In Mr. Wood's newsletter:

On the 12th November 2019, the Judd School sent a group of its finest year 10 French students by plane to the beautiful city of Bordeaux, located in the south west of France, marking the beginning of a life-changing experience for everyone involved. Our visit included many culturally enriching trips, including the tour of ‘le cité du vin’: a fascinating wine museum which gave us all a great insight into the monopoly of wine in France. The sightseeing opportunities were plentiful, we scaled up ‘la dune du Pilat’: the highest sand dune in the whole of Europe, and paid a visit to Saint-Emilion, exploring a local wine business and its elaborate methods of wine production (we even got to taste some!). Aside from the arranged events, each evening the exchange partners would spend time with each other at their families’ homes. The exchange had improved our language skills, made new friends, taught us invaluable lessons about French culture from the inside perspective of native French families, so much so, that we were all extremely reluctant to leave. To anyone in years 9 and below who is passionate about the french language and its culture, I can not emphasise enough how beneficial the trip was and how much I recommend you to sign up for it as soon as the chance arises! 

Ben Nolan and Scott Cupitt, Year 10

In the Juddian:

In March of this year, several Year 10 and 11 French students were lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Bordeaux on an exchange trip. It was overseen by Monsieur Villeléger and Madame Figureau, and it was both fun and educational for all who were involved.  A few weeks beforehand, we were given the contact details of the people who were to live with. We managed to communicate well enough with our exchanges,despite the language barrier, and learnt some French in the process! 

On Monday March 4th we arrived at the school bright and early and flew from Gatwick Airport to Bordeaux. We arrived at the Lycée, French school for ages 15-18, before lunchtime, had a tour of the school, and we were able to see what French school dinners are like! We then walked into the main city, and had a walking tour of all of the places of interest. It was great! At 4:00, we were allowed to go back to the homes of our exchange partners. Many of us used the Bordeaux bus and tram network, and it was certainly an interesting experience, with the majority of the passengers having to cling on to avoid toppling over!

When the second day in Bordeaux arrived, we were lucky enough to do many different  exciting activities with our exchanges, such as a boat ride around ‘L’ile aux Oiseaux’, an hour’s boat ride displaying the beautiful island and the Cabanes Tchanquees. With the exchanges, we were also able to visit and even climb the tallest sand dune in Europe, Le dune du pilat. It overlooked the ocean and on the other side, your view was of a vast forest that stretched for miles, ‘La Forêt du pilat Tohapi’! As well as this, we visited the local Oyster Farm, Le Teich in Arcachon! The Farm was an educational and exciting experience in which we learnt about the production of oysters and were able to enjoy fresh oysters caught off of the coast of Arcachon. The second day in Bordeaux was personally my favourite day as we got to try many new experiences and enjoy the beautiful sights of Arcachon.

Wednesday in Bordeaux was one of the more action-packed days: we had some lessons with our exchange students, and many of us experienced what maths lessons are like in France. We left our hosts at the Lycée, and walked into the older part of Bordeaux for a cooking lesson. We were making pasta with the help of an accomplished French chef, and we had a great time at our work stations cutting vegetables and learning different cooking techniques throughout the course of the session. We we were all able to eat our pasta and it was delicious! We went to the centre of the town and did a ‘Treasure hunt’ with our exchange partners. It involved roaming around Bordeaux to fill out a French worksheet with answers to questions about the history and layout of the city. We then finally got to do an ‘Escape game’, the French escape room experience was essentially being locked in a room filled with potential clues and hidden keys and having to find a way out through unravelling the puzzles. No group performed particularly admirably, possibly because the clues were in French, but it was definitely a lot of fun and a great laugh!

When it reached Thursday, we left our exchanges and travelled to a wine tasting session at ‘Le Chateau Cantenac’ - we had a tour around the Chateau and learnt about how they made wine and preserved it for many months.  We also learnt about the history of the vineyard and how it was founded, a factual yet engrossing experience! Adding to this, we also got given the opportunity to try some ‘Chateau Cantenac’ red wine and learnt how to appreciate wine and how to hold a wine glass properly! We all found that the wine tasted better when it had been accompanied with raspberry lindt chocolate, providing a sweet taste to the wine! This part of the day was particularly special because it's not everyday that you get to drink wine with your teachers! Following on from this, we were allowed to purchase a bottle of wine each to take home as a gift to our parents if we wanted. After purchasing our goods, we all boarded the coach and set off to Saint-Emilion, a medieval picturesque town in the Gironde department of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The town was very beautiful and the architectural features of its buildings were stunning. We each had our own picnic lunches whilst being surrounded by the beautiful scenery in the medieval town. Succeeding this, we were given a tour of the town from a French lady and then we got to visit a Troglodyte Church, which was truly stunning and fascinating!

