Seulement quelques minutes que je suis dans le bus direction Berlin, et la Pologne me manque déjà. Que dire sur ce pays?
C'est fantastique. Grace à ma rencontre avec Kasia, j'ai pu découvrir une nouvelle culture, un style de vie bien différent de la France, et de très beaux endroits. Beaucoup de choses m'ont rappelé l'Allemagne, il existe pas mal de similarités entre ces deux pays, sauf la langue bien évidemment...
D'ailleurs, j'ai appris quelques mots en polonais qui me serviront énormément pour l'avenir!
Pardon d'avance, pour l'orthographe approximative des mots suivants:
djien dobre (bonjour), kurwa (putain), Tak (oui), nie mam problemu (pas de problème), nits (rien), kupa (caca), djien couilla (merci) (très facile pour les français à prononcer, rappel à couilles), et mon favori étant ouchpocouilleche (hm...TU TE CALMES).
Après quatre jours, ma tête allait exploser à force d'entendre du polonais, heureusement que Kasia était là et que sa famille et ses amis me parlaient un peu français. C'est réellement fatiguant d'entendre une langue qu'on ne comprend pas! Mais assez pour le sommaire des mots qui vous aideront à vous débrouiller si jamais vous avez la chance de voyager en Pologne.
La vie ici est en général vraiment moins chère qu'en France, ce qui est super, spécialement pour le shopping et d'autres petits plaisirs personnels! De plus, Poznan étant une ville importante (environ 3x Bordeaux, sans ce qu'il y a autour), les centres commerciaux ne manquent pas. Et pourtant, ce qui m'a tellement plu, c'est que même dans une ville si grande, il existe beaucoup d'espaces verts, notamment un lac artificiel (nommé Malta) dont nous avons fait le tour à vélo avec Kasia et sa famille, ce qui ne donne absolument pas l'impression d'être dans une grande agglomération, ce qui est d'après moi un énorme privilège, de pouvoir se retirer du bruit pour se réfugier dans un environnement plus calme. Naturellement, j'ai aussi eu droit à ma première fête polonaise avec plusieurs amis très sympa de ma chère Kasiou, et c'était grandiose! (Sans parler de la mésaventure des chaussures dans la piscine, Kasia je suis sûre que tu sais de quoi je parle, n'oublie pas que je me vengerai).
En bref, j'espère revenir en Pologne, et je souhaite à n'importe qui d'en faire autant, sans aucun regret! Encore un grand merci à Kasia et sa famille pour m'avoir permis de vivre cette expérience!
À la prochaine, pour découvrir Kasia in Berlin
__________________________________________________________________________________SMITA SINONPAT
Hi Kasia and every polish friends…
First, I’m gonna present myself. My name is Smile. Well, Kasia would probably call me Smita, which is my first name, but everyone in Thailand call me Smile. :) And yes, I’m from Thailand. I live in the capital city, Bangkok.
I had a chance to know Kasia because we’re AFS exchange students together in France between 2013 and 2014. We had spent time together a lot. Kasia is a really nice persona nd I’m really glad to knoe her as a friend and a sister… :) <3
Now I’m gonna talk about my exchange year and the difference between France and Thailand. I come from a big city so it’s completely different from Perigueux, where I was living in France. In Bangkok, I can do everything and get everywhere I want by car but in Perigueux, as a small city, sometimes it was hard to do something I wanted and I mostly got everywhere by bus or on foot. By the way, I love Perigueux. It is a touristic city. There’re a lot of tourists who come and visit this sity. I find it really cute and I’ve never got bored walking in this city.
Let me tell you some more examples of the differences…
The first thing I was shocked about, is the way they eat. They put everything on the table. I mean Food -> on the table! It was quite shocking for me because tables aren’t always clean and they put bread, croissant or bakery stuff on the table without something under the food to protect the dirt. Teaspoon also, after they use it to stir their coffee or drinks, they put it on the table and use it again to stir their drinks! Well, this is what they do in general nut in the restaurant is different. Anyway, I found it disgusting at the beginning nut now I know that it’s their culture and I accepted it.
Second, for us, Thai people, we see French people as lazy people who don’t like to work and sleep all day all night. Haha well I would say yes and no… Yes for the adults who have their jobs and work regularly everyday. They have a really small period of vacation and work almost non-stop all along the year. On the other hand, I would say no for the students. They do study but not as hard as they could. Thai students work and study a lot harder than French students. That’s why I feel that the system of scholarship here is much easier than our system. This is another difference.
