The Student Exchange Experience

• sharing cultures
• enriching lives
• building friendships
• developing language skills
• making memories

In February 2011 our USA–French Student Exchange experience begins as twenty-four
15 and 16-year-old students from Nantes, France begin a 3-week stay with our International School host families. Four weeks after the French students leave, 24 of our IS students will travel to Nantes
for their 3-week stay.

This is a big deal for everyone involved.

This may be the first time we open our homes to someone from a foreign country and the first time out of the country for many of our children.
I suspect this will be the first time that a lot of children will be in a country different from their parents for an extended period of time.
There are a lot of unknowns.

Fortunately, our kids will be in good hands.

The teacher leading this trip, Bob Ellis, has led 14 trips abroad with high school students. He is our student exchange expert and has 32 years of experience. PHEW!

This site is intended as a resource for everyone involved. It is a place you can go to share useful information about our student exchange program and participate in fundraising activities. You can send your friends and family here so they can learn about it too and help support the cause. It is intended to be an interactive site, a dynamic place where you can add your two-bits of information, share your experience and get frequent updates about this student exchange.

It is my hope that participants from both sides of the pond will be active here. It is a social site where parents and students can get involved and have fun by making comments, sharing pictures and connecting with one another from this one easy to remember location:

USAFranceStudentExchangeCenter.com

Bookmark this site. It’s a place where much of this trip can be organized and where those of us who won’t be traveling with the group can get involved and have a virtual foreign exchange of our own.

Amom

(An International School mom who will be sending her only-child to France for the experience of a lifetime.)