Easter holidays

Sorry I haven't posted in a while I just haven't got around to it.

So today is thursday and if I can jog my memory far enough back to friday I can tell you what happened. About 2 hours after school we left for Tours (pronounced Tor) here is a map of France, Paris (the big red square) is where I am now and if you go south a little bit you will find a place called Orléans and South West of that is Tours.

 

After a few hours driving we got to Tours and we stayed with a family, who are friends to the people I am staying with. The first night I skipped dinner because I felt sick. I snoozed for about an hour and when I got up at about 8:00 ish, I sat in the living room listening to the Adults have a conversation in French ( The family we were staying with spoke very little English). 

At about 10:00 the adults went to bed and their son, who is 14 and looks 17 (his dad is very tall as well) put a DVD on called  300, he put it in English with French subtitles, my cousin and I watched that with him till 1:00 (in the morning). 

Saturday I obviously slept, not much to say about saturday, some people went out to play tennis, played with a bit of lego they had, we went for a walk, not much.

The next day was Easter Sunday and in france it is tradition to eat lamb on easter, so we had a joint of New Zealend (Nouvelle Zealande) lamb with a side of ratatouille and a Fraiser (strawberry cake) there was a ¨easter egg hunt¨ where we went out to hunt for chocolate eggs, after the search they where counted and spread out evenly to make it fair (I got more chocolate that way). In the evening we watched a DVD in French with English subtitles, the DVD was called OSS 117, it was about a French secret agent called OSS 117, the show was a parody and OSS 117 was very arrogant, it was designed to make fun of the french (yet I have not met a single arrogant or rude french person yet)very funny movie.

 On easter Monday we left at 10:00 and we had lunch at another friends place in Paris, but this time they were New Zealanders, so they spoke English. we had another New Zealand lamb for lunch, a very big lunch, which I ate waaay to much of (there was still food left over). We stayed until about 5:00 chatting to each other, then we went back to the appartment, after.

Back to the map now I would like to show you where their second house is, its a large house that has been in their family for over 300 years, I will see it in about 3 weeks in the holidays. any way on the map if you can find the red circle, go south until you get to a place called Nimes it's just a little bit south of Nimes, its not actually on the map but thats sort of where it is.

Here is me as a simpson

I found this on the simpsons website where you create your own simpson character, pretty neat

My first week at school

Bonjour

  Today is Saturday ("Samedi" in french) and I have finished my first week at school.

The french school I am going to is  huge, there are about 2 000 students that go there and one of my classes is in the roon 380 so there are alot of rooms. The only class which I can understand or get any work done in is English and a little bit of Math as well. The kids in my class are all friendly and one is Canadian named Alejandero and can speak both french and English so he helps me out a bit. School can start as early as 8:00 and can end as late as 5:00 yet is still only thirty two and a half hours just two and a half more than in NZ. 

I will upload a scanned picture of my timetable ASAP but right now im having problems using this MAC and I am used to using Windows and to make it even more difficult I have to type with a French "AZERTY" keyboard and I prefere using the English "QWERTY" keyboard but that will all change when my laptop arrives in the post. 

Any way today (saturday) we went to watch a rugby match between Racing Metro (pronounced "rasee meetro") and another team whose name I cannot remember, Racing Metro won 23-22 and only got ahead in the last 10 minutes so it was a very close match.

We are watching more rugby right now on TV, it is wales vs france. My uncle is wanting wales to win so the can win the grand slam (winning all the matches)because they are the only ones who have won all of the matches so far so they are than only ones left who can get the grand slam. my cousin is wanting france to win by more than 20 points so that they still have a chance to get to the finals, and i'm not really cheering for anybody.

I am just about to head off to bed so seeya

REUBEN

Last night

Last night we went for a drive around Paris at night. We first saw the Arc de Triomphe, which is much bigger than it looks on photos, and the oldest monument in Paris, a 3,300 year old egyptian obelisk caled the Luxor Obelix.

We also went to a small restaurant that served north african food, I had cous-cous which was like a extremely fine grain rice stuff made of wheat with a waterey sauce poured over , also there was a TV in the restaurant which showed a football match.

When the food was all eaten went to the eiffel tower which was all lit up like a giant metal orange christmas tree. We also saw the largest museum in the world "The Lourve" (pronounced "the loov").

And when I got back to the appartment I fell asleep almost instantly.

Au Revoir Reuben

The flights and the beginning

Arriving in Paris after 30 hours in transit. Didnt get much sleep on the planes. Left Dubai late due to bad weather.

My last day in NZ

Today is my last day in New Zealand, I cant believe I will be flyin outta here in a few hours and be be gone by about 7:00 pm. The flight goes from Christchurch to Sydney then to Dubai then touch down in Paris I think it is about 28 hours.

This morning we picked up a couple of pet rats we had to pick up while in Christchurch and some extra sweatshirts because I was a bit short of them and I can't go cold over in France. I got my watch fixed yesterday and I wont have to adjust the time on the watch because French time is exactly 12 hours apart from our time.

Hopefully next time I post on this blog I will be in France.

Till next time

Reuben













Queing at Christchurch Airport












Filling in the Customs & Declaration forms

Last night at home

Last night at home - we had two of my friends from school over for dinner. Mum made a cake and we all watched a Harry Potter movie. This is it, I cant believe it's here already. We leave for Granny's tomorrow, and will call and see Poppa on the way up. Only 3 nights till my flight out of NZ!