just another morning here

So we’ve enjoyed a visit from a couple of French girls over the past few days They were part of the Orchestre des Jeunes de Haute-Bretagne, which is the youth orchestra of our twin town.

On Wednesday they arrived; we met them very late at the motorway services. It was quite chaotic with over 50 of them and almost as many English families there to collect them (and of course, no sensible system in place for matching people up!) but by wading into the crowd, looking for girls who could be about 12 and calling their names I managed to extract our girls from the melee and be pretty much the first to leave!

My French managed to re-surface; it was probably awful with wrong grammar all over the place (thank goodness they couldn’t see which accents were missing) but good enough to feel as though I was taking good care of them. Anna got a bit frustrated that she couldn’t communicate very well though – only one way to solve that! We did spend some time each day on conversational French, so that was educational I think I would seriously consider doing a long term exchange like the Not Sheep family sometime in the future.

Thursday saw them in town at a Civic Reception with the Mayor etc., lunch laid on, a tour of the cathedral, and then some free time in the city centre. I had given them maps of the city centre which they promptly forgot to take!

The day ended with a long rehearsal, for our orchestra, theirs, and then both together. We got home relatively late, had dinner (probably normal time for the French, late for us!), and then hunted through our DVDs until we found a few with French language/subtitles – surprisingly few of them!

On Friday their organised excursion was to Dartmoor, rather them than us – it was cold! Don’t think they had any clue of how cold it would be, when I told them where they were going. We picked them up mid-afternoon and came home for an early tea before going out to the concert venue for the evening.

The concert was really good; a diverse range of music which was excellent. The French group had a classical guitar ensemble with them and I must admit that their pieces were among my favourites, particularly when they played the Schindler’s List theme by John Williams, with a single violin solo.

Our French girls finally started behaving normally after the concert when they were high as kites (as were our girls!) and regaling Anna and Abbie (with a bit of translation help from me) with a tale of somebody’s bassoon being blocked up and what happened to the blockage (don’t ask!) when it was finally blown out! Anyway it was nice, as I was wondering how long they could be on their best behaviour for! We had late night tea and toast and packed them all off to bed!

Saturday was a very early start; I took them to the services for 8am so that they could have a trip to Bath. Again rather them than me, it was pouring with rain all day long. Still, I think they enjoyed themselves. The Ceilidh that we put on in the evening was a roaring success; we served Cornish pasties and various local cheeses, then ice cream in cornets, and the dancing was enjoyed by all.

On Sunday we had a lazy morning. The children all bonded over Wii Sports, while I cooked a full english breakfast, made all the more exciting by flame grilled tomatoes (I grilled them in the same pan as the bacon, and managed to set fire to the fat, to the extent that Steve had to chuck a wet teatowel over the top! Front door wide open to let out the smoke, fire alarm going off, neighbours all watching in amusement!).

We got ready at a very leisurely pace and then went down to the Quay for the grand finale of the weekend, an open air concert. The sun shone for most of it, but as they played the last piece, the rain started in earnest, if you watch the video clip you can see it at the end!

That was followed by a traditional Devon Cream tea (cream or jam first?) in the pouring rain – which ended up being one of those times where you just have to laugh because it is such a typically British experience – everyone huddled together under a very small canopy but it was really good fun.

Took them back to the coach and waved them off. A simply fantastic extended weekend (and I’ve only blogged about the bits related to the orchestra, there was plenty more!). Tired now, and it’s back to work tomorrow … so doing the only sensible thing and staying up late drinking wine, eating leftover cheese, and watching a film

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 20:29 and is filed under general, languages, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.