HOLIDAY IN NOUMEA

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29102, 14 January 1960, Page 2

HOLIDAY IN NOUMEA

High School Girl

Returns

With a much-improved French accent and delighted to have learnt how French people live in New Caledonia, Elizabeth Boraman, kged 17. a pupil of Christchurch Girls’ High School, arrived home in Christchurch yesterday after spending three weeks in Noumea as guest of a French family. Miss Boraman was the only Christchurch girl among the 20 New Zealand schoolchildren who visited the French island territory between December 15 and January 4 under an exchange scheme organised by the New Zealand and New Caledonian Education Departments. The Boraman family has had previous connexions with New Caledonians. Miss Boraman’s brother was in the island on an exchange visit last year. A French schoolgirl, Germaine Bernard, stayed with the Boramans last January. It was with the Bernards that Miss Boraman was billeted during her stay. In three weeks Miss Boraman learnt to speak with a good accent. although her grammar is

still a little shaky. “I can follow the language now if I listen carefully,” she said. Gaps in comprehension are tided over with intelligent guessing. The Bernard family did much to help Miss Boraman with her French. “We were surprised at Elizabeth’s progress and at the end of her stay she could understand me when I spoke normally and my French is rapid,” wrote Mr Bernard, a gendarme, to Miss Boraman's father, Dr. W. J. Boraman.

Tape recording one of Miss Boraman’s early efforts at speaking was one method of teaching. Christmas customs in New Caledonia were especially interesting to the visitors. Unlike New Zealand with its host of Father Christmases, Noumea has one Pere Noel who appears on the dock about 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve. then rides through the main streets in a car throwing cotton wool to the children.

After greeting Pere Noel, New Caledonians “do” the shops’ then return home to receive presents in shoes around a Christmas tree. Most inhabitants go to midnight Mass in the big cathedral where many people have fans and there are fans passed up and down the pews.

The Bernards joined another family for a reunion Christmas supper from 2 a.m. till 4.30 a.m All meals were more leisurely in Noumea than in New Zealand, said Miss Boraman.

Travelling around the island. Miss Boraman had a chance to see what a genuine tropical island is like. Roads are only earthen tracks, since cyclones would break up asphalt. Along the coast are beaches with golden sands and edged with brilliant trees and coconut palms.

A native shinned a palm and presented coconuts to four New Zealanders who drank the milk and ate the delicious green fruit squatting on the ground.