Five months in France. Five months. From an icy winter to a now ridiculously hot summer. Five months. Five months of living overseas for the first time. Five months. Five month of being surrounded by the French language. Five months. And what have I discovered in these five months? • That it's best not to convert euros into dollars. This proves to be incredibly depressing and you begin to doubt whether they actually want the 4 euro coffee, as really, would yo...

Mainly as proof that I don't actually spend most of my time jetting around Europe I thought I would update my blog from here in Lyon. With little over a month left of my french adventure time is rushing by ridiculously quickly! Today I had a placement test to see what class I will be in for my month long french course starting next week. I learnt my lesson that guessing on placement tests is a stupid idea. I paid dearly for this stupidity in my french class at ...

So the french have such a reputation of arrogance, of rudeness, super chic-ness, of being ridiculously bureaucratic, stylish, sexist etc etc etc. And having lived in France for over 2 months, all the while doing some serious people observing, I’ve decided that they aren’t so much the above (apart from the bureaucratic part - that is undoubtedly and highly annoyingly true!) as much as they just really don’t care what people think. I reckon they are stylish b...

The dilemmas I have encountered so far as une étudiante etranger: The 'Which Side to Kiss' question. This dilemma involves choosing at speed which side to do the peck on the cheek thing that is oh so French. Problem is, which side to go to first? Generally in Lyon it seems to be the left but then there are people who are from different parts of France or different countries where they go right… quite tricky mastering this motion without doing the 'side to...

Bonjour tout le monde! (although sadly I could probably say "Hi Mum" but we shall pretend I have millions of fans...) I decided that I would update my blog when my back muscles and shoulder muscles had recovered so here we are... you may be wondering why I have been in such immense pain... well, glad you asked. Last weekend I arrived in France after saying a sad goodbye to Liv and the lovely Harris whanau in London. There was me, my big backpack, my la...