Ice Hockey and an amazing Geographie teacher

Today I was supposed to have 4 hours worth of school and 3 tests. One hour of French, one hour of English and Two hours of Geographie, all tests. Anyway went to the French test, it was hard but I think i got it right, if i understood the question then I was correct. Then i went into the geographie test and the teacher met me outside and said na don't worry about it it's

too complex so just go home. So i did, I went hoem for 4 hours before I had to come back for an easy english oral comprehension test. It was an easy day and tomorrow I have 2 hours of school including one hour of english it's great, then off for a ride.

The picture is of the Ice Hockey match The black/red/white it Briancon and the grey is Grenoble.

Anyway the 25euro tickets (40 dollars Aus) were given to us as a present, 2 of us, so we went and it was great. The Briancon team is the pride and join of the town, it was awesome, the people there got so excited. The first third went by fairly uneventful and then with about 5 mins to go Grenoble scored the first goal and the arena errupted with boos. The next third Briancon hit back and the crowd was spastic. It was like the MCG at a Collingwood home game when they kick a goal after the siren to win the game except it was only 3,000 people. During the break I went and bought pizza and i got through it without a weird look, it was a good feeling. The third third went through without anything happening, briancon looked dangerous but couldn't score. There were a few huge hits, even in front of the refs and they did nothing, I mean i don't understand the rules but I could't quite believe it, hilarious. The at the end of the game 1-1 turns out they have golden goal. I was sure Briancon were guna get this, they were looking heaps fitter and stronger, however 5 minutes in grenoble got a quick break and scored, no defense just the goalie and there was nothing he could do about it. The mood turned sombre as we left but it was still a great night. I think I'll try and go to some more games, it's an awesome sport, pity we don't have it in Aus.

It's aggresive and fast and the changes/subs are quick as the whole team goes off at once sometime (5 on the field plus keeper, about 16 or 17 in the team) It's fast and hard to follow the puck, but it's still awesome. I think I'm going to try and play during the winter possibly for the local team because the season starts soon.

Anyway its 11.20 at night here and I have to go to school in the morn
Ciao for now
Cal

a month down as of tomorrow!

Well after this post i will finally be up to date and tomorrow I will have be travelling/in France for a month. It's weird it feels a lot shorter but then again I'm comfortable here, great city great people it's great fun. Anyway onto last week.

The photo is of a group of us who by conicedence are all going to paris in novemeber with school (coincedence being that the only people in the photo are the Paris people) From left to right Louis, Me, Jeanne, Coralie, Melissa and Lise (excuse Lise, not quite sure whats happening there)

Monday started with the swimming which I've already blogged about and I got quite sick that night, was coughing up flem everywhere, i guess all the activites have taken their tole on me. Tuesday it got worse and I took the day off school which was nice, I slept untill 12 then watched movies and the U23 world champs TT, which was great considering Cam Meyer got 3rd, awesome result also for Travis Meyer at 19th.

Then Wednesday I went to school considering I only have 2 hours so I figured I could handle it. Then that arvo iw ent to the market, bought a pair of shoes, and then just hung around Lise came over and we mucked around for a bit before she went off to Dance.

Thursday I can't really remember and Friday I got my footy! That was an awesome day, read the Footy post and you'll know what i mean.

Friday night I went to a Crepe party at Jeanne's that was cool, but fattening, I ate a pancake with nutella, Sugar and Maple Syrup on it o and Butter and not the crappy Margerine stuff in Aus but real full fat butter, it's great here.

On saturday I decided my cough was well enough and I needed to burn off the calories from friday night so i went for a ride, I felt awful and got domianted up a tiny hill by the guy that I ebat by like 4 mins up the Galiber so that was depressing but i still managed to beat him on the flats, these boys can't move fast. They cruise out to the hills ride up and down them then cruise home, they don't know how to peddle at 45kmsph it's great fun. But anyway they can climb so it levels out, back home I can climb here i can ride flats.

That night we had an Bon Anniversaire party which was cool, photos are up on facebook and if you don't have facebook drop us an e-mail thefryer_99@hotmail.com and I will e-mail some to you. It was great which ended in a rather disturbing strip show by Pierre to the music of Joe Cocker Baby you can leave your hat on. He ended in a G-string which was really disturbing but brought great laughs to everyone. The party was for myself and two other girls jeanne and Charlotte it was awesome fun only about 40 people but it was cosy and i met a few new people which was cool.

