I’m Pauline, I’m twenty years old.

I come from France. I live and study in Saint-Quentin in the North of France, which is a little city of 70 000 residents, about 170 kilometres from Paris.

I’m studying foreign languages; English and German, economics, management, and others subjects with a view to becoming as a personal assistant.

I came to Durham for a six week work experience placement. I arrived on November, 10^th and will return to my family just before Christmas on December, 22^nd.

I live in Durham at Houghall College with 4 classmates who work in different places: St Aidan’s College, Hatfield College, Van Mildert College and Durham Johnston School.

I work at Durham County Council with Mr.STOBIE, MRS. SMITH and MS. TURZYNSKI in the International Relations office.

During my internship, I have completed many different tasks: translations, creation of documents, and other office work.

I participated in many events like the 60^th anniversary of the partnership with Kreis Wesel, a conference about European funding, a meeting with pupils to show them the importance of learning foreign languages, and a meeting about the Christmas Truce with 13 year old pupils who are learning History and French, where I helped them with translation of letters from French soldiers.

I met some interesting and important persons like the German delegation and peopel from Durham’s partner French council.

This internship allowed me to visit Beamish (a famous open air museum) with a group of Germans teachers and pupils, but also the DLI Museum with a group of French people who were visiting us for an exchange project.

I visited Durham, and I saw wonderful countryside. When I arrived, it was LUMIERE in Durham; a light festival all across the city. I never saw anything like that before. There were so many people who went here to see this unmissable festival.

This internship was a marvelous experience, and a great opportunity to learn and practise more English, to discover another country and another culture, and interesting people. It is also an interesting work placement, which will help me in my future work life.

I hope that my English has improved, and I will keep a lot of good memories from this experience.