Student correspondance and exchange

Having now entered my second term at lycée and surviving...just

I am being asked about student correspondance and possible exchange visits.

I have some pleasant and sensible 15-18 year olds who are keen to develop their English both with language and culture.

Also I have received requests from fellow teachers for their children.

One recently is for an 11 year-old boy presently in his last year at junior school. He is the son of an experienced French-native English teacher who is looking for a future exchange.

All of the the kids live around the northern part of Normandy.

If anyone is interested or knows someone else who might be then please contact me for more information.

I can't help with pointing you at interested parties, Carl, but I can vouch personally for the idea of exchanges such as that.

I did an exchange many years ago when I was at school - Bristol was/is twinned with Bordeaux, and it was a very enlightening experience for me, not just for the language of course but the culture too. I even learned to ski as a direct result of it. I also learned to dunk lumps of baguette layered with jam into coffee at breakfast time - that really is the world's finest invention, in my own humble opinion.

Thanks for the reply Clive.

The town where I teach is Pont Audemer which is actually twinned with Ringwood in Hamphire.

However there is not much activity or interest in that area. The Ringwood twinning commitee consists of one person!

Pont Audemer is a very pleasant town 20 mins from the coast and not far from Honfleur and worthy of some interest.

There is of course an interesting railway connection. At present there is a 'withered arm' of a once popular route from Paris to Honfleur. This virtually abandoned line has been recently used for freight and just before Easter I hastily stopped my lesson to gawp out the window at an EWS liveried class 66 slowly hauling bogie hoppers over the single track level crossing adjacent to the school.

Shame I didn't have my camera.

The other 'twinnings' that exist in my area.

Brionne (nearest town) = Shaftesbury.
Bernay (main principal town) = Haslemere.

I may suggest to the Mayor about a twinning with our village Boisney but we don't have a great deal to offer yet....

I have spoken with several of my guitar students who have been on these exchange visits and the one thing they all moaned about was the English food. Anyway I was talking with the Head teacher at my Grandsons college a few weeks ago and i suggested that if it was just to improve their language skills and to experience a change of culture, there are so many english families living over here that it may be useful for the students to stay with such a family where that is the main language spoken, where UK TV is watched, and where english 'style' food is eaten. that way the 'culture shock' is not so great. does anything like that exist in your area Carl?

Mikey

That's an interesting and potentially useful way Mikey.

When I was living in Chelles near Paris I had requests for just that. (BTW we've been here 4 months now.....)

i.e. French students who didn't want the hassle and insecurity of actually going to England but wanted a cultural and language experience on their own accessible doorstep.

It has been talked about in this very household and I may eventually offer residential intensive English language weekends/courses for people if I can give them an accredited certificate or diploma like TOEIC.

The problem is my house is quite un-English now except for the odd jar of Marmite.

So....if anyone can offer a true 'English experience' in France it might be worth pursuing.

However there are real Anglophile Frenchies who do want to go to England for the expensive food, transport and accomodation......

We are a very English household Carl and a local Magazine (English meaning) Brit Mag run a scheme for French children visiting English Families in the area, for a week for just such an experience, but they have found that households with similar aged children offer the best facilities. We are classed as being to old, both being mid 60’

Old is a terrible word and is unfairly discriminatory.

I'm sure that you could offer valuable experience in many ways.

BTW, do you have details of the magazine please as I would like to contact them.

'Ageism' is one of the worst 'isms' in my opinion, all that experience going to waste!, but things are changing! A lot of companies are employing older people etc. We have our two daughters and their families living with us (grandson 13, and granddaughters 8 and 6) and we still have a spare bedroom! so such a scheme would be useful. i would either like a 17-18 year old female with long blonde hair or a boy who like football and/or trains!! Ah beggars cant be choosers!

mikey

My apologies for taking the thread off topic but this idea of the English eating badly always bothers me.

The myth of bad English food really is just a myth. There are now many excellent restaurants throughout the UK serving extremely good food and even the average pub grub has got far better in the last ten years. The highest ranked restaurants (ranke dby professional gourmets) in the world are in London. For those of course you pay the highest ranked prices but the point is that London is the pinnacle of good eating, worldwide, bar none. Of course Britain has seen an influx of European, Indian and American 'cuisine' (if you can al it that) since the 80s but if you avoid burgers, fried chicken, pizzas and fish and chips there really is little to complain about regarding English cooking.

In most French city high streets you will see the same junk food outlets that you do in other European towns; and the same demographic of kids and families patronizing them.

We are now as health conscious a nation as any, in fact more so than most I imagine and the greasy fried breakfast as a staple is a thing of the past, generally speaking. The people I know are much more into cereals and yoghurt-based foods at the start of the day, or in winter, a high-energy-slow-release food such as porridge.

In our house we (in fact I) home cook fresh ingredients every single day for at least the main meal and we enjoy take aways only about once every two weeks when we feel like being lazy. We always eat as a family at the dining table once a day, almost never in front of the TV.

Not wanting to be accused of discriminating or pointing the finger at a certain demographic I think it is the lower income families or the less well educated that eat the poorer quality foods and I would hope that exchange students might be placed with families that don't eat chips every night and whose idea of a quality meal out is Pizza Hut.

The reason the French kids didnt like the food is not that its bad but rather its cooked and served differently. When I lived in UK I loved my sausages and when i came to France 10 years ago now I didnt like the sausages 'cos they were all meat and tasted completely different. now i love them. the bread tastes different, in fact most foods that we are used to in UK taste different. why? No simple answer to that one! The French are not particularly health conscious when it comes to food, far from it, but it is a very important part of life . In UK we eat to live, in France they live to eat!!

mikey

I agree Martin, English food can be very good and the Englsh are more 'bio' and 'veggie' concious than the French. I'm always promoting English food and many French people are surprised how good it can be. They were queing up for roast beef and potatoes in Chelles!

