Germany is buzzing with excitement because Christmas is near.
I definitely feel like I am part of the family and have a house always open to me half-way across the world.
I guess the strangest place to have found a use for my Japanese would be in India earlier this year. My mum and I went to buy a sari in a little village shop and the sari seller couldn't find an English-Sari instruction book for us. He only had a Japanese instruction book and asked me if I knew Japanese. Then he told me that his wife is actually Japanese and at that precise moment she walked out, dressed in a Sari (as opposed to a kimono) and served us Japanese tea. We even got a...
Every day, the language gets easier and I am loving my new life in France. There is so much to learn and enjoy here and I am so glad I decided to go on this adventure! My family continue to be fantastic here and I couldn't be happier!
Firstly, I'd like to thank you and everyone from the WEP team for making my experience the most unbelievable experience of my life so far. On New Year's we had four metres of snow and it was -20 degrees! I will miss the Italian cusine a lot! Surprisingly, I didn't put on any weight at all! I grew tall, got fit and ate all the right foods. I already miss it.
Life in France is pretty good apart from the millions and millions of stairs I have to climb everyday. I have decided that’s how they stay so thin. The language is still very difficult. It turns out I did not know as much as I thought I did. I can understand quite a bit but just finding it difficult to respond. However, my host family and a couple of my teachers are helping me out heaps. I have made quite a few friends at school, of whom most speak a little English and even the ones who...
Ireland's great! I’m having the best time and way better then I had expected. I love the weather here. Time is going by really quick, which is both a good and a bad thing, but I’m making the most of it! The family's good and I could not have asked for a better one. They treat me like their own. The school is very different, but good. Everyone is really friendly and though it has taken a few weeks, I am slowly getting used to their accents! I love listening to them.
Firstly, thank you for everything you have done for me. This is an awesome experience and I am very grateful to you and everyone at WEP for making it possible. I am having a fantastic time. France is beautiful! The family and I are having an awesome time and school is trundling along. France is a wonderful place and my French is improving by the minute. Once again thanks to everyone at WEP!
Everything is going very well! I'm definitely making the most out of each day. I just recently joined the Badminton club, which is so much fun. Here in the country I stick out completely! So, every day brings new exciting adventures!
Italy is great! I love it here! I am having a lovely time here with my host family who are so kind and sweet to me. They are always asking me 'Come Sta?' and feeding me too much! I am afraid I am going to turn into prosciutto, because I eat so much!
It has been snowing even down here in the south where I live. I even couldn't go to school on Friday because of all the snow on the roads! It’s just all so very different to Australia! I’ve been having lots of snow fights, making snow angels and helping my little host brothers and sisters build a snowman and tobogganing down the backyard slope.
Things are great and you couldn't have chosen a better family for me. It's definitely something I won't regret in the future.
My family and I have been getting along so well! They are super caring people and remind me a tid-bit of my family back home. They have the best sense of humour - I don't know what I'd do without humour! We went hiking and it was so beautiful! We also went ice-skating yesterday, which was awesome.
I suppose the hardest part of the immersion process has been the peeling back of 18 years of Australian male emotional repression. It's amazing how different our two cultures are with regards to openness, especially with males. It's quite different seeing some of the guys from my Argentine rugby team cry after winning a close rugby game. And, as a point of reference, this wasn't a final or a game of any incredible significance. I'd never seen such an emotional outpouring over...
I'm having an absolutely amazing time in my small town of Saulcy-Sur-Meurthe, in north east France. I couldn't have imagined before I left Australia what one could do in two months in a foreign country, and I still have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure that it's all true. I've attended "La fete de St Nicolas", played baseball on a snow covered oval, taught all the rellies "Auzzie Jingle Bells" at Christmas, been on a week-long exchange-on-exchange to Holland, eaten Nutella crepes for...
The crazy Australian I am true and blue, yet the courageous Belgian is beating in my heart too.' Jenni from Brisbane embraced Belgian life 'to the full' as told in a recent email to WEP: 'Everything is going just absolutely fantastically superb over here. I'm living life in beautiful Belgium with some of the most amazing people in the whole world. My family is just fantastic and I love them all as if they were my own. I'm known as the crazy middle child and they are all my beautiful...
At first the language was difficult, but each day it seems to be getting easier and I find I can understand a lot more than I can speak.
I have just come back from Paris. From Montemarte you could see all of Paris and by night it was exactly like in the movies.
I absolutely love it here! My family is great! They have been so welcoming and I really feel at home. I love having a brother and sister. School is getting easier and I’m starting to understand more and more. I went to Paris last week with my host mum. It was absolutely freezing but we had so much fun. Then the other day I went to Brussels with some friends and we went ice-skating while it was snowing!!! It was incredible even though I managed to fall 11 times! It’s been snowing heaps, which...
I just wanted to...express my sincere gratitude for doing what you do. You truly make kids dreams come true. I'm having the time of my life. And so far I haven't gotten homesick at all! It just scares me that at some stage it will have to come to an end.
I can't believe how much I have changed already. I can already tell that I have matured so much. I never thought that by doing an exchange I would learn so much about myself and at the same time learn about a whole different culture. It's just amazing.
Christmas was amazing. I was a bit worried about the food to start off with. My host dad said we would be eating snails and I wasn’t sure how my stomach would handle it. Thankfully my grandmother doesn’t like snails so we didn’t have them. Apart from the foie gras everything else was amazing especially the desserts. I’m really going to miss them :) I spent the week of Christmas/ New Years travelling around and visiting different places and family. I especially loved Chambéry it was so...
My time here in France has been amazing! I had a great holiday with my family, who took me on a road trip to Strasbourg to visit relatives to spend Christmas with. We went back to Irigny for New Year's and celebrated it with friends. It snowed a bit before Christmas, so I made a snowman, but none of it stayed. However, where I went for Christmas was all white on Christmas Eve, but all the snow melted that night so I unfortunately didn’t get a white Christmas. Today was the first day back at...
I have settled in quite well and bonded well with Camille, my host sister. All the students take an interest in me because I am Australian and they find it an exotic place. The language barrier is difficult every day. Though I can understand most things, I find it more difficult to respond.
I am doing fantastic! I just want to say a huge thank you! It all started off strange and unfamiliar, but now I feel as though I’ve known these people my whole life! They are the most welcoming, kindest, and funniest people I’ve ever met and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to meet them! Thank you for being the ones who let me experience a completely different life, from which I gained a second family and two sets of best friends.