Ponts du Monde

Dear Charlie,

As you may or may not know, I have been traveling to Cambodia this last summer with an association called Ponts Du Monde. 
http://www.pontsdumonde.fr/
This was my first time volunteering, and this experience was one of the most rewarding of my life. It was indeed the kind that gives a new perspective on everything you know. There I took care of Cambodians orphans who I couldn’t leave after living such powerful moments with them. Even though we didn't talk the same language, we could connect easily, and I still miss them after all this time. It definitely changed my way of picturing my European way of life, giving me a more objective vision on things, and made me care about where we came from, and especially where things these orphans didn’t have came from for us to have it. 
I could write so much more, but I'm here for an other reason. APCA is where all these children live, and Dara, who is charge, tries to support them financially as much as he can. However they are having financial difficulties right now and could close any time soon. This would leave a lot of the children that I spent my days with without a home. To help them, we created a funding website. Here is the link: https://www.leetchi.com/c/orphelinat-apca

I hope I encouraged you to donate, or even to travel with Ponts du Monde, as this touches me very personally.

Have a nice day,
Irène

2nd Part of Theo's adventures

Hi Readers.
Hi Charlie.

I am going to tell you about New-Zealand, at least what I have discovered of it.

So I (actually me and my family but I'll say 'I' in this article) arrived in Wellington after my quite exhausting and very polluting travel across the world on the 6th of January. At that time all the french students and teachers were in school... I was happy about that, I can't hide it.
So the house I arrived in, the house I was going to be living in for more than half a year, was, and still is up a slope on a hill called Mount Victoria. The house has an amazing view on the harbor and Wellington's city center.

I go and explore the city quite quickly, and since it is quite small (more or less the size of Montpellier) I walk down from Mount Victoria to the harbor and the city center. The first thing I felt and saw was that everybody was relaxed, open and mostly under 30. I thing that's how it got the name of "coolest little capital in the world" !
My first impressions were confirmed during the first week I stayed in the city.

But after only seven days, I go off to explore the south island while it's still hot (seasons are the other way round remember).

So I go to the airport and then, I find myself face to face with Smaug!!! it was really a surprise, the dragon's head was sticking out of rocks. Not far is Gandalf on a giant eagle as in the Hobbit, all three real size (I guess). How amazing. Then I fly off (yes again) to Queenstown, it's a smaller town than Wellington. Queenstown is just by a very long lake called Wakatipu. And it's the world capital for extreme sports!
It's a very touristic town mainly for it's high-adrenaline activities so there isn't much cultural interest in the city. But not far, up the lake, at it's tip, is a city called Glenorchy. It was created in the 1860's and was an important gold mining town at the time, but the business quickly got smaller as the quantity of gold decreased. Apart from that around Glenorchy is the site Peter Jackson used in the Lord of the rings as Isengard! Sadly the tower is gone ;-)

After two days in Queenstown I drive off to the north of the southern island, I pass lakes, small villages and tons of sheep, they were literally everywhere. Day after day I travel clockwise in a big circle through the island starting from the west, going up to Timaru and back down along the east coast where the water was hot enough to swim. I end my tour in Invercargill the south-most city of New-Zealand. Down in the south there are very few people, more sheep and forest, and by the sea there are very long beaches where sea-lions, penguins and other birds come. I can't describe to you what it feel's like being 5 m from a fat sea-lion!

I really loved the wild South island even if what I wrote above didn't show it too much... I also went by Mount Cook New-Zealand's summit and saw a glacier by a lake with icebergs floating in it.
I recommend touring New-Zealand to anyone who is planning to go there.

map

Insengard with something missing

smaug                                    an empty town down in the south                          Gandalf riding an eagle

mount cook glacier                                     the view from my sitting room


Bye Charlie
PS I start school on the 1st of Feb, and I have also created my own blog just about my family's trip to New-Zealand here.

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. 

Cuba

Hey everybody,
I wanted to write an article to share with you some pictures to my trip to Cuba.
I went on April's holidays to visit my uncle that moved there last year. It was great to see him and my family again. Cuba is a great country but very special at the same time. Everything is different, the food, the mentalities, the cars. It's like travelling in time. What I liked about the people there is that they don"t care about theirs looks, or the clothes they wear there is no shame no judgment.
I stayed in "La havana" a lot to stay with my family. I also went to a place named " Vinales" it's beautiful, we also went to Trinidad a very old city ( 400 years) and it's beautiful because all the houses are painted in different colors.
Here are a few pictures : 

This is street in La havana, you can't imagine how hot it was it's mostly small streets with lots of people. La havana  is a very colorful city.  

Here are some palm trees. 

Caribbean sea is gorgeous, so many different shades of blue  !

 

Palm trees again and Cuba's flag ( it is everywhere) 

You can see the capitole, and an old american car. 

And to end properly this article, two beautiful sunsets !!



Hope you enjoyed my article !

Alberta ✿

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 

Italian postcard

Hello!

I've been meaning to write this article for a long time but by the time I connected myself to the blog, I always forgot what to say!
You might be thinking that this is actuality or local stuff but it isn't about any of that... It's about my summer holidays in Italy (although their long gone).
This summer, I went to Italy with my best friend and his parents, we spent 2 weeks there going from city to villages and from villages to city's and I found it really nice! We visited loads of places like: Verona, the lac of Garne, the lac of Côme, Milan, Venice and Turin!!

It was great! I actually wanted to write this article to say how great Milan was so I'll get to the point! We only spent one day in Milan and we went to the UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION MILAN 2015!!! It was great, we visited loads of different platforms including Great Britain, France, Brazil, Russia, America, Italy and Argentina. They were all pretty much good but I've got to say that my favourite was Estonia. There were fun games (swing competitions!!), we also saw magic tricks, a piano playing on it's own, and loads of other informations about the country. 

America and China were really disappointing. I found GB and France ok maybe a bit too much original though because GB was about bees (not really typical about GB) and the France theme was about saucepans and underwear's which I don't think really represent France...

Finally, my day at Milan was a great day I will remember all my life!!

Abel

I'll try to enclude some god pics I took over there but i'm not sure it'll work!