French exchange - why am I panicking??

[swedishmum]

Dd's French exchange student comes over at the beginning of March and I'm stressed - worried what to feed her, what packed lunches, and what to do in the evenings. School suggested scrabble and trivial pursuit... Please tell me I'm being silly. I'm not bad at cooking, our house is fine (student will use dd's room with shower room) but we live in the uber sticks. Ideas for fun things to do en famille with a 14 yo French girl please!!

you need to get together with the other parents doing the exchange

ours had organised eveingins like bowling ,bbq(was in june)etc.

We just fed her what we ate,she ate really really slowly so I don't think she liked it much.Probably should have stuck to pizza and crap like that.

Shopping was another successful trip

I got stressed too when ds had an exchange visitor in Nov. especially when we were told that the French are very fearful of English cooking and expect to be poisoned! It was fine though. The lad was very pleasant, quite sporty and happy to come swimming, play tennis go for walks etc. we took him to see the school play and to visit friends to just play on Wii etc. to see round a local castle and walk on the beach (he wasn't from near the sea). He enjoyed fish and chips and a meal out in an English pub. He absolutely loved marmalade - they don't get it in France, so took some back with him. We were advised not to meet up with other parents and students as they wanted to improve their English & wouldn't if we did that.

the French eat much more slowly than we do anyway- it's a social event not just a necessity.

Agree - get together with other families and do participatory activities - as an aside, they used to love tomato ketchup!

If it was summer we could do all the beach stuff but we do have bowling and not very exciting outlet shopping near us. It's only evenings as they have trips during the day, so we'll book the pub with great fish and chips, maybe cinema or pizza express and I'll load up on ketchup and marmalade! Thanks for the hints. Spam sandwiches and fruit shoot for packed lunch perhaps..... Probably better to get loads in and get her and dd to choose lunch stuff together.

Agree about the taking time over food. I could never get my DCs to eat their meal in 20 minutes as sometimes suggested on mn. We always spend an hour at the table (except breakfast.

Fish and chips is a great idea. Expose her to lots of good quality traditional English food. (IME French people think the combination of roast lamb and mint sauce is weird but roast beef and yorkshire pudding is always a hit.)

If you are not a bad cook, relax. Lots of people in France now haven't a clue how to cook although those that do it well do it really, really well!

IIRC the French generally hate anything prepackaged; although children may be more amenable!

Our french student used to take bloody ages at breakfast as well.

Always last up,last downstairs,had to continually ask her to hurry up for school.

She was a bit away with the fairies though.

Also some of the french students were caught shoplifting in the local shops

OK, best ever school french exchange story coming up!!!!

This happened to a bloke I knew at University.

He arrived at the house and they sat him down to a huge and very long and delicious supper. At the end of it, they all went to bed, he was shown his room, but they neglected to show him where the bathroom was. All the family went to bed and mate needed to loo for a dump. He was terrified to search for the bathroom, in case he walked in on Maman et Papa playing chaisse le saucisse.

But he was desperate for a crap.

So, he crapped in his underpants, balled up the underpants and threw them out the bedroom window.

All went well for the rest of the stay.

Until the last day when Maman presented him with said underpants, beautifully washed and ironed. He wanted to die of shame!!!

We have a German student coming in late April, followed almost immediately by a French student in early May

I'm not worried about food or entertainment (we have a Wii and an Xbox ) but I hadn't even considered getting them up for school; DS2 is self-raising, because he has a paper round, and brings me a cup of tea at about 8.15 before he goes to school - I'm going to have to get up and talk to them in the mornings, aren't I?

wendyweber-yes the mornings are the worst...hollering in loud slow voice

DO YOU WANT TOAST OU CEEERREEEAAAL??

martianbishop - that story is hilarious.

They like nescafe with sugar, refuse real coffee. I avoided white bread sandwiches in the packed lunch, gave ours kind of local brown bread, cheese, fruit etc. She did like tomato ketchup on white rice. They all played twister one evening, and went around in a massive gang. (Mine left Thursday!) Ds's friend is heartbroken, having become romantically entangled with a French girl... It was everyone's best fortnight ever - except the parents probably - but no disasters!

mb poor boy!

when my german exchange came to us we took her to see singin' in the rain with tommy steele, she loved it. .

we also watched alot of videos, her english wasn't that great but she enjoyed poltergeist.

Love it MB! She put dd on her msn yesterday - apparently her school got forms on Friday so dd has found out they like the same music and French girl is looking forward to playing dd's electric guitar. Her English seems very good. Dd's less stressed therefore so am I. Off to make a neon toilet sign.

We have 3 Argentinian 16 year old girls staying this weekend. They are really lovely and very easy to feed. Last night they took my fifteen year old son out into town with the rest of the tour group and they came home at 1.30am .

I remember our house was the meeting place when the french exchange came to our school. If you have got a chill out room or a spare room you could let a few of them get together with their exchange partners and have a little party. That's what most of them remember - where the good/best party was and who kissed who! Most of the french ones had plenty of experience with kissing but our lot had a few first time kisses (including my sister). Such alot of them smoked - that was quite a surprise, as we certainly didn't smoke at 14/15 years old, but it seemed to be allowed in French school.