From Feb. 3-22, five French exchange students will be at LHS. Each person is paired up with an LHS student and will live at their house.

The French students arrived on Friday night, spent the night in a hotel and met their host family on Saturday.

Feb. 5 marks their first day at LHS.

“In the first week they follow their hosts. Second week, they go with a friend to classes. Third week they’re gonna go to classes they are interested in,” world language teacher Emmanuelle Tamaroff said.

Eureka’s French teacher, a colleague of Tamaroff, is in charge of getting the French students here. There are 15 total and five at Lafayette.

“One is in Kansas City, some are in Summit, Marquette and Eureka,” she said. 

All French students come from the same school, Saint-Louis Saint-Clément, which is located in Viry-Châtillon, near Paris.

Terre de Langues is the name of the program that allowed French students to come to the US. Students from Saint Louis Saint Clement have the opportunity to either go to the US or Mexico. The program also lets students from other schools visit schools in other countries.

LHS students learned of the opportunity to host earlier this year, and hosting was optional.

“Tamaroff talked about it at the beginning of the school year and that’s how we found out about it,” senior Amber Yin said. 

Unlike the other students, who are all in French classes, Snyder has been involved with hosting through his mom, who is a French teacher. She has been a host since the 90’s and early 2000’s.

“We’ve mainly hosted during the summer. Olivia will be the third person we’ve hosted during the school year,” Snyder said.

Even though English can be a challenge for French students initially, Snyder says he and his mom push them to speak in English. They also use Google Translate at times.

“They’re here to learn the English experience,” he said.

Yin is hosting a 15-year-old girl named Tessa Polano. She is most looking forward to going to Blues games with Tessa.

“She’s getting my mom a [Kylian] Mbappé jersey, so hopefully we can get her a Blues jersey,” she said.

The other hosting students, along with Yin, include seniors Cassie Mohlmann, Kyle Schwallie, Luke Snyder and Victoria Wiecko.

The hosts are looking forward to showing their students around the city, taking them to sports games, the Fox Theater, restaurants and concerts.

“We’ve been planning to go to a Drake concert with [Noe Kelkoula],” Schwallie said.

While the French student’s goals are to gain confidence in speaking English and learning about America, Tamaroff also hopes that people will gain new friendships out of this experience.

“Get as much as you can from the Frenchies and from the Americans. Make lifelong friendships and then my American students can visit them sometime else in life,” she said.