Sorry it took me so long to finally finish this update. I haven’t been at my host families house much over the past few weeks.

This is my update for the 2 week holiday break which was about 4 weeks ago now, so its really late and I’m really sorry.

Quiberon

When I got home from my Spain trip I was sitting doing my blog update when my host mum told be to pack my bag because we were going to the family holiday house at ‘Quiberon’. We arrived at 10pm so I had dinner and went to bed. The next day I went for a 2 hour tour of the area with my host brother, Edouard. We went for a bike ride along the coastline and looked at all the different beaches. Its different to NZ, but vaguely similar.Edouard also showed me around ‘his playground’ which is an old privately owned area which used to be used as an army training facility during WWII. Edouard and his friends spend a lot of time there during the summer. Apparently if you look in the bushes and dig a bit you can find old guns and ammunition from WWII. When I got back to the house after the tour I packed my bags and we went back to Nantes. It was a short trip but a lot of fun.

Saffre

For 4 days of the first week of the holidays I went to a region not far from Nantes called ‘Saffre’. I stayed with a Rotarian couple, they didn’t have any kids but I still had fun. The first day I arrived they (Joseph & Marie-France) took me to see the Maquis de Saffre, an old WWII memorial for some members of the French Resistance who died when there Farm House was ambushed by the Germans. We got to see the old, half destroyed Farm House which they used as a Head Quarters (HQ=PC in French).

On the Second day Joseph took me to Saint-Naziare, a Harbor city where the Queen Mary II was built (My host dads business supplied all the windows for the QMII). At Saint Nazaire I got to see the old Submarine base which is just about the only building in the city that survived WWII. The rest of the city was destroyed by American bombs. It was a good day, despite the weather.
On the way home I found out that if you order a ‘Schwepes’ in France it means Tonic Water, not Lemonade or any of the other fruit flavors they make. I’m not going to make that mistake again.

On the last day we went to see an old Chateau. It was called the Chateau de la Groulais. We couldn’t go inside but it was really cool to see a chateau. Later that day Joseph got me to show him how to put photos from his camera onto his computer. Now telling explaining how technology works to anyone over 50 is difficult, Its even harder in French, but I think I got the message across.

I didn’t do anything for the second week of the holidays. But the last weekend I went to Tours to see my friend Victoria, an exchange student from Australia (She can’t help where she’s from). The first night I arrived we went to see a movie. We saw “Charlie Wilsons War”, I was worried about wasting my money to see a movie I couldn’t understand, but it was in English, YAY!!!!
The second day we woke up at 10 and then went into town to meet up with 2 of the other students in Tours, Julia (USA) and Rowan (AUS). We went to a park and got told off for sitting on the grass. I miss that. You cant go on the grass in any of the parks here. We decided to go to a café instead, we sat there for ages. We went to the supermarket to get some food after that (Eating out is kind of expensive). I saw coke with coffee flavor so I bought that, It was really nice. We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner, it was quite good. We hung out in town for a while, until about 11pm. Julia came back to Victorias for the night aswel.
The next morning Victoria and I made a Pavlova for lunch. We had to say that it came from New Zealand and Australia (Even though we all know where it REALLY came from). I put some crunchie bars on the top so it was a more NZ pavlova than an Aussie Pavlova.

So that was my holidays. I have more holidays coming up in 2 weeks or so and Im going to Switzerland for 6 days. Im really excited.
We just had our Easter weekend (Called Paques in France). We went to the beach house and had a lunch with all the family.
This weekend im going to a Rotary conference with a whole bunch of other exchange students from all over France, Im really excited.
Just something funny. The other day I accidentally told my old as French teacher that she had a nice bum. If you say “beaucoup” (As in “Merci Beaucoup”) the wrong way it is Nice Bum. Now I just say “merci”.