Then Sunday I went to a small village's 'Fete de la Ville' it was cool everyone had tables set up (including Marie) and you could buy food and everyone sat on table on the lawn outside the town hall and mingled. It was a nice arvo. Then I got back to watch Ballan destroy the worlds and I don't care what bike NZ president has to say the favourites didn't let no names win, they could do nothing about it and even if the favourites had been in Ballan's group he still would have won (with the exception of Bettini and that would have been because of team tactics not because Bettini is stronger).

Now today, had another 10min TT in the pool. We had to beat our previous distances, mine wa 525 although he said 550 today so I dno. But anyway I felt awful this morning and thought I'd put a couple of Tumble turns in this time and though perhaps i could 500 again and if i was really moving mayeb a 600 anyway I hit the wall finishing at a 725 so I was happy with that. Next best was a 375. It was funny the first lap i decided I'd start with Backstroke and swap every lap with freestyle because I was a little worried about my breathing and I wanted to tumble turn at the deep end, anyway I went off and spoke to a guy at the end who said after the first lap he was surprised because he was ahead of me then i turned and it was all over, he tried to stay with me but ended up cracking and finished with a 300 something. I guess it's like riding a hill just gotta go at your own pace.

Tonight I went for a run which was nice to get some exercise in, I'm still a little sick but whatever I need exercise it's killing me. I got word today that my bike is coming on Friday, I think i'll ride Grannon this weekend on a lighter bike just to see how I go. if the Bike is say 9kgs then I'll be 5kgs lighter which will be 6.25% faster according to Michael Ferrari in Tour De Force and if i did a time of 1.07 last time 6.25% faster should be around 1.02.40 (approxiametly it's late and I can't be bothered and i can't be bothered looking for my calculator). Thats annoying I want to go under 1 hr before the snow closes in, I should be able to I'll just lose some more weight and push myself harder. I'll keep you up to date on that.

I've spoken with a few people from home which is cool and it's starting to become a shock to hear an Aus accent, I now know what everyone means about the accent. I guess the track season is about to kick off soon, good luck to the NTID boys and also oli, gav, harry, ferg, in the U19 pursuit and Pistol, Trent, Nathaniel, Steph, Sas, Jack and the CCCC team and all the JDP boys and congrats to Jack for the 1 in 20 race, the kit looks good. Good luck to Gracie in the pursuit, I reckon you can do it bonne chance, Just ride faster it's not really a hard concept is it, you push the peddals harder so therfore you go faster, so do it :p. I want photos from everyone over the summer too. Sorry if I forgot to say good luck to you but I'm tired and good luck anyway

It's off to bed now, I start at 9 tomorrow which is nice, a bit of a sleep in is always appreciated.

Ciao for now

Cal

Cyclingnews is actually slow

I spoke to Oli the other day and he mentioned an interesting thing. Here in France I'm more up to date than cyclingnews is. I never realised it but Cyclingnews gets all its info off L'equipe and various european newspapers. So today because of Oli I thought I'd give you guys an update on Cycling

news before cyclingnews can.

BTW the photos are of last night's party, a birthday party for me and charlotte and Jeanne. The first one is of a group of us Left to Right: Lise, Me, Lou, Louis, Charlotte and Melissa. The second one is of me and the Danish girl; Lise Lerche, Charlotte is her host sister and cause it was sorta my party also I went early to help set up and we got dressed there, jesus girls take forever to get ready for a party.

Anyway back to the original subject of this blog.

Ballan just destroyed the World Champs. He attacked with three kilometres to go and went solo. When he went the others looked liek they were starding still. Sorenson pulled hard but Ballan was too strong, the Italian team was ridicoulous with 3 riders in the final group. Ballan put a lot of effort in all day, he deserved the win, it wasn't like he was protected then won a weak sprint.

Noone knows what the deal is with Schleck and if they do no one is saying anything, multiple interviews with dopign experts and team riders/directors and Pat Mcquaid and they all say the same thing; They'd be very disappointed if it was true but they don't know either way.

The real big news however came from the Pat Mcquaid interview. He spoke about the new doping tests and how they're goign to retest a lot fo them. Apparently there are 12 riders who they indentified early in the season and deliberatly froze their drug tests there were also 30 others who were identified as being "suspicious" during the tour. Directly from Mcquaid's mouth; The podium will change a lot and so will the top 10. Top 10; Sastre, Evans, Kohl, Menchov, Vande Velde, Schleck, Sanchez, Kirchen, Valverde, Valjavec. How many will fall? Mcquaid: "There's a lot of racers who won't sleep easy this week".

It's going to be a big week in cycling, let's see how quick L'equipe is compared to Cyclingnews.

