French Exchange

Last week my daughter Brittany's class hosted a French exchange. A grade eight class from Quebec was matched with them and came here to stay for a week. The Quebec students were each hosted individually in the homes of the students here.

The students from Quebec live in a very remote native reserve. It took them 16 hours to travel here which included a bus ride and two planes.

The students connected with each other on msn and facebook prior to meeting each other. As the students here got to know the students from Quebec, they discovered that their lifestyle there was very different from theirs here. The lifestyle of a teenager in a remote native reserve fishing village doesn't seem to offer very much hope and the pictures of their free-time activites reflected that.

Our girl arrived late on a Wednesday night and left this past Wednesday morning. She was very easy to have in our home. Her English was very limited. Brittany did a lot of translating.

Any concerns we initially had with our daughters class connecting with a group of teenagers that were more worldly-wise diminished with the opportunity to show hope and love.

I asked my daughter on the last night of our Quebec girl's stay at our home if the girl was homesick. Brittany informed me that her friend was not homesick and in fact she did not want to leave.


Brittany learned that while our gas has been around 79 cents a litre - theirs is over $2 a litre. They also have to order their bread and milk a week ahead of time and if enough is not ordered, then they do without. Everything is shipped in to their village.