('v')Birdie's Territory..

Thursday, September 29, 2005

HEY YO! I"M BACK IN SINGAPORE!!!

WHoosh goes 12 days and here i am back in Singapore, missing everyone so dearly especially my family, friends(esp DEARIES), E316 and so many more. Hee i'm kinda experiencing jet lag, time lag, meal lag and all sorts of lag due to the difference in time in France. Hey, but the trip to France was so rewarding! I got to learn so much more French and became more independent=) Hmm will summarise the whole trip a little...so here goes . . .

We took a 12-hour flight(SIA airline) to Paris, which was our first transit place to the intended destination, Rouen(pronounced as Ru-On). Well, i was initially rather scared of taking the plane cos' i didn't exactly remember how it feels like, or whether it would turn out as scary as that in the movie Red Eye. Oooh, the take-off made my heart palpitate more, but thank God for Auntie Nellie, who constantly showed and taught me how to blow air outta my ears b4 the trip. It was effective! Haha U know what, about more than 3/4 of my flight to Paris, i was sleeping like nobirdy's business=P heee, ask my frens and they can tell u how soundly asleep i was! Even the turbulence couldn't wake me up...hmmm is that why i'm nicknamed Sotong? Can't be right...

Due to my sound sleep, we seemed to have reached Paris in only 5hours, cool huh...so now u know, sleeping really shortens ur flight! Okay, so then it was, only after we collected our respective luggages when we realised why Mr. Jean(john) asked us to TRAVEL LIGHT! U know, we practically went everywhere in high speed, dragging our big and heavy luggages and carrying them up and down the stairs. Anyone from our group would have agreed that it was so torturous, countless flights of stairs we unfortunately suffered on. Well at least we're undoubtedly more muscular now..heee! Anyway thanks Monica aka Monster for always exchanging luggages with me whenever we encounter the stairs, U're really a strong monster. I take my hat off u.

When we lethargically reached Paris, it took a 1hour15mins-long trainride before we finally stopped at ROUEN. Haha first thing we typical Singaporeans did was to head to the restaurant for LUNCH!!! First meal there felt good and yet took a long time cos' we couldn't understand the french menu which looked so alien to us. And guess wad i ate, my fave SALMON pasta. YUMMY!~ Then came our "nightmare" when we saw our hosts families, one by one, coming in to pick us up. When the first one came, all of us sorta lost our appetite cos' we were worried if our individual hosts were nice or most importantly, if they PARLEZ ANGLAIS----speak english!
Hmm so in a while, there came a woman, rather sophisticated in dressing. She wore a brown leather coat and had short hair combed back----typical ang moh lah. After a little discussion with Mr Jean, she shouted out, "Koo," which is my surname. Oh then i knew she was gonna be the one i would enjoy my 7 days with.

"Yes, that's me."
The sophisticated lady, known as Mdm Duhamel, smiled at me amicably and asked me a question which i didn't understand at all. Man! French ppl speak real fast u noe, so much so that even Pinky can't beat them. Hey so i was like, "pardon?"
And even after repeated times more slowed down now, i still caught no ball. Then came the sentence i wanted so much to hear.
"I speak a little english!"

After that lunch it was meant to be spending the rest of the day with our "family". So she brought me to her house, taking the train, aka Metro(pronounced Meh-to). I tell ya, my heart literally sank a lil' when i realised the little english she knew was really little. Every conversation seemed so tough to be conveyed to one another, with the 2 pathetic us speaking broken french and english respectively. Haha, u wouldn't believe it but i'd wanted to fly back to Singapore at that moment. It was really nice of her though, to carry my approximately 17kg luggage all the way to my "bedroom."

Not gonna describe everything that happened but on the whole, my first day was disastrous. Thank God she had a french-english dictionary, and me, an english-french one. U definitely wouldn't wanna imagine how many at-the-moment conjured up bodily actions we did to define practically everything we wanted to "talk" about. Hmm somehow she realised i'm a Christian and wanted to bring me to a church. Haha i think my command of French then was so PTT i didn't even know how to say church in french. Sigh, lemme warn u first, if u wanna go to France, must learn French!

