So currently I am just into my 2nd week of sunny Annecy in the south-eastern Haute-Savoie region of France and having a very good (very hot) time!
Annecy first impressions
Although I had seen photos of Annecy before and knew that it was an idyllic holiday village with a gorgeous lake and sweeping mountains as a backdrop - I don't think I actually fully comprehended how gorgeous and idyllic it really is! My host mum is super nice - and so are her two sisters and mum who are visiting as well as her son. The apartment that I'm living in is awesome :) It's a small two-bedroom apartment that my host mum rents just a stone's throw away from the lake (it's possible to see the lake from the balcony) that's filled with beautiful knick-knacks. I think the thing that strikes me about this apartment is that it's filled with stuff but my host mum has managed to make it look all so neat and well put-together! I mean - my room is constantly filled with stuff but it just looks.. ...like there's crap everywhere haha.
I think the best way to describe Annecy is that it's a really, really big town. I wouldn't exactly classify it as a city because it's still got this sleepy-summer-town vibe to it but it's certainly got infrastructure like a shopping district, a handful of supermarkets and car-dealerships as well as a functional public transport system.
Furthermore Annecy's going to host the 2018 winter olympics so I can't wait to watch the telly then and be able to say "I've been there!!"
Weather
Hothothothothothot HOT! Lol. For the week that I've been here already it has not dropped below 30° celsius !! So good hehe. Sometimes it gets a bit baking to just be wandering the streets at 2PM in the afternoon. I think the weather is something else I did not expect to find in France. I mean I knew it was summer in Europe still and I know that parts of France can have quite a Mediterranean climate but I honestly not expecting how hot it was going to be here - especially since people have always told me how gorgeous Annecy looks in the winter! (Not to mention the fact that Annecy will be hosting 2018's winter olympic games.) It kind of makes me wish that Perth could have this extreme variation in the differences in climate. All we've got is HOT and then eh it's a bit cold - but no snow for me to go snowboarding (or any mountains for that either...)
Food & drink
Overall food has been pretty good here. I haven't had anything MINDBLOWINGLY OMG WHERE HAS THIS CUISINE BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE kind of meals but yah - overall it's been good. I've been eating lot-sa baguettes broken up into little pieces - the type where it's quite hard on the outside but squishy on the inside. It's been good but maybe I just haven't been that much of a bread fan because I haven't orgasmed over it or anything like that.
I had the best restaurant-steak of my LIFE at a restaurant by the canals in Annecy. Seriously - restaurants in Perth don't know how to cook steak according to rare-med-well!! My medium steak ACTUALLY CAME OUT AS A MEDIUM STEAK!!!!! And it was soooooo delicious. So delicious. (and big)
Also I think here in France they really like their pommes de terre - potatoes! I have to be careful about what I eat with all these carbohydrates like bread and potates lying in sinisterely tasty wait on the dinner table!!
Not to mention I also had a serve of six escargots for an entrée to my delicious steak dinner! Heheh. They were on the good side of interesting - marinated in some green herbs and spices. A French teacher once said to me that if you like eating squid/calamari - you'll be able to handle escargot. And he was right. My next visit to a restaurant will entail me trying some cuisses de grenouille - frogs legs!
Wine. MmmmmmmmmMMMMMmmmm wine. The rosés, champagnes and reds I've tasted so far have been amayyyzing! Yummy. That is all haha. Actually as I type - my host grandma just offered me some cidre rosé - which is basically rosé cider and omg it's AMAZING. I have never tasted anything like that!!!!!! It's sweet but zingy at the same time. Yumyumyumyumyum
People/culture
Overall all the people that I have met in Annecy have been pretty friendly - with an exception of a few grumps who can't be bothered tolerating my slow French. I totally faux-pas'd on my first day in Annecy *facepalm* we had just sat down from lunch after I had been picked up from the train station and I had already started sipping my wine before the toasts!! Faux pas! Glass chinking and toasting is a pretty big deal. Before each meal a santé! is proposed and everyone has to chink glasses with everyone else whilst maintaining eye-contact and saying santé to each other - which means 'health'.