There are also some little different things in life in general. For example, we can’t drink water from the sink in public or toilets in Thailand but here we can… When they go to buy groceries at supermarket, they never use plastic bag to carry their stuff but we use it all the time… And, most of the time, everything needs to be paid here -> Toilet, it’s quite hard to find a toilet that you don’t need to pay here! Etc…
By the way, there’s one thing I found that we have the same. It’s that we are really proud to be us. French people are so proud of their country and their nationality, so are we!
Here are the examples I would like to present to you guys.
I can’t explain how much I’ve gained from this experience. This exchange year is unbelievable. I’ve learned a lot of new things and have met a lot of new people. I’ve also learned how to stand on my own feet and I feel that I became much more mature than before. I will never forget this year in France. It was like a treasure of my life. It was the best year ever!
__________________________________________________________________________________
ANDREA VAN RENSBURG
Hey, you polish beauties :) (really, every polish person I've seen is beautiful) I'm Andrea, and I'm a Canadian and South African. I met Kasia here in France. I've been here for about 3 months.
I believe that this will be put near a photo of me for a little information on the writer of my article (me, I'm the writer) so yeah. I'm 15, born in Dec.12.1998. I have brown hair&green eyes. I'm a dancer and a runner, and I adore writing. I deteste sugary coffee&I have insomnia. But it's okay because I do funny things when I'm tired. I am in love with France and as I'm going back to Canada within 11 days at writing this, you can imagine I'm quite sad.
*I love Kasia and I want to visit Poland.
-ek is lief vir juwe alma! Enjoy
Andreatjie (little Andrea)
Excuse my grammar mistakes, I'm thinking in French.
Hello, Bonjour, Salut and Good day, polish population of the Internet. We will probably not directly understand the intended quality and feeling behind this article, as I'm not so sure of Kasia's translation skills. Of course, that's a joke. I'm here to talk about Canada in comparison to France, and my general thoughts on it all. How do I begin??! (Quickly, that's how.)
So I'll start with my favourite - French socialisation and personal interaction.
First thing I'll say is that I prefer it here in France. The very first thing I noticed when I arrived, was the fact that everyone seems to be friends with everyone. People are closer and more comfortable with one another, (in my opinion) than they are in Canada. For exaple, in Canada people generally have one group of about 10+ people which they talk to/ spend time with. These groups can become extremely exclusive, to the point where seperate groups don't talk to one another at all. I, as an exception, see myself as a person who is friends with everyone without this elitist attitude that many girls my age have. As for the general social life here in France, I also prefer it to Canada. In Canada, our cities are large and very spread out. We generally have to drive everywhere. Here in France since everyone goes to school in the same small cityand goes home by train or bus, they can stay with one another and do things "en ville" about 385x easier than we can. It's much more casual than in Canada and I prefer it. A lot. But I'll move on.
The absolutely ridiculous education system and the organization of student life.
Here in Francia (do you like my polish reference?) school goes from 8-18 a grand total of 10 hours at school (excluding certain exceptions wherein we finish earlier. We have huge pauses during the day when we don't have class where we can go out and relax. And then there's the BAC. I still don't quite understand the real signifiance of this exam, but it's much more complicated than in Canada. Finally, here's the ridiculous heirarchy of the students and professors.
My opinions: The hours are illogical, the fact that that thay have all the courses throughout the whole year I do not agree with, the pauses I love, the BAC... I don't even have an opinion and the hierarchy* makes me angry.
*hierarchy - learned this word when studying French monarchy systems when I was 13. Funny how I'musing it now talking about France.
Moving on - Food and Exercise.
I will tell you now I may or may not be in love with food. All food, any food (vegetables especially). But here in France I have huge problem with staying fit. In Canada, I have dance or running every day after school, and I eat often in small amounts. I don't eat desserts, or lots of carbohydrates, or much fat. But here in France I have gained weight (not sure how much, I alays say 5 kilos but I think it's less than that) and it's because: the largest percentage of food classifications I eat and am expected to eat is carbohydrates and protein, example: meat and bread. That, I do not to in Canada. I eat very little bread and cheese, lots of nuts, lots of vegetables, and I prefer to avoid meat. Here, every day we have a huge meal in the afternoon and the evening, and that's all. But huge. We eat soup , then salad, then rice, vegetables, a meat, and then bread and cheese. On the contrar, in CanadaI'd eat vegetables, rice and salad. You can imagine how it's affected my body... So that's really different, and a huge part of French culture. Also, I am not allowed to run on my own here, so that has helped with my...uh... lateral expansion...
