今日は、PEGLの
One to One Online Lessons(マンツーマンオンライン英会話レッスン)の
Mai-Lan（マイラン）先生をご紹介致します。
Mai-Lan先生は
「天国に一番近い島」として知られる（？）ニューカレドニア出身の
フランス人です。
生物学の博士号をもつ、非常にインテリジェントな雰囲気の女性ですが、
一方、穏やかで暖かい人柄で、心遣いも細やかで、
事務局スタッフはいつもMai-lan先生に癒されています。
Mai-lan先生から読者の皆様に、お国自慢のメッセージが届いていますので、
ぜひお読みください：
Hello. How are you doing?
Today I would like to tell you about my birthplace, New Caledonia.
Where is New Caledonia? Well it's a very small Island located in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and New Zealand.
Because of its location, lots of people think the mother tongue is English but the island is actually French. We start learning English at school when we are 11 and a lot of us go regularly to Australia or New Zealand for holidays, so our English usually isn’t that bad. As for me, I also studied 4 years in Edinburgh, so I it really helped to improve my English conversation abilities a lot.
Going back to New Caledonia, the country is actually an archipelago, which means a group of islands.
The climate is very nice and we have awesome beaches and lots of nice places to visit. The seasons are opposite to the one of Japan, the cold season being in August and the hot season in December. My favorite place is definitely Isle of Pines, the most southern island of the archipelago. The sand of Isles of Pines is of coral origin and is said to be the finest in the world. Every time I go swimming there, I have to spend hours removing the sand of my clothes. But it’s so soft, I can’t help lying and sleeping on the beach!
The main Island of New Caledonia is 50 km wide and 400 km long. There are 200 000 people living there of which 80 000 live in the Capital: Noumea. This city is located in the south of the island and it is my actual birthplace. There are lots of good restaurants where you can enjoy a wide variety of food, from all over the world. The specialty is the “bougna”, which is made of different types of tuber, coconut milk and chicken or fish, cooked in banana leaves. Delicious! You really should try it at least once.
Being raised in a tropical island changes your view of the world. Before I went to France I never understood why Santa had a red coat and wasn’t feeling horribly hot in December! What a weird old man, I always told myself. My first experience with snow and cold was really intense. We were driving on a small road of France and I made my father stop the car on the side of the road to pick up some ice that had started to build up. That was the first time I saw it in a place that wasn’t a freezer. I was very impressed. How old was I at the time? 6 years old. However, I think since then I had far too much experience of cold weather, be it from having lived 10 years in Paris or 4 in Scotland, which might be the reason why I enjoy staying hours in hot springs. Am I strange?
Still, I hope you enjoyed this little trip to the other side of the world. Let’s have some more chat about it online and tell me if you ever had the chance to visit a similar island. See you soon.
Mai-lan.
いかがでしたか？
Mai-Lan先生とお話してみたくなった受講生の方は、
ぜひ先生のレッスンを予約してみてくださいね。
事務局・山田