Stay tuned

Cal

Ok finally it's here! In this blog I'll update you all on the past two weeks. its been pretty full on and I've nearly been here for a month, it seems so much shorter but it is getting weirder to speak english which is good. Also yesterday i spent 2 horus with some kids in my year level and we spoke french the whole time, the only time i spoke english was cause one of the girls wanted her friend to hear my accent in english.

The picture is of Lucie and Jeanne to friends from school. Lucie did an exchange to America with marie and Jeanne (Pronounced Jan) to England so they know what its like, but they speak french to me most of the time and occasionally explain stuff in english.

Anway since Marseille; Tuesday was my birthday. Because I get up at about 6.30 for school Remi and Michelle were still asleep but the previous night they'd layed out everything that had arrived for me in the past few days on the table, it was a pretty cool thing and I was nearly late for school because I was opening them all. the cards were cool and I've still got them up on my windowsill, thanks goes out to everyone who sent me a card. My sisters oen gave Marie a good laugh it said: "I smile because you are my brother, and I laugh because there's nothing you can do about it". Anyway that arvo the Chouissas gave me their present which was a Hummel Sports jacket which is pretty cool. It's white with Blue V's down the side, I would never wear it playing any sport though it's too good looking. That night we had a special birthday dinner were we had Carbonara which Marie cooked, it was pretty good too, Maries a great cook.

The day after on the Wednesday I went and rode the Cold Du Grannon. It hurts. it's over 10% for about 11km, when I did it I weighed in at something around 73/74 kilos (including bike) and compare that to State titles (61) it was very hard. I did a time of 1.07 hours. Jenny Longua (sorry to her because I'm sure I spelt it wrong) who is a French woman of i think 49 years of age, 4th at the Beijing Olympics beat my time by 19.50 minutes. It was slightly depressing to learn that. However just before the road gets closed due to snow I'm going to ride it again on the Basso and I'll be used to the Altitude and stronger by then and hopefully I'll go sub an hour.

Thursday and Friday were fairly unspectacular, Friday night was another party which was fun, actually it wasn't a party but a Fete which is like a gathering. it was good and I crashed out at about 3am, fell asleep with 3 stunning french girls in the same bed (Mum I kept my hands to myself like a good boy). It's not actually as good as it sounds one was Marie and another was a girl called Jan who's become my best friend/older sister here. It was a good time and I woke up at about 11 the next morning went down stairs and for breakfast was given a tub of Nutella and a spoon.

Went and rode the Cold D'Izoard that saturday. It's a pretty deceiving hill, you look at the gradient and you think yeh whatever (I think it's at about 6 or 7%) however it starts off at about 6% for 3km then for abotu 10km its only at 4 or 5% and the last 7 or 8km it slowly gets steeper, theres no rest as it slowly goes up before finishign at a fun 12%. I won the race to the top however not by much I was pretty nervous and didn't want to go too hard too early and I'm glad I didn't it would be a pain fo a hill to crack on. The descent was fun and a car had to pull over to the side to let us go through. The one benefit of riding on such a heavy bike is that I can go down hills very quickly now, after the hairpin section at the top you didn't need to touch your brakes and just sat on about 80 or 90, it was a nice day and a quick run home. On the way home ridign through the streets of Briancon I saw 2 mates Pierre and Arnould walking down the main street carrying a massive eski, i presumed it was full fo beer turns out it had Wine in there also for the party that night, anyway they went past two of my teachers, stopped chatted to thema dn then kept on there way, everybody here is so relaxed the teachers are really friendly and relaxed outside school. O and takking about teachers After the friday night party on the saturday i got a life home from my Biology teacher, it was really weird he's the dad of a friend of Marie's, I didn't say a word on the way home.

That night was another party/gathering type thing but this time it was more a dinner party. It was a roclette party. It was like mashed potato melted cheese and different types of meat. It was a very sophisticated occasion, with a lot of them swirling and comparing different types of wine comapring white and red. It was fun. That sunday i rested, God knows I needed it too.

Anyway i'm off to yet another party this time it's mine and I'll post about the week tomorrow or tonight.

Ciao for now

Footy!

I'm sorry more blogs are coming soon but It's late and i just need to say this one thing.

Guess what! I played a game of footy in the rain this arvo it was magical. I taught a few of the french boys the basic rules and we got a game going on the asphalt it was great fun, these boys can tackle hard and kick far but none can mark, it was so much fun.
I brought a ball over from australia and I finally got around to inflating it today. it was funny trying to teach them how to play, some were surprisingly good as they were rugby players but they had real difficulty getting their heads around the whole handpass thing and a lot of freekicks were given away but it was fun and noone got hurt. There's a girl here who has just got abck from an exchange in Aus and she lived in brighton so she knows all about footy and she was a real help in explainign the rules. The final score after 2 hours of play was 136-110 high scoring match but the pitch wasn't that long we could kick goals from the other end lol. It was the best agme of footy i think i've had, lots of blood as it was on asphalt but noone seemed to care adn when it rained it reminded me of home.
Anwyayz Ciao i will catch up on the last two weeks over this weekend, fingers crossed

Marseille

Well it’s been nearly a week since I actually went there and I apologise and put the blame on ongoing weather problems, the internet is cutting in and out.