On Friday, we left our exchange students again and took the tram to the ‘Cité du vin’ which was a museum entirely dedicated to wine; its history, its production, and its qualities. I think that it would be fair to say that the teachers enjoyed it more than the students, but nevertheless it was an eye-opening experience - people really care about wine! We then left the museum and reunited with our hosts at the lycée, and had a guided tour of the local academy of arts and its grounds. A teacher from the school gave us a tour of relevant historical sites for French art in Bordeaux, and had really in-depth knowledge about the narrative of artistic progress in the city. Unfortunately he spoke in French, so we couldn’t understand much of the talk, but I’m sure it was interesting! We were then invited to the town hall, for an audience with the mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé. However, Bordeaux was in a period of transition between Mayors, so whilst he was technically the acting mayor, he was busy delivering a farewell speech to his staff, so we didn’t get to see him, however we still had a great time at the Mayor’s reception and even just to be there was an honour! We finished off the school week with a party in the Lycée, where there was cake, pizza and biscuits. It was a great time and everyone enjoyed themselves. We were there from 6:30 until late into the night, and it was a truly special experience seeing the teachers playing basketball!

Our Saturday in Bordeaux was spent as a free day with our host families to allow us to get to know the families better. We had a spontaneous fun day with them, outside of the teacher’s control! With my exchange and their friends, we went ice skating in the local ice hockey stadium, needless to say it was very amusing and some people’s lack of skill when it comes to ice skating was hilarious. When we were finished with ice skating, we went out to eat and do some shopping in Bordeaux, which was then followed by a trip to the cinema to see the latest Avengers movie, which was in English with French subtitles, making us Brits very fortunate! When the movie ended, we went for an evening walk around Bordeaux where we came to the see the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux a grand building in central Bordeaux. Much to our surprise, we turned around to see the grand intercontinental hotel of Bordeaux to see Nicki Minaj standing on her hotel balcony waving down at all her fans as she was on tour in Bordeaux at that time - this was something that we were certainly not expecting to happen!

Sunday was another free day with our hosts and so we went to the Marché des Capucins, a cultural exciting experience! We spent most of our time at the market trying to find french crepes, which we eventually found after about an hour, however they were totally worth it and were oozing with flavour! The Market was a great chance to test our French and enjoy being involved in French culture - it definitely was very different to your usual Sunday’s Farmers’ Markets! Following on from the Market we headed back to one of the exchange's houses and hung out there, a great chance to get to know all of the exchanges better before we left them the next day. When we had decided we were done staying at the exchanges house, we all went out for a game of football at the park and had a great time laughing at each other’s football skills! The game had no rules and so it quite quickly turned into complete madness however it was extremely fun!

Monday was a sad day, as we had to leave Bordeaux. We said our goodbyes, and got a coach at 8:00, having made lots of new friends. We travelled to Bordeaux airport and boarded our flight at 10:30, saying our final goodbyes to the city of Bordeaux. It was a sombre flight home and we landed at 12:30 at Gatwick Airport and then headed back to school from there.

The French Exchange was a truly amazing experience that helped us a lot in character building, in learning French and gaining confidence in ourselves that we can go out, meet new people, speak another language and enjoy ourselves. We got to see amazing sights and see the beautiful city of Bordeaux, the whole trip was a pure delight which opened our eyes up to different cultures and different ways of life. The experience was once in a lifetime and exchanges like these do not come around often, so we are very grateful for the fact that we got to go on an exchange, let alone an amazing one! 

We would like to thank our host school ‘Lycée Montesquieu’ for a great week in Bordeaux where we were looked after extremely well with extremely fun activities planned for us everyday. Lastly, we would also like to thank Monsieur Villeléger and Madame Figureau for organising and planning such an exuberating experience for all of us and looking after us in France. It was a great time that was enjoyed by all and was definitely a trip that we will all remember forever. Their hard work on this trip was noticed and was very appreciated, we’re all very grateful to Monsieur Villeléger and Madame Figureau for all of their hard work.

 Callum Benson & Olly Warren - Year 10