Kia ora Charlie!

This is my first article on the blog, and because I am in New-Zealand and it is currently school holidays, I have the time to tell you about my awesome temporary migration to the other side of the world, literally!

It all started on the 28th of December 2016, a pretty beautiful day in my hometown, Marseille(s). On that day my family and I took a first airplane to London where we stayed just enough time for us to change plane, this time direction Hong-Kong our first stop. The flight was very long but overnight English time, which means we arrived with nine hours of difference around 3pm in this alien city. Luckily most of the Cantonese texts were translated. The only time where it was difficult was when we went to a restaurant where no one spoke English we couldn't understand what we were eating!

this was the menu...

So we stayed in China for 3 days, we spend new years eve there and had wonderful fireworks. Hong-Kong was very crowded, there were people everywhere, both Asian and European. But apart from that, it was very exotic in many ways.

On new year's day we left the northern hemisphere on an other flight 7 hours this time (not good for the planet I know) to Australia and more precisely Brisbane the third biggest city in the country. Getting out of the airport was a shock, it was just so hot and humid! Everyone was wearing shorts and sandals. So we spent 5 days in this tropical weather often going in the hot Pacific for a swim. Australians were very nice calling us "mate" and "darling" all the time. We even went to visit a koala sanctuary full of koala's (obviously) and kangaroo's and all sort of typical Australian animals. The kangaroo's were everywhere and you could feed and touch them as much as you wished. The koalas where really cute.

A little reluctantly, but also looking forward to discovering New-Zealand, we left the sun and heat of Brisbane and Australia.

And I will tell you more about my "adventures" later!

P.S Currently I am at UTC+12:00 so you only have to change p.m to a.m or a.m to p.m to know what time it is in New Zealand!

kite wawe koutou Charlie!

*see you soon Charlie

LONDON

Hello Charlie,

I wanted to share with you "my highlights" of our London trip!


Picture n°2: The same day we met our new little friends for the week, squirrels!

Even if it was not the first time I visited London, I discovered a lot during this week. Numerous beautiful parks, architecture, arts, food markets! Each photo captures something that made this trip wonderful.

Picture n°1: First day, here we are London!
Learning how to use the tube. The most courageous took the stairs

Picture n°3: Third day, and we began our day with a beautiful view of London on Primrose Hill

picture n°4: After visiting UCL, we stopped at a farmer's market and tried new delicious foods and british pastries!

picture n°5: a beautiful view of Saint Paul's Cathedral from the tate moden museum



picture n°6 & 7: -another view!  London eye, Big Ben and The Parliament, taken from South bank
- Book shoping on South bank



Those last two pictures were taken during our last day in London, which was a "free time" day. We could go and do whatever we want in the city.  Sometimes we felt all grown-up even maybe a bit "Londoner", when we took the tube, talked to other people and walked in the street. 

LONDON TRIP

Hi Charlie,

We just came back from London this morning and  I'm here to tell you how cool it was, and to show you that anywhere we were going there was something to remind us the OIB.

 Little apples, you there too ! 

Where is the tree though? 

 He was there to remind us of the presentation of tomorrow...

 She was everywhere... 

This one doesn't need any comments.. 

Nadja, love you. Don't get mad please 

OIBAE <33 London we'll be back. 

Charlie, I'll be back soon too, 

Manon 

American experience

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share with you the amazing experience I had this summer! I went in a host family in the US with the program "immersion totale" proposed by Calvin Thomas.
I was with the Bywater family in Washington state in a very little town called Tenino, near Olympia. Jody and Cheri Bywater have 4 children: Brittany (23), Cassidy (20), Bailey (17) and Andrew (15). Here's a picture of them:



from left to right: Andrew, Bailey, Cassidy, Brittany, Jason (brittany's boyfriend), Cheri and Jody.
 

Most of the time I stayed with Bailey because she was my exchange student (sort of) and she had a car so she took me everywhere with her that was awesome!
I did a lot of things while I was there so I'm just going to tell you 2 of my best memories.
The first one is when we went to the beach in a town called Ocean Shores with Bailey's grand mother and one of her friend (Bailey's).
The water of the ocean was so cold we couldn't take a bath so we just wet our legs but that was still a lot of fun!

 

 

We then went to Portland and that was amazing! This city is beautiful and very clean (no gums or trash on the floor!!). We went to an ice cream shop called "salt & straw" which has the weirdest flavours I've ever seen like "goat cheese marionberry habanero" or "strawberry honey balsamic with cracked black pepper" and last but not least "pear and blue cheese". Yes americans are crazy!

 

 

 

 

Here's the link to Calvin Thomas' website: http://www.calvin-thomas.com/  You should check it out they have a lot of different programs all over the world and it's a very enriching experience especially for us in OIB. It helped me a lot because I'm not used to hear and speak English at home or watever so to be forced to speak and hear English everyday for 4 weeks made me progress in my understanding and my way of speaking English. Sincerely it was the best summer of my life!

 

That's it for me! I hope you enjoyed!

bye!

Amandine.

 

 

Hello, people of the OIB

So I just got back from Italy (yesterday evening x.x), and I'll talk to you about it, but let's take it in a chronological order - that is, from the start of the summer.

The first trip I went on was to Romania. I don't have a lot to say about it, because I spent most of the time at my cousin's wedding (it lasted three days !), but I also visited a beautiful fortificated church.