The picture is of the beach were we ate lunch on saturday in marseille.

Anyway Marseille. It’s about a 3 hour drive but the scenery’s nice, we drove though some cute little towns and we went past the turn off for Gap and past Embrun. Remi explained to me about the Embrun Ironman which is like a normal Ironman plus it’s at altitude and the 180km ride goes over 2 HC Climbs, it’d have to be the hardest Ironman in the world. Remi and I also had a good debate about Armstrong and drugs and like a true Frenchman he thinks Lance cheated, with blood transfusion being the weapon of choice this time.

When we got there it was nice and we didn’t actually go into Marseille but into a small town about 15km away called Cassis. It’s very cool. We drove up this ridge and into a complex of houses, it was sort of like a housing commission except I doubt any of the houses were on sale for less than 1 mil Euro, and when you saw the view from almost all there balconies you can understand why. It looks across Cape Canai and the Mediterranean, It was spectacular. I ate dinner on the balcony at the house of Family Friends (Bruno is in some of the photos from the race).

The next day we slept in and the Bruno, Remi and I drove out to Marseille Uni to pick up numbers and see the set up. The run these things pretty well, they had sponsors like Look and Corima and all minor one who had tents set up around the place. The actual Uni itself is pretty cool, the registration area was in the sport science facility and that looked pretty good and reasonably modern (although I’m not actually sure what modern looks like). Then we drove down to a small restaurant in this little inlet thing. The way you get there is by going along a road only just big enough for one car (it got pretty hairy when we had to pass another car) and you go over the ridge and then drop down towards the ocean, it was spectacular. The restaurant itself was pretty small but the food was great and the view was just amazing. We went for a walk down to the beach after lunch and would have swum but the wind was too strong and too cold. You can buy and rent houses there, which are more like tiny shacks, sorta something out of a small Greek island, very cute. After that we drove around Marseille and visited the church and then went and wandered round the streets, stopping in every shop which stocked Hummel (Remi works for them not sure what but he is obviously very high up in the anarchy). We also walked down a small backstreet market were everything was shit and nothing safe. Michelle commented that we had entered another world; it was pretty cool and definitely another world. After that we sat in a pub, had a drink and watched the pub fill with people coming in to watch Marseille play an away game (soccer). These people are like Collingwood supporters except there are a million of them and no one in Marseille would ever consider supporting a different team, it would be a cardinal sin. The people in Marseille are different from Briancon, I can’t say why they just dress differently, act differently, hold themselves differently, not necessarily bad just different. Overall I really enjoyed my day in Marseille and would definitely come back, for sure.

The race the next day was awesome. It’s like two races in one. The first is a serious race with about 10 categories, I think, for all different age groups starting at 18 and finishing at about 70 and over. Everyone went off at once all 1600 of them, it was good fun however 3kms out was a climb of 4km at about 4%, not hard but enough to break everyone up. I road with Remi Daniel and Luc, it was cool we just took it easy and road. The course was great with 6 climbs with the easiest the first one and the toughest a 6km at 6/7% that was fun and the descents were quick, I found an aero position and just went, Remi’s pretty handy down a descent but he needs to work on cornering, I gain about 10-20ms each hairpin, I have CCCC summer Crits to thank for that. But yeh there was one point were we got split by a traffic policeman and I found the other 3 at a feed station, when I got there they left and told me to catch up. I had 3km of flat then the 6km hill ahead of me so I took my time ate some cheese and lollies drank some coke and texted a mate before I took off and started hunting them down. I started at a TT pace so around 40kmph (no wind and I felt good) and slowly picked up people as I passed them, a few jumped on the back and by the time I hit the hill I think I had about 15, I dropped them at the base of the hill and really got to stretch my legs up the hill. It was a good feeling and because I’d been going slow I was riding with the slower guys so up the hill going at full pace I passed quite a few and caught the boys about a km from the top. We road home and the wind started to pick up o and I nearly got ran over because I took a corner and faded into the left lane, I wasn’t paying attention and naturally I thought the left lane was my lane. Yeh the driver wasn’t too happy about it. But anyway the run home was fun but Luc had taken off and Daniel and Remi were tired so I pulled the last 20km, for the first 5km a guy refused to let me sit on the front, he felt it was demeaning to be pulled by a kid (he actually told Remi this) so when he finished his turn I accelerated and dropped him, then we just rode home. It was a really nice day, we worked out what my time would have been (based on riders who I’ve beaten here plus past avgs from road races like Modella and I would have finished around 30th and would have dominated my age category (that’s not saying much there was only 2 of them and they both finished around 10 mins ahead of my actual time). The whole race was put on by the one club, Marseille, and they did a great job it was a really great day out.

