Local students off to France

Megan Hebert and Zachary Byrne will be taking flight to France this Friday as the two St. Francis students fulfill the second half of an exchange agreement that began last August.
And the grade eight students in the grade seven/eight French Immersion class are ready to spend several months in a brand new world.
“I’m excited about it. I really want to go,” said Hebert, who will be staying in Bordeaux with Emeline Larat, who attended St. Francis from August until November.
Byrne also expressed an eagerness to go to Thiérache and stay with Yvon L’Enfant, whom he also met earlier in the school year. “We’ve kept in touch,” he noted, saying the French he’s learned in school has helped keep the lines of communication open.
“She writes me a letter about what we’re going to be doing. She asks me if I want to go the beach or the museum, and I say ‘yes’ to it all,” smiled Hebert.
“But the best part of the trip will be getting out of Fort Frances,” she added, with Byrne nodding in agreement.
And what do the two hope to get out of the trip by the time they return home in May? “A really bad accent,” joked Byrne, while Hebert said it would be having made new friends.
Both said it was their parents who encouraged them to go on the exchange, especially Hebert, whose sister, Sarah, went two years ago, the first the time St. Francis hosted the program (she has since returned there).
“It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed going to school, and I think the best part was when you had to speak French all the time,” said Sarah Hebert.
“They didn’t understand any English, and I loved it when you had to think of ways to say something and make them understand, and when they had to do the same,” she added.
“We think it’s a wonderful program,” agreed their dad, Brian Hebert.
Byrne’s mother, Shelley, said it would a good chance for her son to practise his French.
“He’s been in French Immersion since kindergarten and aside from being in school, he doesn’t get to use it much,” she noted.
“It was also a good opportunity to see Yvon again, whom he made good friends with while he was here last year, and to immerse himself in a French family and learn something from how they live,” she added.
But St. Francis principal Mariette McRae noted the school may not offer the program on an annual basis.
“It’s a really exciting learning experience for the students but we do understand it must not be easy for a 14-year-old to spend three months away from home,” she said.
The cost of the exchange is paid partly by International Student Exchange Ontario and partly by the students’ parents.