My first week in Vichy has been better than I could have anticipated. The train from Vichy to Paris was a very pleasant ride. I shared a carriage with a little girl and her father and on my left sat an old man whose face carried many stories. I was captured by the gentle nature of the young girl opposite and the way she ate her baguette. To my right I looked out the window, green grass, grey skies and brick country style homes. I surprised myself by carrying a conversation in French with the two gentlemen for a good part of the trip. As I stepped onto the platform at Vichy I had a grin from one ear to the other. This simple human interaction had brought priceless satisfaction. I arrived on Sunday evening greeted by my host father who brought with him a beaming smile and a lot of French!
I
was overflowing with uncertainty and nerves but that soon passed as I
walked into a very warm home and a massive cuddle from my host mum.
After the first night I couldn’t
have felt more at home. I said to myself “this is too good to be true.”
I
have enjoyed my first week of classes at Cavilam where each class has
been different to the previous. Unlike the structure of classes at home
each lesson we cover something
different, which I really enjoy. We learnt about ‘La Gallette Rois’ one day and the next we made a calendar marking the national celebrations in each of our countries. We presented an ‘expose’
or a presentation on a significant festival within our home country
and used computers to view videos and practice comprehension. This
comprehensive range of learning methods made each day new and
interesting.
I’ve
already made a huge group of international friends. We are Australian,
Portuguese, Brazilian, Swiss, Dutch and Korean. Cavilam offers plenty of
extra curricular activities
so when we aren’t in class we’re either doing sport, going to the
movies, meeting at the local café or learning to salsa dance. On
Wednesday we visited nearby Thiers and on Saturday we made a day trip to
Dijon and Beaune.
~ Emily
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