For now I must go, I need my beauty sleep today I have been swimming, running and to the gym, it’s been a good day. We had a small TT type thing in swimming for the school where we had to swim as far as we could for 10 minutes. I sorta set myself a goal of 500ms in a 25m pool, I don’t normally swim and at the moment I’ve got a cold and I really couldn’t be bothered doing tumble turns so I though 500ms was reasonable, 50ms per minute. Anyway I lost count at about lap 12 so I had to rely on my counter and I just kept going. I felt awful and was hacking water up everywhere, it’s hard to get enough oxygen in with a cold, got out of the pool expecting to hear a 400 something, anyway I hit 575 with the next nearest at 400, wasn’t bad. And the other kid in my lane finished swearing and out of breath on a 225. All I could understand was the words “I need to quit smoking and drinking”. I think it summed up a lot of people’s feelings after today. While everyone is skinny, it’s becoming rarer to find a genuinely fit person because none of them can breathe because of their smoking.

Anyway Ciao for now
Cal

Yell for Cadel!

To everyone who reads this I'm really sorry it's been over a week since I've done anything on this, it's just been so jam packed I'm sorry. Since I last wrote something a lot has happened, i've raced in marseille, I've made a really good friend in the Danish girl just because we have so much in common, I've had my birthday, sweet 16 in France, it's snowed on the peaks, I've ridden the Galiber and I'm not sure if you know the climb but in about 30mins I'm going to go a ride the Grannon (last ridden in the tour around 1994), It's said to be the hardest ride in this area (topping Alpe D'huez and Galiber) so I'm goign to go and try and put a good time down, I've made a lot of new friends, and I currently have the best 50m Freestyle time for the moment (sayign more about the dismal efforts of kids at the schoolr ather than my ability). I'm going to write 3 blogs and this first one will cover last week plus Galiber the second will cover Marseille and the third will cover the past 3 days.

The picture is of my school and the front gate, what a view though ey.





Almost the first writing on the road of the Galiber is "Yell for Cadel!"



I can't remember but I went for a 70 km ride in which i did 2 cols an HC and one which i'm not sure wether it was a 2 or 1, remi said 1 but i don't believe him. I went up to something like 2640ms high and when the last kilometre is at 12% it's hard to tell wether it's the alititude or it's just because your wrecked but you really can't breath. I'm not sure of my time but i wasn't overtaken on the way up so it's all good :)


Galiber is amazing, you watch the tour on the TV and it sorta doesn't look real, super humans do super human things in a world were the fans are crazy and the writing on the road just looks amazing, but when you ride galiber, it's so much more real. The writing is just crazy some of it's smudged or has run because of the rain but a lot of it's so clear it's amzing there still Armstrong/Basso comments and Ullrich comments it's awesome. Some writings been written over cause theres just no more space. The climb hurts, it slowly gets steeper and steeper, it zig zags a bit but more or less it jsut goes accross the mountain. The vegetation is pretty low and theres no shelter from the sun. It was a hot day when i did it and i cooked pretty bad on the way up, got a good tan line out of it though. At the time I was going up a Motor bike club was coming down, they just kept coming, it was sorta annoying but i just kept going so it worked out ok. The last Km was awful, I finished with an attempt at a sprint, didn't really come off well but it was still good fun.

The first week and a half of schools been fun, my class is pretty good if not a little weird, everyones really accommadating, and slowly i'm starting to have better conversions with them, the girls are cooler than the guys, the guys in my class sorta don't want to know me but i think it's because I hang out with the guys in the year level above, they're cool I ride with them, go to the gym watch soccer games, watch ice hockey games, run with them it's pretty cool it's a really social town it's awesome. English is starting to become boring because I'm not aloud to do anything sometime I get to read a paragraph or give the class a synomyn
(evidently I'm not aloud to teach them how to spell) and that's nice but it's rare. I'm getting by ok in class except when the teacher starts dictating then a classmate will photocopy their notes for me so it works out well.

