Posted on 07/03/2005 2:57:02 AM PDT by Caipirabob
July 3, 2005 -- Summer plans for dozens of French kids wanting to visit New York City are toast — the apparent victim of anti-French feelings here since the start of the Iraq war.
World Exchange, a nonprofit organization that coordinates a summer exchange, is scheduled to have 92 French students land in New York this week. But only 30 have a place to stay.
The organization can't find New Yorkers willing to take the rest.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
she is czech meethinks...
It's also full of childless people, for whom the thought of being a surrogate parent - even for a short time - might seem unpalatable. And people aren't as willing to take strangers into their homes for any reason as they might have been thirty years ago - Hollywood has created too many horror stories around that theme, and they have sunk in.
Born in Ukraine to a Serbian father and a Russian mother.
A couple of years ago my husband's cousin's son from the Netherlands came to visit and we all showed him a great time. He said he couldn't believe how nice Americans were. What did he think we were a bunch of monsters? Even strangers went out of their way to show him places to go skateboarding. The anti-American propaganda is so prevailing that they really need to see our Nation and people for themselves.
Milla's Russian, but in that episode of "Married . . . With Children," she was a French exchange student.
And a smokin' one! But that comes as no surprise.
Maybe. . .but I never met a french "adult" that wasn't a petulant, petty and self-centered spoiled child/brat.
I agree with you though, no need to take it out on the kids. It's a lost opportunity.
A similar thing happened several years ago with a German cycling team that came to the US. The person who arranged the visit did not have enough host homes when they arrived. This person said that the kids were going to have money for all of their expenses and that the organization that sponsored the visit was going to pay each host family for food for the kids. I felt sorry for kids and I had 4 spare bedrooms so I offered to take 4 of them in. It was a disaster. The kids ate me out of house and home, they did not have money to pay for anything (siteseeing,travel while here, recreational activities, food, etc.). Although I found out they were lying about not having money. They trashed my house, wrecked my motorcycle, they would call me at all hours to pick them up from whereever they managed to go, two of them were arrested for vandalism, they rented porn videos on my Blockbuster card and took them back to Germany, they poured an entire bottle of Joy dishwashing liquid in the hot tub and literally filled the room with suds, etc. By the time it was over 8 weeks later, I had spent several thousand dollars to take care of these kids. Of the bunch that I housed, there was only one who was a decent kid. He was well behaved, financially responsible and has continued to stay in touch for close to 20 years now.
The only repayment that I received from the others was when I was cleaning the house right after they left: I found one of the kids wallets with several hundred German marks......And his passport! I still get a grin when I think about how much trouble he must have had at airports without his passport.
"Take a look at the EU vote for a Constitution"
The majority of French citizens believe just as the rhetoric spewing from the mouthes of French politicians. The vote against the EU Constitution was based more on the French being truly selfishly socialistic or perhaps socialisticly selfish.
I just realized that's Leeloo! Yea, she's a babe. I thought for a minute she was Dagmara whatsername who married the phantom guy, but my wife just corrected me on that.
I do not intend to offend you, but your phrase, "Our town and HS are very diverse,...", shows that you live somewhere where PC "values" hold sway.
I have news for you, the VAST MAJORITY of towns and HSs in America are "very diverse".
Notwithstanding the left's lies and propaganda.
Holding "diversity" up as a sort of PC shield, makes me want to puke.
But I understand why you would think that way, living where you do. So near "the hive".
I agree with you. Why not take the oppurtunity to show these kids how wonderful America is.
My cousins took in a Yugoslavian girl as a foreign exchange student one spring many years ago. She was from Sarajevo. My cousin had two teenaged daughters and thought this would be a great way to expand their horizons.
The high-school-aged exchange student sniffed that everything was "too American", stayed up all night, slept all day (the teens dubbed her "Dracula"), spent more time at the mall with other exchange students than with my cousins and the whole experience seemed unfulfilling.
One day, a couple of years later, a letter arrived from the exchange student. Her city was at the heart of the war in Bosnia and she could no longer feel safe walking the streets. She lived in fear that any day somebody might come to kill her or her family and that she might have to be relocated at any time.
But the cousins had taken her to church a few times while she was in the States and she remembered those words and became a Christian in her moment of crisis. She was writing to apologize for being such an ungrateful snot while visiting America and how she wished she could do things differently now.
I know my cousins prayed for her. Quite a powerful story.
The kids might have brains, as you say, but they also have parents. Parents who are French. Parents who will gloat. Let the kids stay home and help them finish up the wine.
I agree, French kids' parents may well have brainwashed them, but these are just kids, adolescents. And we have a chance to prove to them what America and Americans are really like. This might not seem so important, but look what happened to Natalee Holloway. What if Joran Van der Sloot raped and killed her, the latter probably to shut her up, and then dumped her body somewhere. What would motivate such behavior? Alcohol, drugs, basically no supervision But he's Dutch and grew up in Holland. There's a lot of anti-American feeling in Holland going back years and years, not just the latest flap over GW and Iraq. What if back in Holland, as Joran grew up, the VDS dinner table conversation consisted of discussion of world affairs and in general, America bashing? Wouldn't he take special pleasure in giving this American 'slut' as he called her to her mother's face, what she 'deserved'?
Sounds far-fetched? Some years ago, a Dutch family moved next door to me in MA. Several children, two parents. After a year or two, they became American citizens, and continued to go back to Holland fairly regularly to see family. One trip ended in disaster when two of the Dutch cousins, a teenaged girl and her brother, called my neighbor's daughter, 11, an 'American bitch' and threw her into a canal. They endured endless anit-American rants at family gatherings, curses to curl your hair, and they stopped going to Holland.
This American visit for French kids might be a perfect antidote to the usual venom they hear on a daily basis back home.
I don't view these "kids" as children.
According to the article, they are around 16 years old, probably older.
I was fairly active politically when I was 16, and I sure don't recall myself as being innocent.
Of course, that doesn't mean these particular students are anti-American.
I certainly wouldn't throw a Frenchman out in the snow on a cold wintry night. Nor would I go out of my way, in today's climate, to make them comfy.
Tough.
F
The
French
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