Foreign Exchange Students

Earlier this week, my foreign exchange student, Robin, headed back to France. It was insightful to see things from a different perspective and I thoroughly enjoyed the 3 week experience. It was especially fun since one of my good friends, Alex, had a foreign exchange student, too. I got to spend more time with her and our French students quickly befriended each other. Together, we had a great time since we went to SF, Sunsplash, Six Flags, the movies, etc with our students. It was also nice to have Robin because I was able to spend more time with some of my friends that don't live in Rocklin like my French friend in Granite Bay before she heads off to Stanford and my friend in Roseville from Girls State. Funny story I was wearing my sweatshirt from Girls State in SF and one of the French boys asked me if he could buy it from me! He thought it was based off the song "California Girls" and reasoned it would be incredibly chic to sport back to France. I didn't sell him my sweatshirt despite his fifty dollar offer, but told him it was not based off the song.

These French kids love to party and go on adventures. My dad surprised me the last week in July by taking Robin and I to Los Angeles with him while he was on business! We heard some French spoken in the streets, which was fun, but I ended up speaking Spanish to get around half the time. Robin, along with Alex's student, helped me perfect my French accent. Alex's brother acquired a great French accent and accidentally would begin to speak English with it! I love listening to accents and furthermore, other languages. It was great to have a student this summer since I'm taking a year of French over the summer. As I reflect, here are some great highlights/ideas..

1) Majority of the French students asked to go to the beach as soon as they got here. Their accents were sooo heavy, though, that the vowels in "beach" sounded like an "i" hahaha. They were quick to fix that.

2) ALL the French kids adore American pop culture. They memorized songs from Green Day to the Hannah Montana theme song to sing on the bus.

3) They find Americans completely conservative beyond belief. Alex and I find their culture completely liberal beyond belief (and both of us are moderates more or less).

4) They like to stay up...the entire night. Non-stop socializing..it was fun, though.

5) They all spoke relatively fluent English for the most part. Oh, and they find English an easy language to learn (food for thought for me as a language nerd haha).

6) They find the Galleria more "sophisticated" and also more affordable. College, however, is much more expensive in the States than in Europe.

7) Hollywood was a let down. In France, Hollywood is America's most famous city! Robin much prefers SF and Santa Monica to LA and Hollywood.

I miss hanging out with Robin and the other French kids. Thankfully there's Facebook and studying abroad opportunities in college :)