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Thu, May. 29th, 2003 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annarti
Hello~~ Sallie-lub *wavewave*
“Est-ce que vous désirez quelquechose boire?”
I blinked a few times, trying to decipher the relatively simple sentence and separate the sound of the steward’s voice from the inane babble of meaningless French of surrounding French businessmen and the sound of the plane’s engines.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as?” I cringed internally. Should’ve used ‘vous’ there, not ‘tu’.
Eventually I obtained my orange juice without having to speak a word of English. Whether this was because the steward genuinely thought I was French or whether he didn’t know any English, I’ll never know.
Until landing in the Nantes airport, I had been surrounded by people speaking English, namely those from my French class in Australia. Even on the small, Air France plane, I was accompanied by a girl from Brisbane, part of the same cultural exchange program I was on. Naturally our conversation on the plane circled around how neither of us could speak French.
We landed in Nantes little over an hour after having finally taken off in Paris. The Brisbanian and I huddled on the tarmac, giggling nervously about how we would never have been able to make the journey alone, how we were probably the only English speakers in the whole city, and how stuffed we would be for the next six weeks.
Our host families, or rather one member of them, greeted us in the airport in the traditional French way; by kissing us once or twice on each cheek and welcoming us with a friendly “Bonjour, et bienvenu en France!”
What am I doing here? I can’t speak French!
First thoughts of a sixteen-year-old girl when wheeling the suitcase trolly, which must, of course, veer off to one side. Genuine French language, and nothing but, for the next six weeks. Not French as heard on the tape of a listening comprehension, or the teacher with an accent more Australian than my own, but a native French speaker, who knew probably no more of my language than I knew of hers.
Somehow I managed to make conversation for the hour-long drive between Nantes and Châteaubriant, the small town I would be spending my time in. Naturally I spent my first day sleeping, having been woken that morning at about four in the morning by a few over-excited Scots who felt their impending victory that day in against France in soccer was far too important to leave uncelebrated.
My first day of school involved a History/Geography lesson, an English lesson, a Physics lesson and about five hours worth of frees. History/Geography I never really understood. I’ve grown accustomed to the lessons being separate rather than blocked together in something I can now only describe as being the French version of Australian Studies.
During my first break for the day, half the school evacuated the grounds and stood around the road outside, standing around in what may as well have been sub-zero temperatures breathing fog, while the remaining few stayed inside and played pool.
English was a lesson I had been anticipating for a while. Would the teacher be French, or maybe from England? I could even strike it lucky and have someone from Australia. I took my seat with the two French girls I had very quickly made friends with in History/Geography and waited for the teacher to arrive.
Once greeted with a friendly “Welcome at our class!” I decided the likelihood of Mrs Boulant being of English origin was slim to nil, Australian even less so. I also figured that the best way to make a good first impression is not to correct the English teacher with the second word she had said to me.
After the single hour of lessons came the second two-hour break, this time for lunch. Being a foreign exchange student, I lacked a lunch card, and so told the man stationed there who I was.
“C’est ‘Thompson’ avec un ‘p’.”
“Oui, merci.” He pencilled the strange, foreign name on his pad as I peered over.
“Non, non, avec un ‘p’, là.” I pointed between the ‘m’ and ‘s’.
“Ah, pardon.”
Three days and three repeated spellings later I received my lunch card: ‘Anna Thomson’ was printed clearly above the magnetic strip that would allow me to eat my lunch.
For the last hour of the day I was in a lesson clearly labelled on my timetable as ‘Physique’—Physics. So naturally the teacher produced a model of the human body and proceeded to explain the effects various food groups have on it, as one would expect in a Physics lesson.
On Tuesday ‘Physique’ was marked in again, and so the teacher, different this time, took out a periodic table and handed out sheets for an experiment which resulted in white liquid turning red. Again, a typical Physics lesson.
On returning home from school at around half past six, I found my host sister violently striking the layer of ice on the pond outside with a broom handle. After seeing my puzzled look, she calmly explained this routine was to allow the fish to breathe.
I blinked and stared at the thrashing broom, then walked into the house, convinced I had somehow mistranslated what she had said.
Of course the next morning was my turn to whack the pond and sure enough there were four or five large gold fish under the water’s surface. There was no need for me to dip my fingers in to see how cold the water was; the two-centimetre-thick layer of ice was enough to convince me I would last no more than five minutes in such temperatures. Granted, the fish weren’t exactly attempting backflips in the pond, but they were living, which was more than I could say for myself if I were in there.
