New Habitat, New Hemisphere
Ok, so I moved. Australasia to Europe. 10 hours’ time difference. It’s 4am as I sit here writing, and pitch black outside; the sun won’t rise above the mountains for another six hours or so. Suitcase spilling over with stuff, still, two nights on… Everything feels pretty strange still. You try to anticipate what it’ll feel like, to move, and it’s impossible; frankly it didn’t even feel real for a while. A dream, that I would get on a plane (three) and fly over here and live here. And what do you know? It’s not a dream at all, it’s real, and I’m living here now for a year — I’m both excited and scared.
As I get more settled in – and learn to speak the language! – I hope it’ll feel less scary. Excited I am, as ever: without study and revision and exams hanging overhead, it feels like I’m allowed to be creative, to draw and paint and photograph. High school is great for wringing such impulses out of you. Well, at least it was for me, perhaps you had a different experience? But yes, and to learn French, and to ski! – and to explore this beautiful country, and to meet people.
So I’m here, among other things, to learn French, right? …and oh my god do I want to learn quickly, because I sit there listening to a conversation, where the words just flow together- they speak so FAST! – straining to just recognise any familiar words, never mind trying to understand. Feeling completely dumb, feels like the only way to communicate is through smiles and nods, and those easy, memorised introduction phrases: “je m’appelle Jessica … je suis suedoise”. Year 7 French gets you nowhere, apparently. It’s not really a surprise – I knew it’d be difficult – but ah, can’t wait to be able to hold my own in a conversation! I have to go out and practice. Talk to locals and shop assistant and french friends as best I can, and gradually I’ll improve, yes?
I vividly remember the feeling of moving to London when I was little, and starting year 4, and having girls come up and talking to me; their words flowed together too, impossible to understand, and I could only say ‘no’, and smile, and look confused. Hey, I learnt English! I remember the exact moment in a maths lesson when I learnt the number ‘13′ – THIRteen, like THREE, and THIRty – three months, or so, to a kind of childish fluency? I’m not sure if it’ll take me longer than three months this time around. I’m not eight any more, I’m eighteen, and they say children are the best at language-learning. Then again, I can learn in a more structured, more direct way than I could then. There’s a psychology magazine downstairs, in French of course, that I’m eager to attack, dictionary in hand, try to get through a whole article, see how much I can pick up! I’ll do that today I think. It looks interesting.
If anyone has any tips on learning a language, please share!
Ok. I have to stop writing, have a suitcase to unpack and a day to start (breakfast is still a good three hours away though, haha).
Thanks for reading, whoever you are!
~Jessica
A warm welcome to the continent. You’re going to have the most amazing year of your life!
For the language learning part have a look at this article by Tim Ferris
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/20/learning-language/
he speaks like five languages fluently including Japanese and German!
It holds some really useful ‘hacks’ to get you started.
One little advice I can give you from my own time over in Australia:
“live your life” right from the beginning on. Do all the partying, tasting, travelling you can, just as if you only have a week left. Block all that ‘thinking’ and make the most out of ‘now’-You’ll be surprised how fast one year can be over…
and btw: Where exactly are you in Switzerland? How’s your host family?Your skype ID?
That’s all too much writing for me and i’m also Not As good with words as you are
Also a warm welcome to Europe! Though I rather imagine you’ll experience it as a cold one with this winter and no winter clothing
And a tip for learning new languages I found very useful: once you get over the basics and are in the phase of just taking in more and more words into your vocabulary and learning more and more expressions; it really helped me to have to have a digital dictionary on my laptop. When going through for example a magazine article and you need to regularly look up words in the dictionary you don’t want to be stopped in your reading activity every time by spending a minute to get to the right page. Digital dictionaries won’t hinder you like that and actually keep the pace up with what you were doing and makes it a lot more enjoyable/motivating.
I thought the one by Lingvosoft was ok but unfortunately that one is Windows only
annoying those Mac bullies, right? 
talk to you
Sounds like your having fun over there
Sydney is so boring now…
What’s it like there? How are the people you are staying with?
Godo luck learing French (I couldn’t learn a langauge no matter how hard I try, I envy you so much
The dictionary tip would be number one on my list as well.
I use it so much that I wouldn’t even think of it as a tip.
Get one of those dictionary apps from the App store!
Takes you about 5 seconds to look up a word instead of one minute with the dictionary. Some apps even have a feature to store the words you search for so that you can rehearse them at the end of the day..
It looks amazing – and I am sure you will pick up the language in no time – it is so much easier when you actually live in a french speaking family – and you will have no problems at all to catch it very soon.
Then when you return you can speak french to Oliver and he can become trilingual too
Thanks everybody, you are all wonderful ^^
Moritz: that is great advice – ‘live your life now’ and everything – were you in a big rush at the end leaving sydney, to do things? I can’t wait to start going out and ‘living’, am still settling in this week though, have hardly been out of the house haha. Going to buy a train discount pass… and exchange my money… once my ‘weekend’ comes around, ooh! I’ll send you an email with my skype id
Felix – love your rushed sign-off by the way – you should see the iPhone app I have
It’s fantastic. I know what you mean about the frustration of trying to look stuff up in a heavy book — never mind trying to carry a book around with you! … now I have a portable explanation of everything, AND it does verb conjugation. I’m so glad I live in this century and not thirty years ago. 
Sammm… cheers for following instructions
it’s … different here, in many ways. for instance the mountains always looming above you – I’ve always lived in pretty flat places, haha – but I like it. The family is great. … enjoy your last few precious days of holiday before year 12, mwahahaha 
Sanna – (kanns sa konstigt att skriva ’sanna’ istallet for mamma) – Oliver shall of course speak french
he can be even more wonder-baby. the trilingual one haha. you know that the girl here, who is the some age as him, does exactly with french what ollie does with english : as in, if you speak to her in english she’ll understand and reply in french … she speaks french all the time, it’s so hard to understand what she wants >< “en anglais, sil tu plais!”