However there is a big cultural difference with eating in France in that the big family table is very important and most families including us will eat together at nearly every meal, no TV tray meals.... in fact no TV!

These traditional family dinners, plus gouté, or appero together with associated gossip are intrinsically part of (and I hope continue) society here whereas too often they are sadly in decline in many homes in the U.K.

As an aside it's interesting to see whole families here (3 generations) going to Macdonalds or a Chinese and sitting round a big table as if they were at home.....

Continuing the off topic food, a lot of our French friends ask us to bring back English food for them, like Birds custard powder, Coopers thick Marmalade and other such English delights. When we have French friends round for a meal we always cook English and it goes down very well.

The too old bit Carl was in the vein of not having young children around of a similar age to occupy the visitors I think.

A few years back my daughter Annie did the exchange thing with a family in Germany, this was reciprocated with the daughter coming to stay with me and Annie in England. A total nightmare, as far as food went all she ate was chocolate/hazlenut spread on bread for the whole week. I couldn't get her to eat anything else. She also burned up my phone line talking to her boyfreinds mobile for hours on end, despite being asked not too.

On a more cheerful note, I had MIL and her best freind over for dinner recently (both in late 80's). I made a roast ribjoint with roasties and yorkshires - they loved em despite the fact I am well out of practice (the diet you know). For the freind it was a genuine "first time" with English food, and for pudding I made rhubarb (tinned) and apple crumble (from a mix) with (Aldi tinned) custard. They loved that too.

When we were in Ireland we had takeaways 3-4 nights a week, here in Spain we don't even know if there are takeaways. Now I cook lentilsand fabadas, we have fresh fish, prawns big as lobsters, steaks that melt in the mouth, chicken. My mum thinks I have turned Spanish.

Saddletank is right tho', there is good value and quality pub grub to be had in the UK particularly from the brewery chains (Harvester, O'neils ?? etc)

The traditional fayre around here...Gourmand Normand is very rich, not for those on diet I can say. Thick creamy sauces, fatty, stinky, runny, cheeses and delicious charcuterie plus apple tarts and pastries everywhere.

Even my daughter has put on weight eating the school dinners.

Not me though, 6 days in hospital is a great way to fight the flab.

And actually talking of diets. Last October I weighed 82 kilos. Now I weigh 68...ish. Not bad considering I just stopped eating choccies and crips and cut out the midnight snacks....Oh and no regular full English breakfasts any more.....

If we did exhange visits here then that would a good excuse to start again though.

Carl Hibbs wrote:

The traditional fayre around here...Gourmand Normand is very rich, not for those on diet I can say. Thick creamy sauces, fatty, stinky, runny, cheeses and delicious charcuterie .

Ooooh.Yum.
Sorry.Spent the last three days rallying on the bike.I cook,they go to the fast food kiosks.
I love good rich sauces.Perhaps without the 'interesting cheese'.
Having tried a smelly,ripe soft cheese from a small island supposedly owned by France ,I never want to go through the recovery period again
I'm up for any recipes.

Carl, what are "gouté, or appero" please? I assume a social gathering for family (and friends?) where socialising takes first place over drinking and eating? My wife and I often host or attend parties; we have a circle of about eight other couples, most with kids and perhaps once a month (not necessarily birthday events) we'll be invited to some house or other for drinks and food. Usually it's nibbles but it can be more exotic or carefully prepared. Socialising is the main point of such gatherings, everyone swapping the gossip.

I get the impression this is a pretty middle class practice, the lower orders perhaps concentrate more on the drinking than the eating and socializing.

Sorry. I'm such a snob at heart!

Native French people please correct me if I'm wrong but the 'gouter' is like 'tea-time' between 4 and 6pm and 'appero' is an 'apéritif' a bit later say 6.30 before the evening meal.

Gouter means literally to taste so it's rather like a snack...well so is an aperitif.....

You probably wouldn't drink alcohol at 'gouter' but I like to.

There are quite a strict rules to this it seems where if you invite people for that then it means just that and they leave at the appropriate time.

Personally I can't be done with all that and often at our house gouter rolls into appero and then into dinner and on into supper and even breakfast....specially this weather.

And if you're in Corsica it carries on until 'U spuntinu' which is like 'elevenses' with pastis!

"Le gouter" is the equivalent of tea time, children have a "gouter" after school in the afternoon.
A little snack.

"Apréritf" is before lunch (you could say "apéro"), but you could have an apéritif before the evening meal as well.

Carl, your house sounds like my kind of place, very relaxed and welcoming. Thanks for the info!

Strangely in English usage an aperitif is a pre-dinner drink, evenings only (not lunchtime), usually sherry or a small whiskey/gin, etc with a mixer. Funny how borrowed words get to mean different things.

Thats the English language for you, with 95 per cent of its words 'borrowed' from other languages!

Mikey

Mikey, if thats the case why can't the rest of the world understand me ? Especially here in Spain, and why can't I understand a word anyone says from north/west of Peterborough. Can't even understand the BBC these days, have to put subtitles on.

I used to gouter me grans for tea, but here apero is a dog

There ye go Patrick. A lot of French,Latin, German, Celt, but not a lot of Spanish in English, perhaps thats why?

mikey

mikeyh wrote:

There ye go Patrick. A lot of French,Latin, German, Celt, but not a lot of Spanish in English, perhaps thats why?

mikey

Perhaps because the Spanish never conquered England.

Exactly!

mikey