Nantes Trip 2018

On June 30th, I arrived at the Boston International Airport to meet up with my group as we began our month-long journey to Nantes. After getting to know several of the other students, we took an eight hour plane flight to Paris, from where we took a four hour bus ride to the city of Nantes and the boarding school where we would be staying, Blanche de Castille.

"Le Chantier" just outside the buildings at BDC

When we arrived at BDC, we did not know what to expect. However, we were soon welcomed by the animateurs (interns) and shown to our dorm rooms. The next day, we got into our typical schedule: Breakfast, morning classes, lunch, culture classes, time in the centre-ville, and finally, evening activities.

The morning class was the most typical, here, we worked on grammar and speaking skills for thee hours with ten minute breaks in between. My teacher, Virginie, was a Nantes native and was very helpful in growing my abilities in French. The culture classes were very interesting as well. I took three of them during my time in France: Cinema, Photography and Regional Culture. These classes were very interesting and gave me a background in certain aspects of French life that I never would have discovered without these classes.

One of my favorite times in the day was taking a daily excursion to the centre-ville, essentially the tourism district/downtown of Nantes. Here, we were given a wide variety of things to do, sometimes we would have several free hours to explore the city with our friends, or we would go to a museum as a group. 

The St. Pierre Cathedral in the centre-ville     

The centre-ville was like nothing I have ever experienced before. It was filled with small shops and restaurants, with very few tall buildings. It was very cool to explore and discover new places each time we went, and it was also very satisfying to eventually know the city well enough to walk around without using a map.

To get to the centre-ville (and most places in Nantes), we would take either the public bus or the Tram. Nantes has an amazing public transportation system and taking it everyday was a wonderful chance to interact with the inhabitants of Nantes. Having lived in Nashville my whole life, regularly experiencing well-run and clean public transportation was very a interesting and convenient way to get around. 

A typical road in the centre-ville

Another exciting aspect of the trip was the weekend. Each weekend, our group would drive out of the city and visit a different part of France. For the first weekend, we visited the Moneky Forest, a ropes course just an hour away from Nantes. After the monkey forest, we went to a creperie in the countryside, where we ate delicious ham and cheese crepes with our group. 

Eating crepes at the creperie

The second weekend was perhaps the most exciting, as we visited Puy du Fou, a historical themepark in middle of France. At Puy du Fou we roamed around and went to different spectacles, things like bird shows or viking reenactments.

The Puy du Fou entrance

A bird show at Puy du Fou

 

After the day at Puy du Fou, almost 10,000 visitors went into a large theater, where we watched France win the World Cup Final, one of the most exciting experiences I have ever had.

Allez Mbappe!

For the third and final weekend, we went to Mont Saint Michel, a famous monastery in Normandy on the ocean. It was very beautiful and very fun to explore the Monastery, which seemingly overlooked all of France. There were also several shops and restaurants below the monastery, and we spent hours exploring as much of it as we could.

The incredible view from atop the Mont St. Michel monastery

My time in Nantes had a great mix of learning and having fun. The people I met, both Americans and French were all incredible and helped me have a wonderful experience. Being in a French-only environment for almost a month was very different and helped my proficiency in so many ways. Thanks to the classes and complete immersion, I improved my grammar, writing, speaking and listening comprehension skills more than I ever could have imagined. I also was able to grasp a better understanding for French culture and their way of life.

Merci

I would like to the Wilson family for their incredible generosity by giving me this wonderful opportunity to study in Nantes for a month. Without the Wilson Grant program, I would have never been able to improve my French so much or been able to experience French culture firsthand. I would also like to thank Mr. Trotter, my French teacher for the past two years, for telling me of this opportunity and for making me into the French student that I am today. I am very excited to take AP French next year and I know that this grant will help me succeed in that class more than I ever could have. Finally I would like to thank Mr. Paolicchi for coordinating the Travel Grants and making all of this possible.