For now I have to go got to ride then I'm running to the gym working out then running home, running here is hard as, a lot harder than cycling here, I've finally been able to run 5kms here with only one rest but I just cant breath I mean at home I can run 7kms on a beach with no stops but here it's just ridiculous. Anyway I will try and get at least another blog off tonight, the Marseille one hopefully, I've uploaded photos of Marseille race and Cassis to Uni however I'm having trouble uploading the pictures of Marseille itself but it'll happen soon.

Ciao for now
Cal

First 3 days at school

This Photo is what I see when i stand at the urinal at the toilets near the cantine :)

Well I've been putting off writing this blog because it's going to be long and I haven't had the time, but the longer I put it off the more I have to write about. Since my last blog I've made so many new friends I've lost track, I've been kissed on the cheek so many times it's ridiculous, I've had 3 days of school, got lost in Briancon for about 2 hours and ended up walking home (which was partially good as I got to see a lot of the countryside) and I've destroyed the english class :) Except we've started phonetics, it's bizzarre. i don't really understand it and the teacher keeps speaking with a weird accent, some words sound American, some English and some Irish, even a bit of New Zealander. Anwayz we'll do this in chronological order;

First day (Wednesday):

Wednesdays are a shorter day. They start at 8 and finish at 11, but I'm trying to get out of Italien so that would mean I would start at 9 and finish at 11. I'm learning italien in Francais, it's so weird, I have no clue wether they're speaking Italien or Francais and they're a lot better than me in Italien than I am in Francais. Anway we also had Francais, that's fun I have no idea whats going on but I'm pretty sure they were talking about different types of literacy. My francais teacher doesn't speak english so it's going to be a fun first month or so. Then we had my favourite subject Anglais :) My teacher is cool though he can't understand what I'm saying because of my accent. I have two different types of Anglais teachers; an Anglais prof and an Anglais Specialte Prof. Specialte is like an extension class so we do a lot of talking and tryign to perfect pronunciation I ahd great fun making the class say words with 'H's in them or with 'TH' sounds because they cant do it Thumb becomes umb and Hate beomes ate its hilarious, they laugh along with me and make me say weird things, I made them try and say She sells sea shells by the sea shore. It was funny except i had to say a French tongue twister which ended with the class in fits of laughter including the teacher. Then I had to wait an hour for Marie who had a class before lunch while i had a free, I just played cards with a girl from my class called Joy, you don't need language to play cards :) I've got a lot of girls in my class actually, it's very different from Melbourne High, today (Friday) I was sitting next to a girl called solane and it was so odd, I had to check myself, I mean I was in France, speaking French (Well trying to at least) sitting in a class with girls and copying off a stunningly good looking girl. It was amazing! Lol but na all the kids in the class are accomedating, the guys are a little weird and I tend to hang out with the older guys because they're more into sport and stuff but everyone is really cool.

2nd Day (Thursday):

I Was looking forward to school for the first time in a long time. School here is great because you get to chat with new people and meet new people, c'est bon. The classes were the same except today I also had Histoire and Maths. By the way maths sucks in any language. Na actually it wasn't too bad I had no clue what we had to do but once someone translated it was easy as, we had done it at MHS about 5 weeks before. Histoire was hard, the teacher was dictating and I could only pick up a few things and by the time I had understood then translated a sentence she was already 4 sentences further on. But it was ok I copied off the girl sitting next to me and then translated it during a free period. Thursday was my first day having lunch in the cantine. Its very american. You get your tray and pick up your food then sit in your groups of friends. I met even more new people and Marie wasn't there because she had a 4 hour break in the middle of the day so she went home. I had lunch with a few of her friends and their friends. It was fun, hot food is amazing! and the food was actually pretty good, the kids I hung out with were funny turnign their nose up and stuff that I thought was amazing compared to when I make my lunchbox (credit must go to mum who does make amazing lunchboxes) and it consists of a Vegemite sandwhich and a piece of fruit for lunch. We're have carbonara and sausages next week lol. By the way just to give you an idea of my time table Lundi: 7h Mardi: 4h Mercredi: 1/2/3h Jeudi: 6/7h Vendredi: 4/5h. Some weeks I don't have certain classes so it all depends on wether we're doing week A or B and I'm tryign to get otu of Italien which is 2h per week.

3rd Day (Friday(Today)):

I've just realised how long this is and I'm sorry, it'll be over soon. Today was long and tiring. Nothing much new happened at school today. I'm starting to become decent friends with some of the kids in my class which is nice, plus me and Lise (The danish foreign exchange student) are pretty close jsut because we have stuff in common. At school we only speak French to each other but we had a free today and we gave up and just layed in the grass chatting in English, it was nice to finally have a decent conversation. Anyway after school i tried to get back home by public transport, it did not work, I got so lost and ended up walking home which took 40 mins and I was 2h later than what I would ahve been had I got it right. Remi and Michelle were ok about it, while they were worried (especially Michelle) they knew eventually I would find my way home (It's not big enough to get lost). And people here are nice so they will help me, which they did. They figured it was a good lesson. I felt guilty but at least I now know what to do.

