Ready For Au Pair Visits In Europe

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30036, 22 January 1963, Page 2

Ready For Au Pair Visits In Europe

The second group of Canterbury girls to go abroad under the Reisezirkel travel exchange scheme will sail from Wellington on Friday bound lor France and Germany. The girls, Misses Margaret Cliffold, of Geraldine, Adrienne Sheard and Margaret Moore, of Christchurch, will each spend one year living with a selected family to improve their knowledge of French and German.

Last evening, foe girls met for the first time to “get to know each other” before leaving on the Greek ship, Paths, for Europe. All first heard of foe scheme being introduced to New Zealand by an Englishwoman, Miss Kathleen Marchant, through a report in “The Press” in November, 1061.

Miss Cliffold, a 25-year-old University of Canterbury arts graduate and secondary school language teacher, wee looking forward to meeting her French family in Paris and attending language classes at foe Parisian college, L’Alliance Francaise.

Miss Cliffold was head prefect of foe Timaru Girls’ High School and holds the Trinity College at Music associate diploma. She has been teaching for the last three years at foe Horowhenua College, Levin, after attending foe Christchurch Teachers’ College.

For a year she will assist in the apartment household of a French engineer and his family of two boys.

Pen-Friendships As with her other two companions, she has always wanted to travel and has been corresponding for some years with a pen-friend in France.

Miss Sheard, a-clerk in foe National Airways Corporation Reservations Department since she left Papanui High School two years ago, will live on foe border of Germany and Switzerland, near Lake Constance.

Although keen about most sports she is looking forward especially to ski-ing 'during the current winter in Europe.

She is not worrying too much about language. Nine months of German studies in Christchurch, French lessons

remembered from school and her new Englifo-speaking family of four should be of some help, she expects. She has also been writing to pen-friends for some years in Scotland and India.

“Yes, I am excited,” said 17-year-old Margaret Moore, who recently left Rangi-ruru

Girls’ School after 10 years there. Also a keen letter writer, she was stimulated to travel by corresponding with a Japanese student of English.

After taking private lessons in foe German language throughout last year and getting to know her hosts by letter, she will now leave for a year’s stay in foe city of Dusseldorf. She has spent week-ends and holidays to earn the cost of her fare to Europe. This type of host-guest arrangement, known throughout Europe under the more familiar label of "au pair,** has been popular with many New Zealand girls working abroad. Most have arranged their visits through one of foe many agencies in London.

In all cases, girls receive free board and lodging in the family in return for light household duties.