Emma is participating in a year-long WEP exchange program to France. Read about her first couple of weeks in her new family and school:

Everything is going well. I’m getting used to the cold and the long school days aren’t so bad. I can now understand pretty much everything (sometimes I stop listening though, when I’m tired) and my speaking is coming along. I can make myself understood, and I’m learning how to say new things all the time!

I have been asked a few things about Australia. My teacher asks me to read in our English class a lot, as the others love my accent. I also help out when I can, correcting things for people and practising with them when they want to. I have friends (and have had since my first day – when they found out I was coming, they decided to befriend me), but I get along well with everyone in my class. I know almost the whole class by name, which isn’t so easy when there are 33-ish.

I do what work I can, although as lots of teachers dictate, it’s sometimes hard to follow, and I’m better off just listening, rather than trying to write. Maths class made NO sense to me, so now I work with the “assistants pedagogiques” and Wednesday morning I do philosophy with the terminale class.

I’m having a really great time, and I starting to feel really at ease with my school-mates and family – I felt comfortable before… but now I feel as if I’m really ‘part of everything’!

Photo: Emma (2nd from right) together with other exchange students upon their arrival at Paris' international airport.