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...
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!
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...
My time so far here in Nordholz, Germany, has been a dream. Some of my favourite memories are the memories I've created here.
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 got on very well with my host family, always feeling comfortable and welcome. They really made me feel part of the family.
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'm going very well at the moment. I find that time is going by too fast. Belgium is a super awesome country and I'm so glad I picked it.
Don't think of what you might "miss" at home but of how much you gain from a program like this.
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!
I feel as if I have matured so much already during this expedition to France. I left Australia believing that I was mature and thinking that I knew myself. Being here for what is not even half of my journey so far, I have learnt so much about myself. When I told my parents of my plans to return to France one day, my mother wisely said "This is not just a journey of five months, these are the first steps of many."
I want to say thank-you to WEP for everything. My time as an exchange student was great! I learned so many things here. I made a lot of friends and it is going to be difficult for me to leave. Of course, I had a few problems but thanks to that I am not the same anymore. When I will go back to Australia, I will be more open minded and I will be able to do things I never imagined. Thank-you very much to my co-ordinator and friend Yvette Caro - you are brilliant! Thanks to my natural parents,...
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.
School has been good, my friends are all crazy and fun to be with. Unfortunately, I am not adept at remembering the words they teach me, but I have improved my Japanese, so I am happy. I can say more than the most simple of phrases and I can understand what people are saying more and more.
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.
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 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 really enjoyed trying to fit into a different culture, family and friends group.
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’ve been in Argentina for just over a week now and am loving it. My host family has been very welcoming and everybody that I’ve met has been very enthusiastic about meeting me. I am enjoying the food and the siesta! I am living in the town of Casilda, which is considered a small town (and certainly has a small town vibe). It is a place were half the town, young and old, will show up at the community hall to watch the castalona (Argentine music) concert or the local futbol match, and on the...
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.
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...
Belgium is fabulous and time is going by too quick! My family is really nice and accommodating and so is my school. My school friends find it funny when I talk because I muck up the pronunciation, but I'm getting there with the language. I even started talking to my mum in French one time when she called.
The best way to learn new things is to do it smiling and laughing! This is definitely the best way to learn a new language :)
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...
