We said goodbye to our friends at The Chase and told them how much we are looking forward to seeing them next week.

We got on the bus and drove for…5 minutes before turning round to go back to get Méline’s mobile phone that she had forgotten🫢.

Then we really left and started the long drive home.

We took the Eurotunnel to cross the English Channel from Folkestone to Calais. It was very fast – just 35 minutes and we were back in 🇫🇷.

Inside the train it was very hot so we got out to check for 🐟 🐠 🎣

Luckily for us, we didn’t see any!

And we discovered that a Chase School uniform was coming home with us! What a fantastic idea!

Today we had to change our plans because of some bad weather and a strike in schools here.

So everyone met at school this morning to start the day the creative way! Carrying on from yesterday’s Street Art day, all the pupils were invited to design a template for a skateboard. They worked in pairs or alone to customise their skateboard template.

After the break we went to the computer rooms to create a collaborative piece of work in French and English entitled: « Our favourite moments together ».

After lunch we met up on the football pitch so that Yanis, drone operator « hors pair », could film us all together for a group photo.

Here’s the finished result.

The Chase presented every pupil with a souvenir booklet of their poetry work from last week and the pupils from Nonancourt received a water bottle in the Chase colours.

Then we quickly went inside to end the day with benchball in the gym

And board games in the modern languages department.

Today we were in Bristol, the city reputed to be the birthplace of the famous street artist: Banksy. The city is located on the Avon river, the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a large, vibrant, diverse university city.

We started the day by meeting up with John, our guide from Where the Wall, for our tour of the Stokes Croft area of Bristol, the beating heart of the militant, activist street art in the city.

John had a lot to share with us about the history, past and present, of street art in Bristol.

Then we went to create some street art of our own with a workshop on stencil art and a creative street art writing activity.

We had lunch in a park by the river and in the sunshine. A grey squirrel joined us and stole some of Charles’ lunch!

We all sang Happy Birthday to Leana!

In the afternoon we discovered the historic centre of Bristol and some of its history, plus we found more great street art to admire and finally we finished the afternoon with some shopping for souvenirs.

On Friday evening, all the host families were invited to come to the school’s main hall to eat together and take part in a quiz about French culture, in English, of course!

Everyone started arriving around 6:30 pm.

Everyone ate their own dinner. Some were very traditional – here’s a photo of a beautiful cream tea – with scones, clotted cream, lemonade and even ginger beer ( a typical British soda with no alcohol despite having the word beer in its title).

Families were invited to bring a cake to share…

And they were all amazing and totally delicious.
A prize was awarded to the best cake. Here’s the winner…

Then the quiz began. Three rounds of ten questions about French culture. Mr Edmonds was our fantastic quiz host. All the questions in English were explained to the French pupils so that they could help their host team to win. It was great to see everyone working on their communication skills and having fun trying to understand each other. True teamwork!

And the winners were…the « Qu’ils mangent de la brioche » team.

Well done to everyone for making the evening such a success. Around 8:30 pm it was time to head home. There were lots of ideas being shared about the weekend so We are really looking forward to hearing about them on Monday.

Some were even racing into the weekend!

This morning there was a little snow but the school stayed open. Hooray!

So, we started the morning in the Lecture Theatre with a warm welcome from Mike Fieldhouse, the school headteacher.

Then, everybody was taken on a guided tour of the school in small groups. It was the opportunity to see the Home economics rooms where pupils were learning to make soup and stop and and admire the school honours lists where the names of the pupils who obtained a place in the two famous British Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

For lesson two we went to the school library to create poetry together. The work was done in English and in French and there was some serious artwork to illustrate the masterpieces.

After two lessons where we had the opportunity to observe lessons in maths, geography, religious education, home economics and French, we headed into the town of Malvern to learn about its history.

A short walk into the theatre gardens took us to where we had lunch.

Then we went past the Malvern priory into the town centre where we worked on our booklets in English.

After a lot of worrying about the snow yesterday and this morning. We were lucky to enjoy a sunny and snowy view of the hills.

Day Eight

Day Seven

Day Six

Day Five

Day four

Day three

Day Two

We are posting this photo late because it’s been a busy day! Can you see the rat?

Day One

Can you see Banksy’s rat in this photo taken on the boat as we arrived in England today?

We left school at 6:30 am. It was a short night. We are tired but excited to see our school partners. In Malvern, it’s snowing so they don’t have school today. In the bus, we are doing different activities like FaceTime with our partners (see photo) listening to music, sleeping, reading some books or drama. But it’s raining cats and dogs outside.

The crossing.

We took the ferry at 1:15 pm. The name of our boat was «côte des dunes». Before that we passed through the French and English customs. We were a little bit stressed but all was good. The bus was with us on the ferry..

We arrived at the port of Dover at 1:45 pm UK time. From the deck we could see England from afar. The water was green. There were lots of gulls and a lot of wind. We are writing this at 3:36 pm in England in the bus. We started to complete our trip booklet « My school exchange with Malvern ».