During the half term holidays, I went on an educational exchange trip to
We arrived in
On Sunday, our job was to find our work placements, and if they were open, to go and introduce ourselves so they knew who we were. We went in groups of about 3-4 people whose work placements were situated closely to each others. We did get lost trying to find one particular placement, and thus asking the locals for directions was the only option. However, the man we asked was extremely kind, walking us the whole way and making light conversation while we walked. It made me aware of how much I could understand from getting the gist- even though my French is far from perfect!
I started work on Monday, although some had the day free, and some started in the afternoon. Not everyone there knew who I was, and so the first job was to introduce myself to the receptionist and explain who I was and what I was doing here. While waiting for my supervisor, I asked plenty of questions about the laboratory and how many samples they analysed there. Biology is a huge interest of mine and I was happy that it dawned on me that I would also learn lots of biology there too! A lot of the work I did was helping to restock the analytical machines. When it got to the end of the day, where the workload was a little less stressful (although work never truly stopped!), my colleagues showed me lots of microscopic slides and explained to me what they all meant, which was actually very interesting!
The most amazing thing I realised however is how understanding everyone was, they realised that my French was still improving, and helped me along whenever they could. When the realised that it was getting better, they would start using more complex sentence structures and speaking faster too. You could sense a huge improvement even after the first 2 or 3 days!
Lunch Break….
While in
We all managed to have fun outside of work as well. There was a fair across the river