By Kareena Dhillon
Staff Writer
French students are traveling across the world to come to Manhattan Beach and explore the culture.
Fourteen students from France will be arriving on Feb. 11 and stay until Feb. 25, where they will be shadowing Costa students for two days and learning more about our school system. Then, for the next week they will explore Los Angeles by visiting popular tourist sites. During ski week the students will spend time with their host families.
“It broadens our culture and we get to learn more about where they live,” Costa junior and host Fiona Riverin said. “In Manhattan Beach, we’re very privileged so they could give us a different perspective as to what other lives are like.”
Photos: French students spending time with their hosts.
The students attend the Lycée Sacré Coeur in Aix-en-Provence, France, which is a high school in southeastern France. They are all within ages 15 and 18. The main languages taught in France are English, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. This way it will be more convenient to communicate as the students have been taking english for years, said Riverin.
“I wasn’t going anywhere during ski week and my mom is really interested in hosting an exchange student,” Costa senior Nicholas Vasconcelos said. “I am too, I mean it’s fun. I’ll be communicating with her in French and she will be speaking back in English.”
Visit the Lycée Sacré Coeur High School website.
Originally, the students were supposed to go to a different school in California for the exchange. However, when that fell through, Ms. Resnikoff was asked to host them. There are two french teachers, Ms. Resnikoff and Ms. Buck, and by agreeing to this program, Resnikoff has given her students an opportunity to learn more about a different culture.
“I am super excited for the french students to come here because they are going to get to experience America,” Buck said. “Also my french students will benefit because they are going to have to use everyday language and learn new words that they never knew.”
Take a tour of Aix-en-Provence, France where the exchange students are from. The students are traveling from a “country town” to the urban sidewalks of California where the culture is very different.
There will be 13 host families, and for many of them this is their first time having a foreign exchange student stay in their residence. From figuring out what meals to make every night to deciding which activities to attend, it’s going to be an eventful ski week, said Riverin.
“We will learn about different cultures and also make friends we will keep for a long time,” Riverin said. “If all goes well it will have a good reputation for exchange programs and hopefully more kids will want to come from different parts of the world.”
Click here to learn more about the different exchange programs in France.
Costa students were able to choose which student would be staying at their house, Riverin said. Each student had an application that could be viewed. This could be based on personal preference or purely random.
“I think it is great because I feel like in America we don’t know much about other cultures,” Vasconcelos said. “This is a good opportunity to learn more about French culture and for them to learn more about us. It reflects Costa really well.”
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