This week has been pretty normal – I’ve definitely found a routine here. Everyone at school has been complementing me on my french recently, which is a huge confidence booster! Now that I can understand and speak more I can actually show my friends who I am, terrible puns and all, which is great because these last few weeks of listening more than talking have been… an experience, but anyone who knows me knows I loooove to talk!

I participate in lots of classes now – they are all starting new topics so it’s good for me. In maths we are doing Linear Algebra, I nearly leaped for joy because we did that last year – however in french it will definitely be more interesting! I also got permission from the school to spend the first week after the holidays off school because I am meeting up with the JPC french class when they come over for their trip! I’m so excited for that but also nervous that seeing familiar faces will bring on another wave of homesickness (which has totally disappeared thank goodness).

It was Lina’s birthday on Saturday, but I only saw her for about 2 hours. That girl can sleep, she slept in until 12:30 on her birthday!! I couldn’t believe it, I always wake up really early from excitement but she was just so chilled. We had a nice lunch together and then she was off to kayak. I didn’t go because they weren’t on water, they were just watching a safety video.

Today for lunch we went out to a little cafe and had crêpes! I had my first ever galette (savoury crêpe) which had cheese, ham and egg, and honestly I didn’t really like it, I don’t really like melted cheese. But it was still cool to try and I might just go for a different flavour next time. However the desert crêpe was amazing! I tried a flavour I haven’t before – banana and chocolate – and it definitely didn’t disappoint, I guess I’ll always be a sweet tooth:D

Today it reached 21 degrees, the hottest yet! Whenever I’ve had chances to go running I kept making excuses – the main being it’s way to hot. So today I bought a pair of summer sports clothes so I don’t have to run in my hot trackpants – no excuses now Sophia! It was also daylight savings the other day which is messing with my brain. Instead of being 12 hours behind NZ I am now only 11.

ALSO this happened ages ago but for some reason I always forget to write it down even though it’s really important. A nice girl at school called Elisabeth offered me to stay with her family for the second half of the year. She even got the all clear from her parents and I will be going to stay with them the weekend after this ( I think) to see what life with them is like. We first met when she saw me reading wattpad which she also loves, and we fanned over heaps of books and movies – we have exactly the same taste ( she just reads the french translations)! Elisabeth says she has 3 or 4 sisters ( I forgot exactly…), so I should never get bored. It will definitely be a change ( Zoe is enough thank you very much! :D)

Differences of the month:

1. Change – If something for sale says it costs 9 Euro’s and 99 centimes it literally means it, you get 1 centieme change! Same goes for 95 centiemes and 98 centieme. There are so many coins I can’t tell them apart and have embarrassed myself multiple times fumbling through my purse through the 8 different types of coins! I often forget I get change and just walk out…
2. You have to pay to use the motorway. I know this is done in NZ as well but here it’s basically every motorway. I’ll try take a photo next time, but one second you are driving on a normal road and then the next the road will just stretch out to about 20 lanes with a gate thing for each. You put your credit card into a machine and a ticket comes out and the gate opens. It closes so fast so you have to zoom through super quickly. These motorways are everywhere – we went through about 6 just on the way to the Pyrenees.
3. There’s always about 5 jet streams in the sky. It’s never clear.
4. As well as squirrels (Which I still haven’t seen!) there are bears. There are also leeches….
5. The way people imitate animal’s sounds are different! Me and my friends had a good laugh discussing the differences for this. E.g we say a rooster says cock-a-doodle-doo but the french say it makes the sound coquereco!

I can’t remember if I have photos for this blog but I don’t have time to upload them now. If I do I’ll upload them when I have time.