Mardi Michels is an Australian born, Canadian living, Francophile who's journey over many years was lovely to immerse in for a while as we chatted.

Mardi and I talked over zoom with her sitting in her gorgeous vacation home in south west France in Nerac. The light over her shoulder had me longing for France even with just an online connection... swoon!

So Mardi grew up in Adelaide and learned French from the start of high school. Immediately after finishing school at age 17 she then went on a Rotary exchange program to Belgium. Unfortunately France wasn't available but Brussels provided the opportunity for her to be fluent in French by the end of the year. 

After her exchange experience, Mardi returned to Australia and went to university to study French further. She started to wonder why she was learning French and French literature whilst living in Australia! So she made the move to France. After some twists and turns in her journey, Mardi discovered she loved teaching and became a French teacher.

Her journey took another turn when she moved to Canada and eventually had the opportunity to create cookbooks! It wasn't originally the plan to make books for children's cooking, but with some more twists and turns the result was Mardi having great success encouraging French cooking with kids!

Now between, more cookbooks being released, teaching French in Canada, spending summers in her vacation home in Nerac in France and running that as a holiday rental, Mardi lives a busy French life! To me though it sounds like she has struck just the right balance and  shows us all how to live a purposefully French inspired life.

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Louise Prichard is the host of the Loulabelle's FrancoFiles podcast.
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