May the 5th marked the end of my 4th month in France, it’s amazing how fast it’s gone – if I don’t watch out this exchange will be over in the blink of an eye! P.s this post is a continuation of the last post.

I was very upset to leave my wonderful host family on Monday morning. Before I left, Coline gave me a little bouquet of muguet flowers to celebrate the 1st of May (in France this is a symbol of good luck). Their family invited me to stay with them during the big holidays in July, so hopefully this isn’t the last I’ll see of them because I really enjoyed my stay.

After everyone said goodbye to their host families, all the JPC kids got on the bus to head for a train station. From this point of the trip it would just be us, and Madame Clarke of course. The train ride to Avignon was the longest 6 hours of my life – everyone was so loud and wouldn’t shut up! The scenery was awesome and as we got closer to Avignon it looked suspiciously New Zealandish with it’s wild untamed forest and mountains. When we arrived at Avignon we went straight to a restaurant for dinner, and I ordered the meatiest thing on the menu – living a family of partially vegetarians is hard! Anna and I were pretty much glooed at the hip and talking non stop. One of the girls ordered snails and asked if I wanted to have one, I was definitely keen but the second it was on my fork and I started inspecting it I realised how similar it looked to a leech. Just like that all determination was gone and now I don’t think I’ll ever unsee that!

At the crack of dawn on Tuesday, we were woken up to go spend the morning in Avignon. Our first stop was the “Palais de Papes”, a massive palace built in the 14th century homed to 6 Popes (might want to check those facts, it was from memory). The building was absolutely magnificent and I went full on tourist mode taking a million bigillion photos. We then visited a very famous bridge many people may have heard in a song, “Pont de Pezenet”. If you want to know about it, it’s best to google it because I took the french tour and can’t guarantee any of my facts are true because my brain was so confused by English and french at this point.

We were given the rest of the morning off to explore Avignon as we pleased. Anna and I headed off to a lavender shop we saw on the way to buy things for the Aunts and Grandmas – this was our chance after all, we were in Provence! I then did something I am very very very ashamed of…. IateMcDonaldsInFrance. I’m so sorry, I know it’s a crime, especially when there was a bakery next door equipped with tarts and pastries. In my defence Anna forced me, so punish her not me.

We left Avignon after lunch and headed to Arles. On the way we stopped to see the ‘highest of all elevated aqueducts’ called “Le Pont de Gard” which stands at 48.8 meters tall. Once again Sophia the Tourist made her appearance and took another million photos. I would love to return to this place if given the chance, it was incredible. When we arrived in Arles it was pretty late so we ate dinner at the hostel and then just hang out in our dorm rooms. I quickly discovered my dorm group haven’t heard of sleep and stayed up forever!!!

The next morning we looked around Arles. We were given a map with all the tourist spots and could go anywhere we wanted: FREEDOM! Anna and I went straight to an impressive looking Amphitheatre built in 90AD that could hold 21,000 spectators. We were looking around it taking photos when disaster struck (dum dum duuum), we somehow managed to delete all the photos from the last few days off my camera. We were a little annoyed as anyone would be but decided we would visit every tourist spot possible in Arles and take heeeaps of photos to make up for it. In a way it was a small blessing because we wouldn’t have visited as many sites as we did: we were basically a blur running through town for the next three hours. My map reading definitely improved wonders. In the end we visited: Les Thermes de Constantin ( a 4th century Roman style bathing pools), an art gallery dedicated to Vincent Van Goph complete with 9 of his paintings, L’eglise de Saint-Trophime, and became very familiar with the town’s Crêperie 😉

Anna and I slept all the way to Gras where we were stopping by at Fragonard – one of Provinces best perfume factories. That was an experience, the second we stepped off the bus we were hit by the almost over whelming smell of flowers – even the toilets smelled like perfume! We had a tour of the factory and learnt how perfume was made, and then we were taken into the shop half of the building. One thing I learnt: Perfume is expensive!! I’ve never been that much into perfume but I think I found true love with this one smell called “belle cherie”, that was ah-mazing, I got the tiniest bottle there was and yet it still nearly broke my bank. There’s no regrets though, it smells incredible 😀

Nice was the last stop of the trip – a beautiful city over looking the Mediterranean ocean. By the time we arrived on Wednesday night it was too late to see much of it so we looked around the next day. The biggest difference I noticed about Nice to the other towns I’ve been to, is the number of armed police men walking around and standing in shops watching your every move. The reason there was so much security was because of the terrorist attack last year when a bus driver drove through a market filled with people – the same market we were headed for. At the market Anna and I got charactures ( no idea how to spell it) of ourselves drawn by a man who called himself Picasso Junior, he was amazing and literally only took 3 minutes! We had such a good laugh looking the drawings of ourselves, I thought he did an amazing job!

We had lunch up a small mountain where we could overlook the city and I nearly peed myself when a giant crack rippled through the air not too far away – it sounded exactly like a bomb going off! Anna and I freaked out, but it was weird because we heard no screams and everyone around us seemed very chilled. One of the guys on the trip reckoned he saw a rocket go up in the mountains which could have caused the sound, or because it was around 12pm when we heard it, it could have just been a canon going off to mark mid day. Either way Anna and I were just paranoid and it wasn’t a terrorist attack! The rest of the day was spent exploring Nice in our own time and getting lost in the backstreets of the city – something I do quite alot these days (never gets old). In the afternoon it was freezing and looked like it was going to bucket down at second so of course we just had to go swimming in the icy sea. It was so great, we lasted 30 minutes before Madame Clarke threatened to throw our towels in to get us out (it was warmer in than out).

Everyone got dressed up for our last proper restaurant dinner together and headed out to a luxurious looking pizza place. I had the best lasagna ever and then followed it with the biggest creme caramel I have ever layed eyes on. Anna wasn’t too happy because we shared the desert and she hated it ( god knows why, it was glorious)!

The next morning I said goodbye to everyone, even though it sucked to leave my friends, I have my other friends in France now so it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Unlike the first time I left New Zealand, I have people I love in France and so knowing I was going back to that helped alot. After that followed a lonely 10 hour train ride where I got to see a part of the French countryside different to what I’d seen before.

I’ll end this blog post here, but first I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to JPC, Madame Clark, my parents and NZIIU for giving me this opportunity to meet up with my friends from New Zealand during my exchange. It meant the world to me to see familiar faces and share everyone’s experience in France. THANKS SO MUCH!