Student visitors from France keep smiling despite D.C. snow

The teachers of the Lycée Paul-Louis Courier spent a year planning their students' trip to Washington. A "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" is how Béatrice Boulay, an English teacher from the school in Tours, France, put it.

"This weather is also probably once in a lifetime," Mme. Boulay said Monday.

Her two dozen French students were supposed to have been at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, accompanying their American "pen pals" to class, getting a taste of U.S. curriculum, practicing their English. But school had been canceled.

Let's go to the Smithsonian, someone suggested. That was closed, too.

And that is why Gallic cheek pecks were being exchanged in the food court at Westfield Montgomery. A quick trip to the shopping mall had been organized.

"To boost morale," explained Christiane Nugent, the Richard Montgomery French teacher who with her colleague Parfait Awono planned the exchange between the two schools.

Morale was definitely in need of boosting. Some of the French students were staying in houses that had lost power. Many were in homes situated at the end of unplowed streets. Worried parents were checking in from France, our blizzard having made the news there. Just about everyone was suffering from the kind of cabin fever that sets in after a few days of being snowbound.

"Her top scores in the Wii are probably going to last for a long time," said Danny Bachman of Mélina, the French teenager his daughter Miriam is hosting. Their snowy weekend included epic video game battles.

Some of the students were put to work.

"I helped my host dad to shovel snow with a machine," said Jessica, a 16-year-old staying with the Mallon family in Germantown. "It was pretty fun."

A few families (ours included) managed to escape to New York City for the weekend before the blizzard started, but most had hunkered down.

The exchange, while by no means snakebit, was certainly snowbit. A planned field trip to the Maison Blanche (the White House) was thrown into disarray when snow canceled school last Wednesday. They did get to tour the State House in Annapolis on Thursday. (A politician they met encouraged them to tell their host families to support her candidacy.)