The First of two Year 3 trips to Sauveterre
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Vendredi
3K departed early on Friday, 19th September to take a flight to Holland, to transfer to Toulouse on a second plane. On the plane with them were Mr Spencer, Mrs Knight, Miss Bevan and six Mowden Mums, who were coming out to Sauveterre with us.
At Newcastle Airport the excitement was mounting and some last minute shopping went on in the departure hall shops. Once aboard, we rattled down the runway and flew away south to Amsterdam (or Hamsterland as it was rechristened!)
A relaxing lunch at BK (during which a certain H.R. consumed 5 bags of chips!) and we were off again, soaring into the sky to fly across France towards the south west. We arrived early at Toulouse, where we met Mr Bailey and Mr Stacchini, who drove us to the Chateau in their minibuses. It was lovely and warm and everyone was very excited. We had lovely Toulouse sausages for supper and went to find our rooms. We were allowed to play outside for a while and we collected leaves and berries for one of the teachers. We explored the "maze" and decided it was a great place to play. When we went to bed it was much too exciting to get to sleep, so we joked around for ages in our "chambres!"
Samedi
We had our cereal and baguette for petit-déjeuner then went to meet a teacher called Madame Roujas. She spoke French to us and taught us a poem about Autumn, as it was the first day of the season (l'automne.) She asked us to use the leaves and berries to decorate the poem on special sheets. After that, we went to an art class with a lady called Natalia, who told us about Van Gogh in French and in English. It was very interesting and we did some drawings.
At break, we met the Mums and went to the market in L'Isle-en-Dodon. We had to find an unusual object for less than 2 euros each. Harry bought a trout, Archie found an African spiky cucumber and James bought some "boulots" which are like sea snails (whelks). We took our shopping back to Sauveterre and had lunch. It was crispy duck legs, and they were delicious; so were the little square chips!
In the afternoon, we all went to Lombez. Here we split in two groups. One group went to Pellis the bakery where Laurent Pellis taught us how to make and decorate French "Tartes aux fruits" using Mirabelle fruit, apricot, pear and apple. We used a special apple peeler and we squeezed patisserie cream and glaze onto the tarts before Laurent took them through to the gigantic ovens to bake them. Meanwhile, the other group went to a sweet shop to buy postcards and sweets from a lady called Francoise, who made us ask for things in French. We finished off with a drink or and ice cream in a café round the corner.
At the end of the afternoon, it was really warm and we went for a swim in the lovely Sauveterre swimming pool. The Sauveterre boys all went to watch Toulouse FC play a match in the evening, but we had supper and watched "Finding Nemo" on the big screen.
Dimanche
On Sunday at breakfast, our fruit tarts appeared from the Patisserie along with the croissants and pains au chocolat for breakfast. We decided to keep the tarts for our picnic lunch and give one to everyone including the Sauveterre children and our Mums.
We wrote our post cards to our families at home and then went to complete work on the den we were building in the maze. It was a lovely sunny day again and just before lunch we drove to Samatan Lake. We had a lovely picnic by the lake and played all afternoon on the beach. We swam, played beach volleyball, frisbee, climbed on the swings and slides and, best of all, caught some crayfish in the lake! We ended the afternoon with an ice cream at the café by the lake before going back to Sauveterre.
After supper, we settled down with the Sauveterre children to watch a really funny Asterix film, all in French with French subtitles, which we could mostly understand.
Lundi
In the morning, we returned to class with Natalia and Madame Roujas. We finished off our self-portraits and drawings of Sauveterre. After break, we played "Pétanque" with Mr Bailey and Mr Stacchini at the front of the château. We went for a walk up to the village of Sauveterre which is right up on a hill behind the château. We saw the church, the village well, the grave yard (with some bones in the little house) and went up to the viewpoint at the top. It was too hazy to see the mountains today.
We ended with a French lunch and set off for the airport afterwards. We were all extremely tired out and apart from a very noisy time in the play area at Hamsterland Airport, we had a quiet trip back to Newcastle.
The whole trip was really good fun and we did many interesting and fun things. We are sure that next week's group will have a lovely time too.
MWWS and 3K