Anwyayz I'm wrecked and I have to get up in the morning to go for a group ride up the col du galiber. I apologise for all my spelling errors, i'm very tired. If you have any questions don't hesiatate to e-mail thefryer_99@hotmail.com (by the way its an _ between fryer and 99)

Ciao for now

Grenoble

First off here's three more photos from tuesday's ride and 2 of Alpe D'Huez

It may look like I'm not wearing a helmet but this climb was closed off to cars for the day and we were going at about 15kmsph and I put it back on after the steep part (3km) and I definetly had it on for the descent.

Now I've had to big days so I'll split them into two different blogs the first is I met my host mother yesterday. Me and Remi after school drove down to Grenoble and picked her up from the train station. I saw some amazing sights like water falls and glaciers. These glaciers have been there all summer and apparently you can go summer skiing on it. They're blue and they just look crazy. When we go on rides we stop in little towns to fill up waterbottles from these wells, the water in them is clean and comes from the glaciers in the mountains. It's the best water I've ever tasted it's fresh and a little sweet.

Anyway we drove down through the mountains and I noticed a sign pointing to Alpe D'huez turns out we drove right past it's base. We were running a little early so Remi took a little detour and we drove the first 3km of Alpe D'huez. It's crazy. It is absolutely amazing. I saw the corners with the numbers on them and people who have won the stage that has finished on top. The turns are fairly easy maybe 2% but then it just kicks up ridioulously it's amazing and there's writing all over the roads. People supporting Andy Schleck and CSC were out in force this year. Anyway I'll be riding it in a week before the snow sets in. :)

Grenoble is just like any other town its about the size of Bendigo but theres a lot of cafes. It wasn't a nice day when we were there but it was still cool seeing it. We met Michelle at the train station and she's really nice. Her english isn't as good as Remi's or Marie's so I enjoy speaking to her becuase I have to speak French I can't revert to English. She's fun and very motherly we did a wash before she came and the lothes were out drying I checked them when we got home and they were still dry. About an hour later a neat pile of my folded clothes were sitting on my desk, I couldn't believe it they must have dried about 2 minutes before I felt bad but she was fine with doing it and she'd done everyones at the same time. I've really lucked out with my Family, they're all really cool and I hope one day I can show them around Australia.

Anywayz Ciao for now

Second Day

Don't worry my posts will calm down after the first week it's just theres so much happening atm.

Today I went for a three hour ride which included a hors categorie climb of 12kms at an avg of 8% with about 2 kms of 2/3% in the middle so its a nuts climb, those of you that are cyclists will understand that those of you who arn't all you need to know is it hurts. It was a great ride and I got to really mash ont he peddles up the hill giving a motor bike a startle around a corner. It passed me and then slowed for the corner so I went around it. Then coming home there was a 3 km stretch of ride slightly downhill and dead flat so I gunned it and Remi sat on the back we flew. It was amazing countryside and probably the best training roads I've ever seen. It was like a postcard.

The Photo to the left is of me at the top of the climb, it's a deadend with a spectacular view behind me, just about everywhere I look it looks like that.

After that i went into the town with Marie and we met up with various people, some I knew some I didn't. It was fun I hung out with the local gym junkies, they were cool and we got ice cream and I kept getting pulled away by other groups of people to walk around with them I lsot Marie more than once but it was cool everyones so relaxed here and everyone knows everyone. I reckon i hung out with just about half the town this arvo. It was fun just relaxing and chilling with kids my age. I got burnt to a crisp though I'm so gone it's ridicoulus. Because the air is really thin here it's easier to get burnt i guess.

Anyway first day of french school tomorrow i'm shit nervous, merde. It'll be good fun though. Toddy left today I hope he gets to Renne ok.

Anwyayz Ciao

My First day!

This was my first full day and it was crazy. I met so many new people and got so many kisses on the cheek it's very odd but the girls here are classy and good looking so it's all good :P. The first thign that struck me about French people is that they're all classy and almost none are overweight with an extradonairy number of good looking girls and they're all outrageous.

The photo to the left is of me on ym first ride in France, the alititude killed me we went up 1600m and tomorrow we will go up 2100 but yeh there is a glacier in the background and summer has just ended.