Yup so the 2nd day, she was so kind to teach me the right direction of train that goes and leaves her apartment. In addition, she accompanied me to the station to meet the rest of my frens there the next morning. So nice to me that i wanted to express how thankful i was but all i could say was "merci beaucoup" which means thanks a lot. Aiyoh, pathetic sia.

It was the the 2nd day, on Tuesday evening when i had to travel home alone after our day's interesting lesson at the int'l university and sightseeing. Oh man, i was really afraid to travel alone cos i felt so unbelonged and blur la, as usual. But at least i didnt take the wrong direction=P

Next few days' journey in the train alone was chicken feet, haha thank God for removing my fear of travelling alone. With many days of movin' around by train, i discovered that Rouen ppl are really friendly and polite. In extreme i mean. Even anyone sitting opp. u would strike a conversation and ask me where i'm from and everything. If only SG was like that. Yeah, if only.

SO we've been studying for about 4 days in the uni and we came across many CUTE GUYS, whom we call CG=P hehe, CHIOU BU is CB. Ya lah, then of cos, in our group we've got some who were more thick-skinned la, who shamelessly went up to CGs to take pics with them. Oh well, it's good that they don't do that in SG huh. heeeheee shamelessly shameless. CMI la u gals. At least i only took photos discreetly.....eh eh, u didn't read that. Okay, next. Apart from the CGs we saw, some of the french lessons we had were interesting. It's kinda fun having so many students from all over the globe coming together to form classes. There was this Cultural Management class where we had so many ppl they'd to join 2 classrooms. Haha guess the 6 of us took up more space for that day. Quite pai seh. But the lesson was cool, talkin' bout the different cultures and traditions in different countries, with different nationalities sharing their different practices. Hmm sadly, where there's an interesting, there's a boring. Some lessons like intro to EU was a bit too draggy and monotonous that we tried hard battling with our heavy eyelids. Not forgetting the full meals we always had before class.

After classes we always looked forward to sightseeing! We went to countless places, with Mr Jean leading us like a bullet train. Attractions in Rouen we went to were the Cathedrale de Notre Dame, where i went for masse on Sunday, Jeanne D'Arc(another church), a renowned beach called Fecamp, seaport called Honfleur and the D.O.M factory. We sampled some flavours of the Benedictine, and as i wasn't used to alcohol, i didn't exactly like the taste of it though mine's Peach flavour.

Bla bla bla, a week past and it was time for us to bid our host families goodbye and off to Paris we go. Well it was kinda a disappointment for most of us, if not all. Maybe cos' our expectations and hopes we pinned on Paris were really high, only to get there feelin' disappointed with some who were rather unfriendly and snobbish. We even got scolded and cursed at for no reason.

All i enjoyed on the last 2 days was our visit to the Castle of Versailles, which is another town a little off Paris. It was like some fantasy or fable with the nice illustrations of castles and palaces. Once we went in, Mr Jean gave us an hr and a half to roam around and 4 of us decided to walked all the way to the end of the whole field which was so enormously wide. Half hour of briskwalking got us to less than 3/4 of the field. And as we were tres tres fatigue(treh treh fa-ti-geh), when means very tired, we just dropped ourselves on the lustrously green grass and faced up to the blue blue winnie-the-pooh sky. So cool man, that was the only moment when i didn't wanna leave Paris.

Alrightey, i've already made the whole 12-day trip summary as summarised as possible. Think the photos would mean more words than all these right. Will show ya what i have so far for now, rest are with my fren.

This is the city of Rouen, with many houses that look like that. Can shop a lot too.

Look at the flowers in Rouen, so nice right. Situated beside the Jeanne D'Arc.

The Jeanne D'Arc, where a famous lady, named Jeanne of Arc, was burnt.

~BloGGyBirdie~(('v')) @ 11:14 PM | smile!

JESUS loves U and birdie loves U too! We can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens us=)

Birdie!!!

Yo! U can call me Bird, Birdie or simply my actuali name Bernice=) Oh but i've got a new nickname now, it's Sotong...mainly due to my blurness=P I'm a happy birdie who lives for Jesus Christ! SO being part of CHC, i love my spiritual family a lot! Apart from being a church-goer, i love SLEEEEPING, chatting over the phone, watching movies, playing pool and learning french too! Oh anyway, welcome to my blog=)