And finally: The overall effects of French lifestyle/culture on my mindset, personality, and general world view.
Here, I'm going to be getting a little more profound than before, hopefully you can handle it.
I. Prefer. France.
I don't care it the education system is shit and that I'm becoming round. I love it.
My mindset when I arrived was that the world is a collection of countries and governments and military associations. After travelling alone and for a long time (for the very first time in my life) I can see every wonder and taste every delicacy. The world is absolutely magical, filled to the brim with people to meet, places to go, and ideas to consider. I doubt that I will ever be content to stay in Canada. My whole head has been turned in the direction of seeing new things and expanding my general knowlegde of the world. I've definitely grown as a person, become less judgemental, developed new interests and, obviously, changed my plans for the future (example - I plan to come to Poland next April for Kasia's birthday... :))
The social atmosphere here has inspired me to become closer with more people as well as to develop casual frienships with people I don't speak to often.
The education (or primarily, my class of 1ère L), has inspired me to begin learning about worldly events on my own.
The food here has inspired me to diet like a maniac when I get home, and lastly,
the people here have made it crucial that I return.
Basically, I am an improved and inspired perso, after my experience here, and I don't think I'll ever be the same.
Much love, pancakes, bisous and maples syrup to all!
have a lovely life <3
A Canadian's experience&point of view regarding French
society, education, cuisine etc.
Article by Andrea Van Rensburg.
Complete with comparative analogies and a couple useless diagrams.
RACHEL WICKS
Hello Poland! Czes
Apparently, I have to write an article to tell you about myself... or at least... that's what Kasia is making me do :)
So, for, starters, my name is Rachel Wicks and I was born in Flushing,MI in the US. It's a small town outside Flint, MI, a larger city (about 100 000 people).
Anyway, I have realized that the French are severely lacking in their knowledge of the US so let's clear up a few things before I continue (just in case you guys didn't know either):
- I do not own a gun
- I do not eat McDonald's everyday, nor do I eat pancakes, eggs and bacon for every breakfast.
- I am not related to a celebrity, and I've never met Obama.
- Washington DC in, in fact, the capital... not New York.
You all are Polish, so I'm going to hope that the Polish education system is better than the French, so I hope you already knew this.
Now for those of you who have never been to the Us, it's a bit different from what my experience in France has been. The most obvious difference, that my fellow Americans have also talked about is the size. Everything is smaller here, a surprise for me, because even though everybody had told me things would be smaller in Europe, I never imagined how small they actually are. It's difficult when you ask where the grocery store is, and apparently you are already standing in front of it, but you're thinking "how could this possibly be the grocery store? my house is bigger than this! Where's Walmart? (a 10 000 m2 grocery store)?! How can this store have everything i need? And it's difficult at first because everything is so big in the US, the stores, the roads, cars, even the people are huge! ;) Luckily, I had two other Americans who were in the same city as me, Megan from Colorado and Deia from New York, and I probably would never met these girls if all of us had stayed home. We were all American, but we lived too far apart, the odds are too low for a chance meeting. It's a great defect that comes with the vastness of the Unitet States: isolation.
The US has expanded its borders to the point that it's an inconvenience to leave the country. We're isolated from the rest of the world. Some of us are isolated from the rest of the US. There are people from Michigan who have never left the state; the pnly foreign country I had been to before I left was Canada, and it doesn't make sense to me. Borders shouldn't keep people in. That's why I am doing this exchange. I refuse to stay in the same place for the rest of my life without giving myself the opportunity to do something like this, to leave my country for a year and experience something new, something different, something exciting. For that, I'm incredibly lucky. Without this, I would've never imagined that you could find everything what you need at that tiny grocery store on the corner and that you can take the bus anywhere , and I would've never met the amazing people who feel the same way I do, and you would've never read this beautiful article about my experience here, because I would've never met the wonderful Ke$ha Darling, for which I'm incredibly grateful.
Rachel Wicks
PS. I'm really sorry this turned into a "I wouldn't be here today" speech
PPS. I'm just going to stop now.
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