Update on my adventures in France
05/01/2008
Salut tout le monde,
Well some time has pasted since I last wrote to you – 2 months to be exact, and a bit has happened in that time. During the February school holidays for St Valentine’s Day myself and the other exchange students in the area went ice-skating and spent a day in the centre of town shopping and eating etc. It was an awesome day and even though their French skills are much better than mine they are a huge help at getting used to the French culture and language. After the holidays I did an interview for my school’s trimestral journal, which was interesting and I can’t wait to see it when it gets published at the end of April.
At the start of March I left my first host family due to a change in their family circumstances so I got to go live with my EF representative in Solignac for a month while searching for a new host family. I have been having so much fun living at Solignac it’s a medium sized village about 20mins out of the centre of Limoges and is like a village from one of those 100 most beautiful towns in France books!! There’s an 11th century Abbey, horse riding tracks (not that I have ridden a horse along them but I went hiking instead!), it’s also got a river running through the town and a forest which makes me feel like I’m in the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale! I had such a fun time living with my EF rep.
The first weekend at my Reps’ house we arranged a surprise birthday party for her son and all the family came over for the weekend to celebrate! This weekend also just so happened to be Easter weekend so there were 12 people crammed into the one house for three days eating 100 courses at every meal, as well as many kilograms of chocolate! As part of their family’s Easter tradition the husband goes and hides the chocolates in the trees. However, I didn’t realise when the family explained to me that the eggs were in the trees that they were actually at the top of tall pine trees hidden and the use of gardening gloves was necessary in order to climb to the top of the trees to try and get the chocolates before someone else did. I had such a good time needless to say and did get lots of chocolate.
After all my pigging out on chocolate at the start of march by the end of March I started to do take part in activities which didn’t involve me eating! My English teacher invited me to do a radio interview IN FRENCH for a local radio station’s teen time slot. It was a really exciting experience because it was in a real radio station with those cool mics and all. My French wasn’t of a fantastic quality but I enjoyed myself and wasn’t too nervous thanks to my EF rep who came with me.
Around this time the host mother of the German exchange student in Limoges asked all us exchange students to model her boutiques’ spring collection at a private runway show. We were all so excited because it was such a new thing. It was held at a nightclub and was a private event – invite only, with all the designers and boutiques in the region as well as the two EF reps who acted as chauffer/photographer for us all! It was so hectic trying to get our hair and makeup done and then get changed into our outfits. But it’s something I’ll never forget and probably would ever had done back home! But then again that’s one of the awesome things about being an exchange student – it doesn’t matter if you do something like a radio interview or modelling or something else you would never have done at home, you can make a complete fool of yourself and still have the best time in the world!
Until next time
Katie
