France

Paris is the city of love! And I always have to laugh when I speak French. You know, in order to pronounce the words in the correct way, you have to hold your lips just like when you are kissing :-D Actually, yes, it's really true: In one of my French classes the teacher gave us cigarette filters to hold between our lips while speaking. (In every language you hold and move your lips in a different way.) That's why I feel always so good and funny when speaking with french people. :-) (In fact, my parents speak French together, so I have heard the language all my life.)

In order to learn to speak it myself, I attended another language course organized by EF in Cannes during summer 2001. For three weeks, I lived in a local family and didn't do anything else except speaking french, having fun with the other 29 girls (we were a total of 30 students from Finland and I was the only boy), lying on the beach, and visiting attractions, such as Nice, Antibes, Grasse, Monaco, San Remo, St. Tropez, and Saint Raphaël. I had a good time :-) On the same trip, we also made a stopover to Paris. I was able to sense the feelings of which my mother had spoken to me so many times - she had lived in Paris for 12 years or so. Simply astonishing.

On another trip, during my interrail voyage through Europe in summer 2004, I visited Strasbourg, again the Côte d'Azur, Marseille, and Perpignan, after which I continued to Spain. Oh, I almost forgot: On my trip to Jersey in 2000, I visited also Saint-Malo.