First off my family;

Marie (Host Sister): She is funny, out there, likes to joke and is at this moment attempting to marry me off to a nice Danish girl who is also an exchange student living in briancon. Shes taller than me and bigger. She has taken on the role of older sister pretty quickly. Shes great and is very good at english except she refuses to speak it to unless she needs me to explain soemthing about the language or how to pronounce an english word. Shes a very classy cat.

Remi (Host Father): He's a good guy, it's that simple he's awesome, much like my own dad, always wanting me to learn and making me say words over and over again untill I get them right, he's smart and I heard him talking in english on the phone making a business deal and I pity the dutch dude on the other end. I think the dutch guy just gave in in the end. He's smart and patient and relaxed. He will be a lot of fun.

The House: It's quaint, cute and cosy. It's all wooden but it's nice, it reminds me of a ski lodge. i has a deck and a small backyard which is on the side. The family owns two cars one of which i gather is Marie's as it is a baby blue volkswagen buggy.

My first day started with me sleeping untill 11.30 adn then remi and I went for a small ride. Just 30kms but we still had a total of 300ms of elavation in total, remi is ok but he grinds so that goes against him up the hills. The when we got back some of Marie's friends and some how gotten into the house and were packing the fridge with pizza's and ice cream for that night, turned out we were havign a small party in my honour :). As one of the girls described latter that night I was the princess of the night (one of the girls stuffed her english up so for the rest of the night I became a princess).

That night about 10 of us sat on the patteo and ate pizza and chatted, well they chatted I just looked confused. We eventually got a system working with my french and their english we got by and it was a very enjoyable evening. Marie's friends are all great. They all smoke which was a bit odd but apparently its the norm here, no one offered me a ciggy and they all respected the fact that I didn't smoke which was very cool of them. For some reason their smoke didn't affect me and it wasn't too bad.

That night I went to bed absolutely wrecked.

as always photos are on Facebook

Ciao

On arrival

Well I got to France without any difficulties. We flew into KL and spent about an hour there and we met up with some other exchange students who were French coming back from Sydney. They were funny and we had a laugh with them, they're English was very good. Then we spent about 10 or 11 boring hours cramped in a plane. i tried to sleep as it was about 4 in the morning in Aus but the stupid stewardess lady kept waking me up every hour to offer me food which I didn't even want.

The photo to the left is of our row from KL to Paris In Order from Left to Right we have; Roman (French kid, he was really nice) Emi (Sydney girl who was way too excited) Jorja (Who despite her looks isn't emo and is actually really cool just got unlucky with her natural hair colour) and Karlee (A country bumpkin from near Warnabool, she was awesome and a little quiet)

We got to Paris and I had this Sydney girl sitting next to me getting very excited I think she'd drunk one to many caffeine drinks on the plane and she was going off, it got annoying but it was also slightly contagious. We got out of the plane and then we hit customs. We had a group of 4 of which two had Aus passports and 2 had EU passports. Because it was the last day of the holidays for the french the EU passport lines were packed and the 2 girls on the AUS passports got through quick as while me and the hyped up Sydney girl were stuck in lines. After about 15 mins in the line she hit a major low which I found quite funny and we had some troubles battling the french who seem to have no concept of line cutting and rope jumping, it was bizarre. After 50mins (I'm not kidding it took just under an hour in a hot sweaty line) we finely got out and then realised we Had another struggle, getting our luggage. My bag weighed 30kgs and as i hauled it off the carousel i hit about 5 people who went down like a sack of potatoes, I was so tired and sick of it that I just didn't care, although having said that it was fun competing with them and trying to get the trolley out of the airport was like go karts (I upended at least two other trolleys).

Then we all had to wait as our group of 4 slowly disintegrated as people were whisked off to connecting trains or planes and finally I was the last left. The STS organizer lady took the train with me to Paris and then took me to the big train station (it's massive like imagine Spencer street then triple it and add a shopping centre). She said she'd wait with my baggage and gave me free roam around Paris for an hour and a half. It was amazing, Paris is so beau. I saw Bastille and the river Seine, I nearly fell asleep beside the river, it was a perfect day, sunny and no wind and about 24 degrees.

After that i got on my train and had an uneventfully train trip down through Italy and ending up in OULX (Italy) where Remi (My host Father) and Marie (My Host Sister) met me. The only interesting thing was when the ticket inspector asked me for my ticket he started speaking to me in Italian, so I guess I look more Italian than French. Once Remi and Marie picked me up we drove back to there house and had dinner. I will describe the house, Town and my host family in the next blog.

If you want to look at photos I've uploaded them all onto facebook, if i'm not one of your friends add me and if you don't have facebook then get it.

For now Ciao