New to Livejournal

2006-05-30T07:48:14Z

Hello to all of you that should by chance happen to have stumbled across my new place of existence on the web. I believe I shall aim to write in here quite frequently, though of course I have said that before with previous journals and never gotten past the first entry...but this shall be different I think, as I am currently in France (since January) and shall be here until early December. Hopefully that should give me enough experiences to write about and post photo's about. Whether or not it is actually interesting to any of you...well that is an entirely different matter altogether. I shall try to write in a way that doesn't bore you terrible much though, but, all in all this shall just be a place for me to ramble away, record my experiences so I don't forget them, and give friends and family that are interested about my life over here the chance to read about it.

To give a quick insight into what kind of person I am. Well, I'm an 18 year old male, Janaka Rodrigue being my name, son of Jeff and Sonia, brother to 20 year old Aaron.

Usually I live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, in a place called Tallebudgera Valley. It's probably one of my favourite places in the world, I've never before seen a place where you can venture out to tropical rainforests and waterfalls, mountains and rolling hills of green grass, but yet still only be 5 minutes away from golden sandy beaches. Truly a magnificent and unique place to live in my opinion.

At the moment however, I'm on a student exchange program in a large city named Nantes, in France. I live in a place called Treillieres, which is a quiet little suburb on the outskirts of Nantes. I live with Marie-Claude and Alain, my host mother and father, and Charlotte, my host sister (although she is rarely here these days - the word 'boyfriend' should explain why not). I go to a private school here called 'St Fèlix' in the centre of Nantes. It's fairly good, I can definitely say I prefer Australian schools however.

Well that's my living situation at the moment covered anyway. To describe me as a person...hmm. Well a lot of the time I'm a quiet person, perhaps a little shy, but it really depends who I'm around, if I'm around friends or family I'm quite outspoken and perhaps a little crazy sometimes, but it's all good fun. In my heart I'm a creative person, I'm not really one for mathematical logic. As a result of this, photography is my biggest passion, if I'm not busy doing something I'll usually be out looking for something to photograph, or if I don't have my camera with me, thinking about what I could do for my next project.

I love to read and to write as well. I've always read a lot since I was young, liking the ability to loose myself within the pages of the books and become part of the imaginary world. At the moment the only writing I'm doing however constitutes of a movie script I'm helping a friend (Levi) write. He's going to produce the movie this year (nothing huge, but you have to start off somewhere) and then hopefully I shall see it when I return to Aus.

I love being outdoors, even if I'm not doing anything other than sitting in the sunshine or watching a waterfall or walking through a rainforest, it's when I feel most content, when there are no buildings or masses of people around, nothing but pure nature. I love the beach too though, even though there are way to many tourists there for my liking (that kind of figures though, living on the Gold Coast). The beach I've seen so far here in Nantes (well actually, 100km south west of Nantes) wasn't terribly good at all, brown dirty sand and dirty grey water...doesn't quite compare to home.

I love music, a lot of my friends are great musicians, and I really like to hear them play and produce beautiful songs. My family is pretty musical, my dad and brother being quite good at their instruments. I play a little bit of a guitar, not as well as I'd like by any means, but I'm only young, so I have plenty of time to learn. Favourite bands or music style is pretty varied, as I like alot of music, though a few that come to mind are Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice, Ben Harper, Mozart, Prodigy, Linkin Park, The Dresden Dolls, Paul Oakenfold, Moby, Lenny Kravitz, Pierre Bensusan, Eva Cassidy, The Fray, Dallas Green, and many more.

I like to cook, and as such I like basically all foods. Favourites would have to be Indian, Italian, French and Japanese. I love cheese more than chocolate, so I'm definately in the right country for that, considering France has over 400 types of cheeses.

Well that should just about do for now I think, as I update more often you'll get an idea of what I'm like anyway. I'm off to school now, which shall be okay as I only have two classes today, French literature and English. It's rather cold though, 6 degrees, which is a shame considering it's a cloudless sunny day.

For now, here's a photo of me I took yesterday after a game of soccer.
All the best,
Janaka.

Memoirs of a Monkey

New to Livejournal