Hosting Camille from Calais

I first met Camille only a couple hours after her arrival in Los Angeles when I picked her and my youngest sister up from a welcome dinner on our high school campus. The pair, having chatted over Instagram for the past few months, were already laughing loudly and comparing celebrity crushes on the drive home. They sang loudly to shared favorite songs in the back seat. Camille's willingness to get over initial discomfort in favor of enthusiasm and fun meant a quick and lasting bond.

As with our last two correspondents from Calais, my sisters and I and our guest all shared interests and experiences with music, movies, and friendships. Harry Styles, one such shared interest, had a French-American girlfriend, Camille Rowe with beach waves and a striped boat neck shirt, who we jokingly characterized as the meeting of our two lives.

Though Camille's English was nearly perfect and better than our French, we practiced both languages and exchanged favorite phrases and colloquialisms. This Sunday, the Global Initiatives Program is hosting an AFS-USA panel discussion which will feature four or five international exchange students. Their American peers will be invited to ask questions of the panel and to mingle with the featured speakers over a late lunch. From my experience with Camille from Calais, I have nothing new or particularly worldly to add to the emphasis on the importance of intercultural experiences, but that might be the point. Camille and my family and I enjoyed each other's company completely during her time with us, and I look forward to next summer when my youngest sister will stay with Camille's family in the North of France. We valued the past week not because it was an international experience, but because we were able to learn from each other and laugh together. This, along with the development of our French and English respectively, is genuine intercultural dialogue, in a kitchen or in front of the TV.