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SELB Exchange 1

Jenna and Cathy’s ‘Sejour En France’

In mid-February, two croissant-eaters arrived in Newry looking weary and slightly agitated….yip it was raining! Anne and Helene were here to stay for ten days, and the panic was setting in as we tried to plan interesting things that were worth doing in the big cities of Kilkeel and Annalong. The next morning we decided to play the parts of the perfect hostesses by bringing them to Belfast. Both looked quite uneasy as we chugged along in the famous Ulsterbus. After around 250 << ca va’s >> they admitted that they honestly believed they were being led to their doom. The reason for those dilated pupils out through the window became clear they were sniper spotting!! Well; strangely enough they survived the journey and enjoyed the day. They even helped Cathy chase the pigeons from Jenna’s path (due to Jenna’s bird phobia), altogether making the day enjoyable for everyone!

Part of the exchange is working in the primary school and while both enjoyed this, they seemed a little ‘peeved’ with the children’s fixed belief that not only did they eat frogs legs and snails for breakfast, lunch and tea, but spiders, slugs and even ladybirds crept into the equation!

When Anne and Helene returned home, the 19 th of March came very quickly and it was now time for us to jet off! We arrived in Tours feeling quite weary from the journey but excited. The first day was spent in the ‘Lycee’ with Anne and Helene. Jenna was relegated to the English department with a boy from Newry called Rory. Cathy spent her first day in the ‘ecole maternelle’ – the equivalent of our nursery school. We were both bombarded with questions about the differences in religion in Northern Ireland. As we were from different cultural backgrounds to the French pupils, it was quite a tense situation, but we told them that there isn’t much of a difference between us. We think this baffled them all the more as they couldn’t understand why there is trouble in Northern Ireland if everyone is the same…or perhaps they couldn’t understand our broken francais! The students also told us that they were expecting us to have orange hair, orange freckles and wearing green clobber with shamrocks stuck on. As you can imagine we were enjoying ourselves by the end of the day as this eased the tension and it became less awkward.

The rest of the time was spent in ‘l’ecole Primaire’ where we met lots of interesting children who were full of personal questions. They became fascinated with Jenna’s upbeat version of the alphabet song and they found it funny when we sang them another song mining the noises and actions of the different animals in the song. However, we’re not sure if they were laughing at us or with us. Sainte Marguerite primary school will never be the same again!

The weather was excellent and every day at lunchtime we had to escape from the gathering mob of our fan club of persistent French children, to a couple of benches where we lay and moaned. We got a few strange looks and thought it was maybe just because we were the ‘Irish girls’. However, we soon solved the mystery. One day when Cathy sprawled out on one of the benches with her eyes closed, two distressed girls came running over shouting ‘bouche a bouche!’ meaning ‘mouth to mouth’. They thought Cathy had stopped breathing and that I was sitting there gawking at her!

We both had a brilliant time, not much sight seeing (one hurried day around Paris), plenty of sunshine, plenty of pecks on the cheek from ‘les garcons’ (ummm!) and plenty of ‘pain au chocolat’ - bliss! We both agree that we’ll never feel the same about ‘Marks and Spencer’s chocolate croissants after indulging in the real thing!

We would like to thank all the organisers of the trip – particularly Miss Entwistle, Colette and Cations who went with us on the trip, but most of all to our principal Mr Cunningham who made it all possible. It was a once in a lifetime experience that we (and France) definitely will never forget!!!

By Jenna Cassidy and Cathy McMath

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SELB Exchange 1
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