Volunteers take in St Emilion

Posted on September 26, 2018 by La Giraudiere

Saint Emilion Welcome Volunteers

After lunch Wednesday, Paul surprised the volunteers at La Giraudiere with a trip to the famous town of Saint Emilion. The weather was fantastic and remains quite warm in the Charente region. We drove through the french countryside with a range of beautiful sites including vines (vignoble) of the Bordeaux region. There is a lot of activity in the regions of Charente and Bordeaux with “La Vendage” ( Harvesting Grapes) commencing in recent weeks.

Vineyards of Saint Emilion

Saint-Emilion Vineyards

When we arrived in the medieaval french town, Paul was kind enough to show us the sites including the exterior of the  monolithic church  which began construction during the 12th Century in the town  of Saint-Émilion. The town of Saint-Emilion was named in honour of a hermit monk who lived in the caves nearby and who developed a religious following during his life. The Saint-Emilion Monolithic Church is the largest underground church in all of Europe;the bell tower rises above the town in a magnificent display  of ingenuity and the power of faith.

Church qt Saint Emillion

Monolithic Church

Shiao-Ping, Gwen and Andrea, the current  volunteers enjoyed a stroll through the French  town taking in some local produce from the Bordeaux region including some wine tasting, identifying aromas at the local wine providors and finishing with a coffee at the local cafe.

Our visit to Saint-Emilion was the final trip for our volunteers Shiao-Ping and Gwen as they will be completing their volunteer time in the French Countryside this weekend. We returned  to Charente and La Giraudiere happy to have learnt something about the rich history of this region.

Thanks to Paul for, helping to make this french volunteer experience a vacation to remember.

Andrea

Volunteers Excursion

Visit Saint-Emilion

 

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Scotland and France alliance continues at La Giraudiere

Posted on September 26, 2018 by La Giraudiere

Volunteer from Scotland helps project in France

Saturday morning at Chalais station, gare de Chalais, we said goodbye to Eilidh a volunteer from Dunblane in Scotland. Eilidh arrived at La Giraudiere on the 19th of August and spent three weeks with us volunteering. During her time Eilidh helped on many of the volunteering activities including Housekeeping, office admin social media, blogging and the accounts for the association.

Eilidh is a student at Stirling University and is studying International Management, French and Spanish. Her knowledge of the French language proved very useful and she has put it to good use when checking the updates to our French section of the website.

Eilidh enjoying the local delicasey of mussels and chips in Royan

Eilidh enjoying the local delicasey of mussels and chips in Royan

This was Eilidh first trip abroad alone and she enjoyed the independance and the security which La Giraudiere provides to people travelling alone, especially first timers, during her stay she became an avid supporter of the local football team, Foot Sud Charente, a club iniated by both the former clubs of Brossac and Chalais.

She also experienced several outings, or excursions, with the group, including to a plus belle village de France namely Aubeterre-sur-dronne famous also for it’s monolithique church and stunning village.

A trip to the wonderfull coast of South West France was also included which took in yet another plus belle village de France namley Talmont situated on the esturary of the Garonne river just prior to the alantic ocean. After Talmont there was a trip to the small seaside town of Saint-Palais-sur-mer taking in the costal city of Royan.

volunteering group La Giraudiere

Volunteers meet Locals at La Giraudiere

A big thank you to Eildh for all you did at La Giraudiere and for your help with the group your lovely scottish accent will be sadly missed by us all.

volunteer from scotland

Eilidh volunteer

 

 

 

 

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Nouveau Site de Web

Posted on September 6, 2018 by La Giraudiere

French Website Improvements!

Our French website has been upgraded and rewritten thanks to some of our volunteers! We are very excited to launch the new page and the volunteers loved giving their input.

When Antoine was volunteering with us last week, we decided to use his wealth of French knowledge to our advantage. We asked him to read through our French site and correct any issues he noticed. He rose to the challenge and has tranformed our page.

We also gave our international management and languages student, Eilidh, a chance to practise her marketing and language skills by proof reading the pages and adjusting anything that didn’t quite fit. Big thank you to these 2 volunteers for all their efforts.

We hope our French site will encourage French volunteers to come to La Giuraudière to improve their English skills and also give some of our Anglophones the chance to practise their conversational French. It is a win win for everyone involved, so we really hope our new improvements will encourage those looking for volunteering opportunities to get involved.

Why not share the link below onto your Facebook page and let’s see how far we can spread it!!

Le bénévolat pour apprendre l’anglais en France

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Au Revoir Antoine and Mai

Posted on September 6, 2018 by La Giraudiere

Our Rays of Sunshine Return Home

We sadly had to say goodbye to our two lovely volunteers, Antoine and Mai. Both of them have been a massive help here at La Giraudiere.

Firstly, we have Antoine from France who was here for 3 weeks. This bubbly character always kept us entertained, from dancing at dinner to his little book which he religiously wrote his new English words into. He was a great asset with constructing our new balconies and with any labour intensive job. He always had a smile on his face which in turn made the atmosphere that bit happier.

Antoine thouroughly enjoyed all the trips we went on, especially when we went to the beach at Royan. However, his favourite activity was much closer to LG, as he loved going down to the lake with Janet (a.k.a Auntie Janet) to swim and play in the water. We miss you already Antoine and we wish you all the best for the future.

French Volunteer

French-volunteer-Antoine

We also say goodbye to Mai, an English teacher from China. Despite being here for only 1 week, she was very helpful in our office. She translated many of the pages of our website into Chinese so that more Chinese volunteers have the opportunity to come to LG. She was very committed and even used part of her day off to complete the project.

Chinese volunteer

Mei Bigiong – Chinese Volunters

One thing Mai loved doing was taking pictures!! As she was keen to show her husband all of her travels, she would happily sit looking out the window on our drives and just take as many pictures as possible. Her favourite trip was to the concert and market at Barbezeuix and is very keen to come back next year. We would love to have you back and thanks again for all your help.

Bon voyage Antoine and Mai and we would love to have you back volunteering with us next year!!

 

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Eilidh Exchanges Ceilidh Culture

Posted on September 4, 2018 by La Giraudiere

Dancing in the Moonlight

Here at La Giraudiere, we love sharing cultures. Due to our volunteers being from across the globe, everyone has their own traditions, from clothing to cooking. We pride ourselves on allowing everyone to experience other cultures and a prime example of this was last Friday. Our resident Scot, Eilidh, decided to teach some of our volunteers how to ceilidh dance.

For those who are unaware of what ceilidh dancing is, it is a traditional form of Scottish dancing. It is frequently performed at weddings and Burns Suppers and is a great way to get people dancing and mixing. Eilidh “loves a good ceilidh“, so after dinner she took Janet, Jack and Antoine through a few of the steps.

They covered a total of 3 dances; “The Gay Gordons”, “The Canadian Barndance” and “The Military Twostep”, all accompanied by tunes from Eilidh’s favourite bands from home. Despite discovering they all had 2 left feet, the group soon got into the dancing and in the end they put on a great show.

When the team got too tired from all the Scottish dancing, they deicded to let their hair down and put on some classic tunes that everyone could dance to. Macarena, S Club 7 and Steps were all blaring from LG and the group loved being able to dance under the stars and have their own party.

Here is a short clip of the group performing “The Gay Gordon’s” .Why don’t you try and learn it from the video and send us a clip? The best video will get shared on our Facbook page, get your dancing shoes on!!

 

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