Summer 2015

Hey Charlie !

I decided, for my summer holidays, to go to school in a country where it's winter... I guess it doesn't sound good from this perspective but it was an amazing experience... am I convincing enough?

I arrived in Perth on the day of my birthday and the French national day, it was the last week of a short two week break from school there. So I spent my first week visiting the city centre, the beaches and the suburbs. I was in a host family (They were so nice and welcoming!), they had five children under the age of 13.I didn't spot any major differences in their way of life except  they eat very small lunches and big dinners  with a lot of meat, and the community spirit that is very strong there.

The temperature varied, it went from a bit less than15 degrees  to 30 degrees! They were all wearing short sleeves t-shirts and shorts.

Then it was the first day of school, which was great ! I was in year 10, like seconde in France. The school is less formal and the teachers provide a more individual education, and creativity, and personal opinions or interpretations are encouraged. Above all, their day started at 8.40 a.m and finished at 2.50 p.m (but they had two recesses of 20mn including the lunch break). I also got to choose options like drama, music, photography, cooking, wood work... And I discovered that they had extension courses for gifted students . I had to wear a uniform... and that was not as cool as I thought.

During these 4 school weeks, I made a lot of friends, learnt about lots of maths notions, read Macbeth, had a A (and a C) at a science test, learnt about STIs and made up a psychology experiment (I had psychology lessons)... There was an "award ceremony" where they gave awards to every three best student in each subject.
And I went to Pemberton with the host family, which was a small town near Perth, and climbed a 53 meter tree on which people used to look for fires in the forest.It looked a bit tropical there but it was very cold! I also had surf lessons and managed to stand up on the board... for two seconds. There were white kangaroos in the widlife park I visited (koalas, wombats and colourful birds too)!!!

"Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight"

(remind you of something ?)

I guess i can't tell you everything about my awesome trip to Australia neither about Italy, and all the concerts I went to, but I can tell you I will never forget about these holidays !
Agathe M.