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SVHS Class of ‘07 grad Megan McSheffery spent about 10 months in the northeast of France and came to the Monday, July 28 Perth-Andover Rotary Club meeting to tell her sponsors about her stay and show her slides. At the meeting held at Perth-Andover Motor Inn, club members were eager to know details of her life with host families.

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‘The Lorraine area where I was, in the Vosges District was the place in France where it rains the most," she began. "My town, Gerardmer, has about ten thousand people and is extremely famous for having tulips growing everywhere. Every two years, in early June, they have a parade, and they make all the floats out of tulips."

The town and the area is also known for the horror film festival that takes place there.

"They show films for about a week straight, 24 hours a day, in their original languages with subtitles in French."

Her first host family owned a pizzeria/ restaurant and her second one owned, rode and jumped horses, an activity very popular in France. She said that shortly after her arrival in France she met the members of the region's Rotary Club. "In France the Rotary Clubs don't usually have females, so I was extremely out of place. I was there with older gentlemen and it was slightly awkward for the first couple of meetings."

They met every Friday evening at seven to have a glass of champagne and chat with the students about the week just passed. She said that the club had a lot of outings planned for the exchange students.

"I couldn't imagine before going to the opera. We all dressed up and it was just an amazing experience."

Megan attended the public high school in Gerardmer where about 15 exchange students also attended classes. As well as Canadians there were Americans, Ecuadorians, Mexicans, and a Filipino.

"The school system is very different there," she told the Rotarians. "I went in the first day and said Hi! to my teacher but that was extremely shunned upon. In class they didn't ask a lot of questions, you just sat there and listened to lectures. I made a lot of friends though and after a while the teacher actually came and spoke to me."

Her school day began at 8 a.m. and ended - after two hours of sports - at 7 p.m. She said they all had Wednesday afternoon off classes but had to attend on Saturday morning.

"So it was not a very good first week," she laughed, "especially math Saturday morning at nine. The math teacher was just an enemy by the end of the year."

One of the outings for the exchange students was a ski trip to Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe.

"I had done a fair amount of skiing before, but once I got there I got shown up by a bunch of Rotarians. Once fellow 75-years-old beat me down to the bottom of the hill. You couldn't see the bottom; it took five hours to get down and it was 18 kilometres. It was a great experience; I couldn't have asked for a better trip."

She and others also got to see Germany, spending two weeks on an exchange there and all through her stay she met with the other exchange students from the district to tour various areas, many of them still bearing scars from the wars. She said that the French knowledge of Canada was almost nil except for some information about Quebec. She also said that students appeared to have almost no knowledge of Canada's huge contribution during two World Wars.

"When I got back to Canada I was having some problems speaking English," Megan said. "I almost had to learn English again."

She said that the French that she had learned through 12 years of Immersion was somewhat different from that spoken in northeastern France and it took some time to adjust.

"It was an amazing experience though, and I just want to say thank you for letting me go on this exchange," she concluded. "I'm really glad that I went."