LOTE The Language faculty is preparing to finish off another exciting year, which saw the continuation of initiatives started in previous years. A number of our Italian students took part in the return trip to Montalcino, Tuscany with a group of teachers lead by Mrs L. Russo while another French group headed for Rennes in Brittany, France accompanied by Mrs Di Giacomo and myself. As these lines are being printed, we are planning the return trip from Rennes. We are expecting a fairly big group of about 22 students who will need to be accommodated at De La Salle and possibly another school for a handful of girls. We are grateful for the generosity of our school community in accepting these young people from France in the knowledge that your sons will benefit from a similar treatment during our next visit to the “Lycee De La Salle’ in Rennes. In these turbulent times, it is comforting to see how travel exchanges promote the best values in our young and help them grow with a wider view of the world. Once again, all our French students took part in the Alliance Française Poetry and VCE Competitions and the Dante Alighieri society assessed our Year 9 and 10 students in the Italian competition. They all distinguished themselves and an impressive number were awarded certificates for their efforts. Richard Buckley won the 3rd prize at state level for the Alliance Francaise Poetry Recitation Competition (Berthe Mouchette Competition). Our VCE Indonesian students are preparing to make their way to the University of Melbourne for the launch of the Essay Writing Competition under the auspices of the Asia Institute. I am confident next year will provide its fair share of excitement for all our language students and we will again see students making the most of the opportunities offered to them. Mr Thierry Moran and the Language faculty.
Tour of France In March, a group of 12 French students from Years 9, 10 and 11, Ms DiGiacomo and Mr Moran went to France. After about 24 hours of travelling, we arrived in Paris, unpacked, and went for breakfast in a completely magical city. We took the train (Metro) to Notre Dame. It exceeded our expectations. It was big and the detailed designs on the walls inside were amazing. As it had started raining we were unable to go to the top so we pressed on. We walked from Notre Dame to the Arc de Triomphe which is in the middle of one of the busiest roundabouts in the world. We had to take the ramp that led underneath this snarl of traffic. We visited the splendour of Versailles, the massive palace where the lords or Versailles stayed in 1038. The garden of Versailles was one of the highlights of the trip. My favourite day was visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. Going up the Eiffel Tower was scary. It was windy and it was a long, long way down to the bottom. The Louvre was even better. We had lunch there first and then went on to look at magnificent art. Everyone was just interested in the Mona Lisa, but that ended up to be a disappointment as it was nothing as we all expected. It is really quite small and the viewing area was about 20 metres away from the actual painting! We took a bus to Rennes which is a large town about four hours away from Paris. This is where 86
we would meet our host families and go to school. Meeting my host family for the first time was a daunting experience. I was bombarded with questions about Australia and my language skills were tested! School was interesting because no one knew quite what was happening, what they were saying and what we were trying to tell them. We were asked a lot of questions and made a lot of really good friends. Home made dinners were one of the best aspects of the trip, but not compared to Mont Saint-Michel. It is a very famous castle about 30 minutes from Rennes. Mont Saint-Michel was used in the sixth and seventh centuries as an Armorican stronghold of RomanoBreton culture and power. What makes it so special it that it is on an island surrounded by water and the tide rises at night and the castle is lit up. “Soyer toutes oreilles!” David Simon
