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Bonjour!

Mon 16 Jul 2012

Hi I‘m Richard and I have von Willebrand disorder. In 2010 I had the incredible fortune to win a Vision and Leadership Award as well as a grant from the Damon Courtney Memorial Endowment Fund to go on a school exchange trip to France for 5 weeks. The trip was a way for me to work on my French conversational skills as well as advance my passion for the theatre by attending a performing arts school.

So on the 25th of September 2011 I jumped on a plane to Melbourne (from Tassie) and took the longest and loneliest trip of my life all the way to France. When I got there I was greeted by my host family and was taken all the way to a suburb called Belleville translated to ‘beautiful town’ – which is near the centre of France.

As I arrived a week before the start of the school year I had the chance to do almost every well-known tourist attraction in Paris. This included going to the Louvre, the Champs-Elysees and of course the amazing Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph.

Once my vacation week was over it was time to get stuck into school. I attended all the same classes as my exchange student, the hardest of which was learning Spanish and their own French class however; I seemed to excel in English class! I made lots of new friends, learnt a lot about the French culture and also had a great time learning dance in a different language, especially ballet, as most ballet terms are French.

I am extremely grateful for winning the Vision and Leadership Award as it has changed my life by providing me with an opportunity I would otherwise have not had. Even better is that now my exchange student is in Australia attending all of my classes!


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awards boys vision Von Willebrand vwd