye. We ?'had envie' of going on it except the queue was a mile long! Instead we walked through some of the beautiful Royal Parks (including Kensington Gardens, where Peter Pan ran away to and found Tinkerbell), browsed the markets and saw some of the most beautiful oil paintings for sale that we had ever seen. Beach and ocean scenes that looked like photographs! Amazing! We admired the red buses and saw one with an ad on the side saying in no uncertain terms, ?'Looks are everything'. That's London for you(?)

We were lucky enough to catch the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace which involved furry Beef-eater guards marching in formation to a live band. Caught it on video to, will post it later on. I looked up at the windows for the Queen but did not catch sight of her. We caught the metro across the city to London Bridge and no, it was not falling down. The queue for the London dungeons was as big as the one for the London eye so we decided to find a real red phone box.

While we were there we decided to all squeeze inside and take photos, to the surprise of people passing outside! Flavie and Sophie called us from Portello Markets and after a massive metro effort to the other side of the city, we arrived. When we got there they called to say that they were back in the other direction so we had to catch it back again! That is how we spent a great deal of our afternoon. By the time we got back to the ferry and to Calais, it was 2am and we all slept until midday. Dominique cooked us an amazing meal of bacon, eggs and sausages and we relaxed/played boardgames/packed up.

We spent another few wonderful hours at the beach collecting rocks, digging holes, having crab wars, listening to music and frolicking in the surf. This was my favourite part of the whole weekend and was a good way to say goodbye to Michael, since he is heading back to the States in a few weeks. We were running late to get back to the train so we had to run barefoot across all the rocks and rockpools, our feet got grazed quite a fair bit. I got back to Lille and missed the time in Calais already.

I stayed up late the next night to put the final touches on my Australian exposé for my English class since I had not already done it. It was the same as the French one except in English and on a DVD and the photos were of better quality. I also showed a large wall map, the postcards, the cloth flag, Australian money, vegemite, DVD footage of Kath And Kim (which they did not really understand thank goodness as it started to get a bit vulgar) and the Tolmie fires. In general it went well but I kept mixing up words as I was quite tired from staying up late the past few nights. Right now in English we are watching the film "Bread And Roses."

The week passed relatively uneventfully. In orchestra, I played the best I have ever played at rehearsals. My teacher gave me an even harder piece for me French horn exam. I also acted the best I have ever done in English theatre. I was on a role! (pun, not spelling mistake) All my terminale classes finished up this week so I gat to finish a fair bit earlier until the 7th of June, which is the LAST OFFICIAL DAY OF SCHOOL FOR THE YEAR.

Now for this weekend. Friday lunchtime I took a 5 hour train trip down to Libourne, which is near Bordeaux, to stay with my Norwegian friend Aashild and her host family for the weekend. It is right in the middle of wine-brewing territory and Aashild lives in the middle of a vineyard! She showed me the rows of vines and the immense vats! Saturday we caught the train into Bordeaux and met up with our Australian friend Charles. We saw some of the historical monuments, fountains, the church, the townhall (a Palais) and a bonsai tree display which was inside! We had lunch with some of Charles's other STS friends and took a guided tour of the theatre which was constructed a few centuries ago I believe. It is absolutely incredible!! Unfortunately it underwent some dramatic renovations in the time of the French Revolution and much of the original furnishings were destroyed. What a fabulous day we had in Bordeaux.

The next day was even better. Charles, Aashild and I all met up and visited the nearby wine-producing town of Saint Emilion for the morning. We took a tourist train tour of the area including the vineyards, a guided tour of the biggest underground cathedral in Europe plus the underground catacomb where the people who were rich/pure of soul were interred. There are even some skeletal remains from a later period, the 1800's. Incredible. For anyone planning a trip to France, St Emilion is a must see. Aashild's family were kind enough to gift me with a bottle of red-wine from their estate!  It was sad to say goodbye to everyone again since they are all (with the exception of Charlie) going back to their native countries. Aashild may come and spend the day in Copenhagen avec moi, we shall see!

The end of an entry that I have been fabricating over a few weeks comes to an end- photos will be coming shortly, I promise. Also please ignore all the spelling and grammar errors, I have been staying up at al hours of the night fabricating this. Please correct if you find any errors father dearest! In fact, that phrase reminds me of a sweet old Christian lady on the bus… we attempted conversation and she gave me a prayer to learn. Voilà. Actually Buddhism still takes my fancy, contemplating visiting the temple nearby for a cultural experience…

Because foreigners always have bad prejudices about good food, based on PC ideas...

"Brochettes de cœurs de canard" that was, I suppose?

Je le crois aussi, Walter!

I loved France, I went a while back, but gosh that was an awesome trip. I am totally reminiscing as I write this, the whole trip was just spectacular. Including the flight over, I flew with Lufthansa and that was an awesome experience. I need to go back!