A très bientôt

Well... Hasn't time flown? And what's been happening, you might ask? Well it all seems a bit of a blur, had I been a more committed blogger the updates would have been up here as they occurred, but never mind, lets get started: A HUGE relief came in the form of my visa about 10 days ago, so youpee for that. I look a bit... Interesting in the photo, but I can't say I expected any less.
Also the travel pack arrived with the famed yellow luggage tags, as well as my itinerary. The itinerary goes along the lines of:
a) Be at Auckland international terminal at 9am on Thursday
b) Fly out at Midday to Singapore. Spend about 4 hours there (hopefully have a shower!)
c) Fly out of Singapore to Munich (this is the longer flight of the two, 12 hours and 45 minutes! Such fun!)
d) We have three hours in Munich, and then catch our flight to sweet, sweet Paris!

This has all been super duper exciting news, and coupled with the fact that I'm pretty much all packed up means that the surrealism of this whole thing is slowly disappearing. Also I've been given some pretty amazing farewells. I suppose I start with a sweet breakfast out, Mum's shout. Then last Friday afternoon was my last time working at after school care with the very awesome KatiKids.

The kids had thrown me a goodbye party and made banners, cards and red, white and blue cupcakes. It was brilliant! Then that night, I went to my friend's place for dinner and had a fun night and farewelled some of his family. We also ate the pavlova I had made, as I figured I should probably practice my Kiwi cuisine instead of simply winging it!
Another cool thing that happened was my initiation into the world of the Google+ hangouts! It was really swell to meet quite a few of the people who I'm going to meet at orientations, and to have accent talks, break the ice and share what I would deem "general amusingnosity".

So Thursday and Friday were pretty awesome, but what could top that? Only Saturday and Sunday of course! My splendiferous bunch of friends threw me a surprise leaving party on Saturday night, which pretty much blew my mind! Thank you guys so much. And Sunday was the leaving dinner which I had already planned, so we all got together and ate lots of Pizzas. It was well good. And now it's Tuesday! And there are 2 sleeps left. I'm incredibly excited/nervous. We shall call it nervcited. In less than a week I will be settling in here:
 So I'll take the opportunity now to say goodbye Kiwis, I'll see your sweet faces soon. Don't change too much! Next time I post, who knows where I'll be. I'll see if I can in Singapore, Munich or Paris. Love you all!
xxx

Bobbing Along

So I realise that it's only been a short while since my first post, but I do have a wee bit to update! This might be a bit of over-posting, but I'll try to limit it!

The afternoon after I made this blog I made a momentous and wise decision. You see, the facebook group for AFSers worldwide heading to France in September has a group chat, which pretty often is buzzing with people having (very random) conversations. Until yesterday, I'd been furiously pressing the "esc" button whenever the chat box popped up on my screen. And, as if just to spite me, it would pop straight back up with 2,3,5,10,15 new messages! Which brings me to aforementioned momentous decision: I suddenly realised the age old saying "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" held weight here. So I started chatting to people about some on topic stuff (like airlines) and some off topic stuff (lets 'like' all the frape-like posts which Allyssa has been putting up!). All in all, I'm pretty darn stoked that I came to embrace the bubbly little box that is the AFSers' group chat. I met some cool cats (mostly you American kids: Gello, Jackson, Allyssa, Elise etc...) and I think it's a pretty swell thing that we can all become friends before we meet face to face at orientations (in freakin' PARIS people!).

That small, but significant success has been followed by a few today. I've managed to get my suitcase, which I would love to describe thus: "Big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest... blue...ever."
But then my suitcase would be the TARDIS, which unfortunately isn't quite true. However, it has to be said, the suitcase is quite large. And it is a pretty exquisite shade of blue! So maybe it's a distant relation, it doesn't hurt to hope!
Big props go to my dear Mumsy for buying it for me! So now I'm ready to start packing. I'd better hope it is bigger on the inside considering all I want to fit in there! (And no, Colonel Max FightMaster, my brutal and magical longboard is NOT staying at home!)

I also bought some new jeans today, which were a bargain, so I was pretty pleased with myself. Until, at tonight's AFS Chapter meeting, I was talking with three recent returnees (Dana- Italy, Anna- Austria and Kallie- Quebec) who were all telling me how much weight they stacked on while overseas. This does not bode well for me: What's the point of owning super new Wranglers if I can't squeeze my happy-but-treacherously-obese backside into them! Woe is me! Looks like I'll have to stock up on the fat man pants while I'm away. I suppose I can't say I wasn't warned, according to many people I've talked to, AFS actually stands for Another Fat Student.

On that depressing note, I think I'll leave until there is more to tell- Only two weeks to go!

God Bless you lot (:
J
xx
P.S. I wasn't sure where to throw this in, but I had a really good Skype conversation last night to Clement, my French friend who was in NZ with AFS for 2010. I threw lots of questions at him and he somewhat calmed my jangling nerves but got me even more excited to be there. Funny how that works. Je suis vraiment impatiente!

Starting Out

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog.
I'm Julia and I thought it was about time I started something here considering that in 16 days I will be winging it out of New Zealand to spend just over 10 months living with a family in France as an AFS exchange student. I've done a little bit of research (AKA stalking past AFSer's blogs) for a bit of a guide what to do, and as it turns out, I seem to be a royal slacker! They all started their blogs months before their departure and kept up to date with all the preparations and pre-departure shenanigans. But c'est la vie, I am simply not that dedicated!

However, I've made a start before I leave so I'm not tooooo bad. To put it briefly, the AFS process has involved LOTS of paperwork (but that's okay, I actually like filling out forms), various meetings and orientations (which have been fun) and an almost spur-of-the-moment plane trip to Wellington for a 2 minute interview as a part of my Visa application. Each AFS labelled envelope has brought excitement, whether it be a bill for the programme fee (well that was exciting until I opened the envelope), or details of a host family placement!

Speaking of which, the host family I will be staying with consists of a Host Mum, Laure (who at 29 is younger than two of my siblings!) and Host Dad, Christophe. I'll be staying in an eeentsy teentsy village in the South of France, called Burlats, which you can find some stats on here. If you're too lazy to follow the link, Burlats is a village of 1879 inhabitants (soon to be 1880!), not far from a town called Castres which is where I'll be attending lycee. This is in the Midi-Pyrenees region, the largest region in France. Oh, and did I mention? It. Looks. BEAUTIFUL! I'm so blessed to be able to go to such an amazing part of an amazing country.

And here is where I'm at two weeks out: I have officially quit school, and am cleaning the bomb site that is my room. I'm still figuring out how I'm going to use my hard earned cash (travelex? debit?) and looking anxiously at the exchange rates hoping they are kind to me. Going to buy my suitcase tomorrow which means I can start packing! And now it is hitting me how much other stuff needs organising, but hey, it'll all turn out fine! I'm really excited and just want to be there already, but at the same time am really nervous about not being able to communicate as easily as I would like. And then of course I'm freaked out by how much I am going to miss my family and gorgeous friends. You guys aren't allowed to change too much, right? You shouldn't mess with that level of perfection!

Anyway, I hope this blog is an easy way to keep you all in the loop with my goings-on and I'll try to learn how  to add hyperlinks, photos and other fancy stuff to spice it up a bit. Hope it's not too random/boring for you!
Thanks for having a looksie, and feel free to ask me anything I've skipped over!
God Bless (:
xx