I guess I have already experienced a little bit of that European 'openness' that you hear about - how no topic is sacred and personal questions can be asked from day one. Literally after day 3 or so my host mum's sisters were already asking me if I had put on weight from eating the new food! I just said that I didn't know and rolled with it but I did note that it was something an Australian family probably wouldn't ask so casually to a stranger.
Language/language school
So as you may or may not know - I am actually in Annecy because I have enrolled into a private language course at IFALPES - aka Institut Française des Alpes for two weeks. In short - the language school/homestay decision was a frigging GOOD idea. My classes range from a little-easy to appropriately challenging which is just an awesome mix of grammar revision and challenging grammatical and conversational application of my French knowledge!! I was initially placed into group 4 (out of 8) but after two days it was very obvious to the teachers that the content was too easy for me... I mean at that stage they were learning HOW to form the conditional. Um. Yeah. After 3 years of university-level French I had already had the formation of various grammatical usages down pat - so then I got shifted up to group 5 where they're still revising grammar in general but adopting its usage in more complicated scenarios. E.g., on Friday I had to read an article on voting/politics in France and then we had a 2 hour discussion about it with the class!! Awesome :)
My last point there about 'awesome' segues nicely into what I think about the teaching quality at IFALPES. Basically - I think it's very, very good. I think it's got to do with the fact it's a private school so thus there is enough money there to hire plenty-o French teachers. Also - with my intensive 4-hour classes a day there is PLENTY OF TIME TO DO STUFF!!!!!! I think this is what's made the me the most happy. When I get a sheet with exercises to do in class - I actually have time to do it! As in the whole sheet - without stressing and clock-watching. The atmosphere in the classes is definitely studious but also a lot of fun because we have time to crunch out sentences and exercises and then time afterward to DISCUSS all our questions and concerns!
One thing in particular that I have noticed is that maybe half of the students here learning French already know English as a 2nd language. From this I can gather that having knowledge of English takes precedence over French...
One problem with my French that I've always thought I had was that my grammatical and writing skills in general were waaay too advanced for my speaking and listening skills and now that I'm in France I'm noticing it's absolutely true. I believe I was placed into group 4 based on the oral test where I had to respond to questions and answer but I believe I was moved up into group 5 after two days because I essentially blitzed a small grammar test they gave me. I was finished before anyone else... There is very little else I can do at the moment than work hard to fix up this disparity in my skills.
So how is that fixing up the disparity working for me at the moment? Overall - well. I have definitely been speaking a loooot a lot a lot of French since I've arrived. My host family speak no English at all - so that's been really great for making me use my French. However it's been really hard as well. When they speak slowly/normally/clearly it's very possible for me to understand what is going on and hold a conversation - however they're also a close knit family who at times speak French at a ridiculously break-neck pace whilst I stare on glossy-eyed and slightly drunk during meals from all the various wines I've been drinking haha.
What has ABSOLUTELY improved for me is that I have lost the inherent shyness I had for speaking French since I started learning the language. In Perth I suffered an inferiority complex where I felt that I could not speak French out of fear I'd be ridiculed for speaking wrong (which I knew that I would absolutely do). When in France - you blab out what you want to say otherwise you don't say anything at all!! After ONE WEEK of solid French speaking I feel that I could return to UWA and hold a conversation with my teachers in French non-stop. Although I am 10000km away from being fluent in French - it really has dawned on me that I am able to speak some French and hold a half-way decent conversation. I have all the tools for it stored in my head...
The other thing I have really enjoyed about my enrollment at IFALPES is that all the other students at my level are in the same boat as me... They all have some decent level of French and are serious about improving their French. For the first time in my life I have conducted whole days of continuous conversation in French with other people whose native language is actually English. It is seriously so amazing and it's made me so happy. So happy :)
So now I have another week in beautiful Annecy ahead of me and after that 3 days in Nancy with my friend Chloe from uni :) My confidence in French has leaped up wonderfully and now I am hoping that my vocab and listening skills will too. Sometimes I feel a bit down because my French family speak sooo fast and I don't understand them but then I remember this is the most French I have ever spoken in my life and that I have only been here for 1 week. I still have another 6½ months in here :)
As a passing note - I received an e-mail from Lille 3 saying that they've received my e-mail about my change-in-date for arriving at Résidence Triolo - so now I don't have to stress about that. I am seeeeeeriously keen for my upcoming semester in Lille!!
Jessica
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