Comenius: Take on the challenge!

Sunday 22nd March

The day with the family. Each student had a different kind of day but here is mine.
First we went to see the big statue. "Our lady of France" The stairway was extremely long, but all the steps I took were totally worth it.

The view was stunning on the top of the statue. I could see the whole city!

After that my family told me that we are going to their grandparents house...just an average house they said, it won't be big they said!
They lived in a castle! A beautiful old castle restored to its old glory! Their grandparents were really nice and the food they cooked, it was really good. The French cheese, yum!
And no, I`m not messing with you. It was a castle.
They took me around the castle and all I could say was "wow".
So much old stuff and so many cool rooms! They even took me to the tower and that was really nice too. The visit was very nice in every way.

After that we went home for a while and after that we went bowling with other families. I`m not much of a bowler but I had fun!

Some photos of the other students' day.

Le Rocher d 'Aiguilhe

A glass window in the church

After a football match at Saint Etienne

We went home again, to sleep. The last night was kind of sad because that was the last time I went to sleep there. The beds were so fluffy!
The next morning we left and traveled back to Finland.

The trip was great!

Merci France!

Saturday 21st March

We had to wake up early on Saturday because the bus had to leave the school at 8 AM. We went to Brioude and it took about an hour to get there. It was raining when we arrived there. In Brioude we visited the Museum of Lace. There we got to make some lace bracelets. We also had a tour in the museum where we saw some amazing pieces of art all made of lace. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take any pictures there. But this is what making lace looks like:

Great concentration

And here are some lace works from the street

After the Museum of Lace we had some free time and then we went to eat lunch to St. Beauzire. There we had a local dish, potatoes and cheese. After that we visited the castle of Chavaniac Lafayette. The weather was very cold and the tour was quite long. But we learned some interesting facts about the history of that castle and the people who used to live there.

The Castle

Lafayette

All the Comenius students

We were back at school around 6 pm. The host families were waiting for us and all of us got to spend the rest of the evening with the host family. My host family and I went to the grocery store, ate food from McDonalds and watched Netflix. It was a day of fun after all!

Friday 20th March

On the morning we visited different enterprises. We were divided into 5 groups. I went with my group in to the waste treatment plant. There were many unique methods to handle the waste. For example, they have some material which makes that place odourless. That is good for people. They have also really basic methods like burning the waste and reusing waste for different purposes. The safety was alright. I liked that visit because in Finland we don’t have many places like that.

From the frame factory Gauthier

Testing the shutters

From the steel factory Gagne.

After lunch we went to the center of Le Puy en Velay. We were divided into new groups. We went sightseeing around Le Puy. We also had a little competition. AT every attraction we saw we got a few syllables and we should make one sentence out of them. The French students told something about each attraction. It was really interesting because we saw a lot of the city. The morning was a little boring but end of the day was funny and nice.

One of the groups

Thursday 19th March

In the morning we came to school at eight o´clock.

The school grounds

Then we walked to community center along the river Loire.

A beautiful mural

The Community centre of Brives-Charensac

The mayor of Brives-Charensac greeted us. We also had a snack. Then we had our presentations there. The school's music class sang a few French songs to the Comenius-students and teachers.