Hello, my name is Saoirse. I am 13 years old and live in the French Basque country just on the border with Spain. I’m from Sandymount, and came to France in 1999 to live.

My nana still lives in Sandymount, and sends us ‘NewsFour’. When I finish school in France, I wish to come back and go to university in Dublin, to study journalism.

I’m just going to let you know what life is like for someone my age in France.

In school, I learn English, it’s compulsory from the age of 8. I say the younger you start, the easier it is to learn. I also learn maths, French, music, sciences, physics, sports, art, technology, history, geography, and civics.

I’m in 2nd year in secondary school. Secondary school is divided in 2 levels, College for 4 years (11-15) and Lycée (15-18). At the end of Lycée, you do your Bacc a Lauréat, which is the equivalent of the Leaving Certificate in Ireland. In 3rd year, we learn our second foreign language. In my case, it will be Spanish.

I eat in school, lunch is from 12:30 to 02:00, and the meals are served to us. The food is mostly nice, and the menu is very well balanced.

Dinner is a bigger thing in France, it is a meal where the whole family gets together, and stays for something like an hour around the table, talking about their day, what they would like to do tomorrow, etc. There are a lot of restaurants in France, no chippers, and very few fast food restaurants.

During the summer, all the restaurants stay open, because everyone else is on holidays, and there are a lot of tourists, so this is their most important time of the year. I get my school holidays at the start of July, and go back in September.

In France, there are all sorts of radio stations, classical music stations, rock stations, jazz stations, news stations, rap/rhythm ’n’ blues stations, traffic stations– a bit of everything!

Music is a very big thing for me. A lot of English-speaking groups are big here, all my friends know U2, and the ones who didn’t like them are big fans now because of me.

I also listen to Greenday– they’re huge here. I can’t always listen to the radio because my radio doesn’t always receive the signal, as I live in the middle of the western Pyrénées, which is 20 minutes from Biarritz.

From December to January, the mountains are full of snow. It is beautiful and looks like a chocolate cake with a lot of white icing on top. It made me feel very cold and very Christmasy.

For Christmas, chocolates are a great present here. I can’t remember how many boxes we got this year, and I don’t really feel like counting them. The French just love chocolate. They wonder what life would be without it.

Before the holidays, I went to see ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’. The film itself was great, but in French, it wasn’t the same. I have the three first films, and always watch them in English, so to see it in French, it was different. They all sound a lot younger, and the translations aren’t always the best. I always watch films in their original format, as long as it’s either French or English.

This year, I’m coming home to Ireland with my family, for a get-together. And I just can’t wait to see how much Ireland as changed since I was last there as everybody tells me, it has changed a lot, especially around Sandymount and Ringsend. See you all then.

Above is (from left to right) My little brother Bríain, Me, and my younger sister Dearbhla taken in Biarritz. The mountains behind are in Spain, with San Sebastiao at the other side.