^ true story, yup yup ^^
“Est-ce que vous désirez quelquechose boire?”
I blinked a few times, trying to decipher the relatively simple sentence and separate the sound of the steward’s voice from the inane babble of meaningless French of surrounding French businessmen and the sound of the plane’s engines.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as?” I cringed internally. Should’ve used ‘vous’ there, not ‘tu’.
Eventually I obtained my orange juice without having to speak a word of English. Whether this was because the steward genuinely thought I was French or whether he didn’t know any English, I’ll never know.
Until landing in the Nantes airport, I had been surrounded by people speaking English, namely those from my French class in Australia. Even on the small, Air France plane, I was accompanied by a girl from Brisbane, part of the same cultural exchange program I was on. Naturally our conversation on the plane circled around how neither of us could speak French.
We landed in Nantes little over an hour after having finally taken off in Paris. The Brisbanian and I huddled on the tarmac, giggling nervously about how we would never have been able to make the journey alone, how we were probably the only English speakers in the whole city, and how stuffed we would be for the next six weeks.
Our host families, or rather one member of them, greeted us in the airport in the traditional French way; by kissing us once or twice on each cheek and welcoming us with a friendly “Bonjour, et bienvenu en France!”
What am I doing here? I can’t speak French!
First thoughts of a sixteen-year-old girl when wheeling the suitcase trolly, which must, of course, veer off to one side. Genuine French language, and nothing but, for the next six weeks. Not French as heard on the tape of a listening comprehension, or the teacher with an accent more Australian than my own, but a native French speaker, who knew probably no more of my language than I knew of hers.
Somehow I managed to make conversation for the hour-long drive between Nantes and Châteaubriant, the small town I would be spending my time in. Naturally I spent my first day sleeping, having been woken that morning at about four in the morning by a few over-excited Scots who felt their impending victory that day in against France in soccer was far too important to leave uncelebrated.
My first day of school involved a History/Geography lesson, an English lesson, a Physics lesson and about five hours worth of frees. History/Geography I never really understood. I’ve grown accustomed to the lessons being separate rather than blocked together in something I can now only describe as being the French version of Australian Studies.
During my first break for the day, half the school evacuated the grounds and stood around the road outside, standing around in what may as well have been sub-zero temperatures breathing fog, while the remaining few stayed inside and played pool.
English was a lesson I had been anticipating for a while. Would the teacher be French, or maybe from England? I could even strike it lucky and have someone from Australia. I took my seat with the two French girls I had very quickly made friends with in History/Geography and waited for the teacher to arrive.
Once greeted with a friendly “Welcome at our class!” I decided the likelihood of Mrs Boulant being of English origin was slim to nil, Australian even less so. I also figured that the best way to make a good first impression is not to correct the English teacher with the second word she had said to me.
After the single hour of lessons came the second two-hour break, this time for lunch. Being a foreign exchange student, I lacked a lunch card, and so told the man stationed there who I was.
“C’est ‘Thompson’ avec un ‘p’.”
“Oui, merci.” He pencilled the strange, foreign name on his pad as I peered over.
“Non, non, avec un ‘p’, là.” I pointed between the ‘m’ and ‘s’.
“Ah, pardon.”
Three days and three repeated spellings later I received my lunch card: ‘Anna Thomson’ was printed clearly above the magnetic strip that would allow me to eat my lunch.
For the last hour of the day I was in a lesson clearly labelled on my timetable as ‘Physique’—Physics. So naturally the teacher produced a model of the human body and proceeded to explain the effects various food groups have on it, as one would expect in a Physics lesson.
On Tuesday ‘Physique’ was marked in again, and so the teacher, different this time, took out a periodic table and handed out sheets for an experiment which resulted in white liquid turning red. Again, a typical Physics lesson.
On returning home from school at around half past six, I found my host sister violently striking the layer of ice on the pond outside with a broom handle. After seeing my puzzled look, she calmly explained this routine was to allow the fish to breathe.
I blinked and stared at the thrashing broom, then walked into the house, convinced I had somehow mistranslated what she had said.
Of course the next morning was my turn to whack the pond and sure enough there were four or five large gold fish under the water’s surface. There was no need for me to dip my fingers in to see how cold the water was; the two-centimetre-thick layer of ice was enough to convince me I would last no more than five minutes in such temperatures. Granted, the fish weren’t exactly attempting backflips in the pond, but they were living, which was more than I could say for myself if I were in there.
^ true story, yup yup ^^