Help translating some phrases for an email

[Allison L.]

Hello-

I'm writing an email to a French friend (the daughter in the family I lived with while studying in Paris years ago) and my French (especially my idiomatic French) is quite rusty. I can look up words in the dictionary but I sometimes have trouble putting phrases together appropriately.  Can someone help with the following words and/or phrases?

"I learned to speak French with the best French family ever!"       I have:  "J'ai appris le français dans la meilleure famille française que j'aie jamais connue."  Is this OK? 

"She just turned [age]"  Would this be "Elle vient d'avoir..."?

"He would love to learn to snowboard."  I have: "Il voudrait bien apprendre à faire du snowboard."

How do you say "reserved" when referring to a person's temperament?  Réservé?

"This will give them a chance to get to know each other and each other's families." (We are discussing a cultural exchange between people who don't yet know each other.)

"I would like to share the beauty of the Alpes with my family."  I think I don't use the verb "partager" here.  Maybe "connaître"?

"I'm trying to find reasonably-priced apartments in...."  I have: "Je recherche des apartments de prix raisonnable à..."  Does that work?

Merci bien, tout le monde!

[Neil Coffey]

Your suggestions are generally fine. To fill in your gaps:

"This will give them a chance to get to know each other and each other's families." -> I think you can just translate this as "Cela leur donnera l'opportunité de se connaître et de connaître leurs familles (respectives)" -- you don't really need to translate "each other's" literally as the meaning is pretty clear.

I actually think "partager" is actually OK with the meaning you suggest, but you could indeed also use faire connaître, e.g. "J'aimerais faire connaître à ma famille la beauté des Alpes".

In your last example, it's more common to use "à": "des appartements à prix abordables/raisonnables". Of course, you could also just say "des appartements pas trop chers".

[Neil Coffey]

P.S. If you want a "French" way to say "snowboard", you can also say "faire de la planche à neige".

[Allison L.]

Thanks so much, Neil, I appreciate it.  This is really helpful!