This is the inside of the fortification, civils could hide themselves in the rooms if they needed it, and if the danger lasted for a long time one of the rooms was turned into a school.

My conclusion of this was : Romania is beautiful (though I already knew that because I spent ten days there a few years ago), and I really hate the fact that it has such a negative image here.

After coming home and resting for a few days, my parents, my sisters, and I, spent a day in the car to drive my sisters to a summer camp in Switzerland, and then there was another day of driving so I could be dropped off at an Italian family's place, near Genova, where I spent two weeks. We spent every single day at the beach so I have no picture to show you, I'm sorry (but we all know what the sea looks like so it's not that bad).

My conclusion of this was : I am not going back to the beach for a long time. If my calculations are right, in the space of those two weeks, the time I spent at the beach in my lifetime was almost doubled.

The next two weeks, I was at home with the girl from the Italian family, and then I went back to Italy for a week - but near Milano this time, with other people.

I spent a day in Milano (to see this :

),

an afternoon in a village next to a canal (but that was just an excuse to buy ice cream), and an evening at the Expo. The Expo is an exposition (who would have guessed that ?) about one of my favourite things : food. There were many many many many pavilions, each representing a country, and inside, we could see the country's agricultural landscapes, traditional cooking tools... In front of each pavilion, however, there was actual food : either a restaurant serving the represented country's traditional meals, or a stand where we could buy food that we could eat while continuing to visit. For instance, the UK had a stand that served fish and chips, Belgium had waffles, Hungary (I was so happy when I saw that they had represented both my nationalities) had kürtòskalàcs (that's an amazing but undescribable sweet), and France had croissants.

At the end of the evening, we sat down on a lawn and watched the Tree of Life, which

 was

 beautiful

They even shot fireworks from its top, but I was too busy enjoying the sight to take more pictures.

However, most of my time in that family was spent at home, either awkwardly sitting on the sofa, trying to find something to talk about, or actually talking - and I think my Italian improved ! We'll see if it really did when class starts again though (and somehow I am not very eager for that to happen. I wonder why.).

My conclusion of this was : I need to go back because it was so cool.

So this was my summer everyone, I hope you're all fine, and see you soon !

Judith

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.

 

Hello! :)

Dear Charlie,

Yes, it’s been a while… But… Ok, I have no excuse :D

I hope you’re fine ! Personnally, I’m great ! I went to Cargèse ! J It’s in Corsica, just here :

It was great ! I loved it J Everyday, I did the same things, but it was perfect J I went to the beach, I ate, I slept, I went to the beach, I ate, I slept… I stayed there two weeks J I’m a bit tanned (So yes, it is possible!) The sea was beautiful. It was very clear, and its colours were amazing J

During the 16th century, about 600 Greek people who were fleeing the turkish occupation came in Cargèse. For example, there are two churches which were built face to face. I went to visit these two churches (the Latin church, and the Greek church). I personnaly prefered the Greek one ^^

The two churches

The Greek one

The Latin one

I’ve visited the Scandola Nature Reserve (Unesco World Heritage), and it was beautiful.

Where I stayed, there was a one-eyed kitten. I love cats, so he became my new friend :D

Hope you liked it ^^

Bye ! J

My excuse for not writting enough - Thailand

Dear Charlie,
I know, I know it's been a while since I haven't written anything to you! Please forgive me because I have a good excuse: I was in Thailand!
So let me tell you more about the amazing trip I had the chance to do!

My mother's best friend is Thai and lives there for two years now so we came to visit her (and Thailand for me as it was my first time there).
We flew from Nice to Istanbul and from Istanbul to Bangkok at the end of July. Arrived in Bangkok we stayed there for a few days at my mother's friend's apartment (it has a swimming pool at the top of it, you can see in the photos how much life was difficult). We visited Temples and malls (of course!).

BKK view

BKK by night

What Pho Temple

Then we left the city and went to the country, in Klongwan, a village near the ocean. It was really pretty and the people were sooo nice (they stared at me all the time, maybe because I don't really look like the typical Thai girl ahah!). We stayed there for a week (or so), we went to the beach, saw monkeys or just acted as vegetables do. 

Klongwan

Thai food !!!

We came back to Bangkok but only for 2 days before going to... Chiang Mai! I found this city so cool and attractive (even if there was A LOT of tourists also called "fareng" by the Thais)...! We saw and touched cute tigers and  went to a lot of markets: by day, by night, food or little things markets, both... I really enjoyed being there. We also did a one day trek, we saw/rode elephants, walked into the jungle, "swam" in waterfalls and visited a traditional village! It probably was the best day of my trip to Thailand!!

(baby) tiger at Tiger Kingdom

Elephants in Chiang Mai

Sleeping Buddah in Ayutthayya

We then came back to Bangkok (again), where we would stay for the end of the holidays before flying back home :( But surprise! We only arrived in Bangkok that a bomb exploded in one of Bangkok's biggest mall... The atmosphere there became really sad and stressful and it was hard to go out without wondering if something will happen.

The 22th of August we took a plane from Bangkok to Istanbul and from Istanbul to Nice. It was an awesome trip that I will never forget. Thailand is a magical country, very paradoxical because of the wealth, but still really interesting! The people there are extremely nice and I think Thailand is called "Country of smile" or something like that and guess what... IT IS MORE THAN TRUE!

Hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I do, Charlie (and all the OIB of course)!
See you soon (as we are going back to school in a few days, ugh!).

Bye :)

- Juliette