Hi Louise, wow hasn’t it been a while!
First I’d like to apologise for not keeping in better contact with you over the last months, so much has been going on I’ve barely been at home in 2 weeks! Now that I am home I’ve decided to sit down and write a little message to you and rotary in Warrnambool about what I’ve been up to the last couple months!
I’ll also try my best to attach a power point of some photos from the most incredible summer of my life!! Now, if we back track to June, I finished my last day of school the 7th. For 3 whole months I was on holidays with my friends, host families and a few other exchange students! In June, I went to my first French wedding, visited Royan (a seaside town 1 hour away on the train) with some other exchange students for the day, went to a couple of “end of school year parties” with the French kids from my class and made the most of the warm weather by spending many days and evenings in the city, having picnics by the little lake, and watching the sunset from the old ramparts of the city. The end of July marked home time for most of the exchange students I’d come to known, lived with, and adored, so there was a couple sad days saying goodbye to them, however I hope that life we lead will lead us back to one another some way or another.
July started off great with a week in Bordeaux with all the exchange students from the southern hemisphere in my district. This meant I got to see Maddix, the other Australian girl from district 9780, who is from Horsham, as well as 2 other girls from Australia, 2 from Argentina and one from Brazil. You can imagine the fun that 7 16-18 year old girls can get up to while in the south of France, and we thoroughly enjoyed our tours of Bordeaux, la cité du vin, a visit to Saint Emilion and a tour of a wine yard there, sailing in Arcachon, cooking lessons, bike riding and so much more! It’s safe to say we were completely spoiled and I was lucky enough to be able to stay on in Bordeaux for another 3 days, and spend Bastille day ( the 14th of July) along the river with exchange students, Rotex and our host siblings that we’d already spent the week with.
When I returned to Angouleme after 10 days on holiday it didn’t stop either, with my host family escaping the July heat to go to the beach on many occasions. Unfortunately, there were 4 days where my host parents were stuck at work, and during those 4 days, it happened to soar up to 42 degrees each day. In all honesty, it wasn’t the most pleasant of days, or nights, as the extreme heat meant that even around 2 AM the temperature was still around 30 degrees! Before July finished, my host family also treated me and my host sister to a little trip to Paris for the weekend, where we stayed with my host uncle and his wife. The Saturday we spent in the city, visiting the Champs de Élysée, the Eifel tower, the Louvre as well as lots and lots of shopping, and on the Sunday, my host sister and I spent the day at Versailles! It was absolutely breathtaking, the sheer size of the chateau amazed me, and more so the amount of paintings, statues and pure gold was absolutely incredible! The gardens were also very beautiful, although being overrun by what we assumed to be Chinese tour groups!
The start of August I changed host families for the final time. While I was a little nervous at first to do so, after 3 days I felt as if I fit right in and am very, very happy here with this family. It seems I also have what they say in France as “trop la chance” essentially meaning I’m too lucky, as my new family happened to have a summer house in Cap Ferret, one of the most popular seaside destinations for French people to spend their summers in. Our summer house was very little and I ended up sharing a bedroom with my host siblings, however I couldn’t complain as once the terrace ended, the beach started (i’ll attach photos so you can truly understand). Nevertheless, this place was truly magical. Each day, we would take my host fathers boat out to a sand bank, park it there for the afternoon, and have a picnic. After we’d spend the afternoon tanning and relaxing in the water, before coming home and always eating amazing seafood for dinner. Cap ferret is part of the basin of Arcachon, so its home to some of the best oysters in the world, and although I tried many times, I still couldn’t make myself like them!
I was definitely a little sad to say goodbye to the basin, and hello again to the French school system after spending 4 beautiful weeks there, however once September started, the countdown began to see my family again! Last Tuesday, Mum, Dad and my baby sister Lexi arrived in Angouleme on the train, after 234 days of me not seeing them! It was completely unimaginable, and I don’t think I realised how much I missed them, until I was sitting at the train station counting down the minutes until they arrived We spent a beautiful 4 days in Angouleme, with my host families treating them to beautiful French dinners, me dragging dad along to my weekly rotary meeting where he had to do “the bis” with about 30 French men, and then not understand anything for 40 minutes! We also visited all the things my city has too see and ventured to a nearby town called Cognac for an afternoon! Saturday! we took the train to Nerac, to go visit a French girl that you all know and love quite dearly, Lea! It had also been about 8 months since I said goodbye to lea at the airport as in Australia, she was much like a third sister to me! It was absolutely incredible to see Lea again, and it was equally as good to meet her family, especially her mum, who continuously throughout these last 8 months has sent me messages checking up on me, making sure I’m being taken care of, and assuring me that if anything goes wrong, she would jump in her car and come pick me up.
Lea is definitely her mother’s daughter, as her mother, Laurence cooked up an absolute storm for us Saturday, before taking us on a winery tour and a boat ride through the river of Nerac on Sunday. It was definitely a little sad saying goodbye to her family, but I’m very glad I’ll be able to see them again soon as I have a rotary weekend in her town in November. It’s safe to say my parents were equally as happy to see Léa again and meet her family, and although there was a large language barrier between the two sets of parents, by the end of the weekend they were already making plans to come stay with us in Australia once Lea’s mum mastered her fear of flying ! Sunday night I said goodbye to my parents for a little while as they venture off to Spain and Portugal for 12 days. Luckily for me though, I’ve been blessed with a very caring host family and rotary club who granted me permission to miss a little time off school and spend 2 weeks with my family starting from the 28th of September!
I will let you all know of what we get up to! I hope you all are doing well? and I send my condolences to the family and friends of Ron.
Lots of love,
Monique.
