Rotarian Karen Hawitt (Leigh), right, has taken exchange student Camille Buisson under her wing. Buisson’s jacket is covered with pins she’s obtained from other Rotary exchange students. (Richard McGuire photo)
When Camille Buisson came to Osoyoos from France last summer as part of a Rotary Club exchange program, her English was very good, though a bit formal.
Buisson, 16, said she learned her English mostly from television and movies. She’d never before lived in an English-speaking country.
“I’m self-taught,” said Buisson, who spoke recently to a lunch meeting of the Rotary Club of Osoyoos, her host club.
Each year, the service club tries to host an “inbound” student from another country, while sending an Osoyoos student abroad. Currently an “outbound” girl from Osoyoos, Nina Oliveira, is in France.
“I taught myself,” Buisson said. “I learned from watching. I read books to learn the grammar and words. I watched movies – lots and lots of movies.”
At first she watched with French subtitles. When she gained proficiency, she switched to English subtitles, so she could read the English as she listened. Finally, she turned the subtitles off.
Now, having attended Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) throughout the past school year, her speech is less formal.
Her language is peppered with words such as “like” and “awesome” that Canadian teenagers tend to use.
“I’ve learned slang for sure, because I’m hanging out with people from the school every day,” she said.
Attending OSS was a very different experience from her school in Chambéry, France, a city of 60,000 people in the Rhône-Alpes roughly midway between Lyon, France and Geneva, Switzerland.
“My high school is a little bit bigger than OSS,” said Buisson. “It’s 2,000 students instead of 200.”
She was struck by the fact that in Osoyoos many of her classmates had known each other their entire lives.
In her school, her small circle of close friends has only known each other for a couple of years.
School in Canada is also much easier, she finds, with more “fun courses,” whereas in France the curriculum is all academic and the schedule is imposed on students with no choices.
One such “fun course” at OSS was drama class, where she was perhaps typecast in the role of Marie Antoinette for the class play.
The school day in Chambéry also runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a one-hour break for lunch. And she rides a municipal bus each day from her home on the edge of the city, where her father is a neurosurgeon and her mother is a veterinarian.
Despite making many new friends in Osoyoos at first, Buisson also encounters loneliness, something most exchange students experience.
When she first arrived, she was a novelty for the other students and many accepted her invitations to be friends.
“It was ‘Oh my God, she’s awesome, she’s from France,’ and then that lasts for three months, four months,” Buisson told the Rotarians. “Then you are lonely because everyone’s back together being best friends, and you’re just here like, ‘Hi,’ and they say, ‘We’re going to hang out, so see you, bye.’”
Buisson looks forward to periodic meetings she has with other exchange students from around the world also spending time in B.C. Many of them also experience loneliness.
An avid skier, she’s taken trips with these other exchange students to places like Revelstoke or Silver Star Mountain Ski Resort near Vernon.
“All of the exchange students, we got to go skiing,” she said showing her pictures. “It’s really funny to see those Brazilians trying to ski for the first time.”
Recently, any loneliness Buisson might have had has vanished with the arrival in Osoyoos of her older sister, Albane, 18 for a two-week visit. The two have been juggling host families and also taking excursions together to places such as Chelan, WA.
During her time in Osoyoos, Buisson has stayed with several host families – Marieze and Garnet Tarr, Karen Hawitt and Trevor Leigh, Jeff and Eva Duguid and later Harold and Audrie Cox.
Hawitt especially has taken her under her wing.
“It’s been great,” said Hawitt. “My daughter Zoe, who’s six, and Camille get along like a house on fire. It’s been fun having another person at the table with dinner, teaching Camille to cook, make bread. It’s been lovely.”
Hawitt, who has visited France a number of times, also likes that Buisson speaks some French with her husband and daughter.
“She took my daughter and taught her how to ski and they swam,” said Hawitt, whose daughter is an only child. “It makes a difference having a child with other kids in the house for sure.”
Osoyoos Rotarians have taken Buisson to such places as Calgary and Vancouver and she’s also skied at resorts ranging from Mount Baldy to Whistler. At Baldy, which is closed, they had to snowmobile up the pristine snow.
“I loved Vancouver and Calgary because they are big cities,” she said. “I love Osoyoos too, but because it’s so small, there’s not a lot to do, but there’s a lot of people to see and meet.”
Although Osoyoos lacks the excitement of a larger city, Buisson still has many good things to say about it.
“I love how pretty it is. I love the lake, all the vineyards and the orchards. It’s super beautiful,” she said. “I love how it’s a community, together. We don’t really have that in my city. It’s not a community. Here everyone is together all the time. The town is really like a family.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
