Recap - 1 week left in France!

Oh my gosh, I can not believe how fast time has gone. I have just one week left in this beautiful country before moving on to the next exciting part of my trip. The last couple of months living here in France have been so amazing, but have gone so quickly! So I thought I would quickly try to recap a few of the experiences I've had here which didn't end up with their own blog post...

- SNOW!!!! I know that I've seen snow on the mountains before and gone skiing or sledding or whatever but I don't think I've ever actually seen it fall from the sky, so that was pretty cool - literally.

- The VIP section at local basketball games! This involved half time snacks and French champagne as well as a dinner after the game and opportunities to hear interviews with some of the players from our team, Etoile (and even get kissed on the cheek by them!) I also met the Mayor of Charleville one time and he was pretty cool and he even knew about New Zealand.

- French yoga classes... well twice. This was a good way to teach me that I actually didn't remember the names of all the body parts in French! Turns out it's pretty hard to relax and get in the 'zen-zone' when you're trying to sneakily copy the others in the class when you can't whip our google translate to check what on earth the teacher wants you to stretch and bend.

- Saturday morning markets with lots of local produce such as fresh fruit and veggies, deli, bread and of course, cheese. Great way to experience the community lifestyle here, bumping into friends, or friends of friends, or work colleagues, or neighbours at every stall!

- Getting lost in Paris by myself while trying to find a particular shopping mall - typical Sophie, right. I ended up walking around in not-very-comfortable-bad-shoe-choice-ankle-boots for around 6 hours with just a bottle of water and some chocolate. Let's just say thank god for the chocolate. I think I counted 8 blisters in total, not a bad effort shoes.

- English classes in French schools, both collège (middle school) and lycée (high school). These are actually so interesting to me seeing people trying to learn a language which comes naturally to me. It's compulsory here to study English, and another second language, at school which I think is super important as language learning is amazingly good for the brain and the heart and the soul (language nerd alert, sorry!) Also it was the first time I've sat in a classroom for about 7 months so that was fun too. Everyone here is so interested to learn about New Zealand!

Overall, France has so far been amazing and I think I made a really good life choice deciding to study French at high school, and actually following through with my dream of coming here. I'm also very excited to be coming home in about 3 weeks, so until then I hope you're all well and doing things that make you happy! Lots of love xxxx