Tour de Elgin

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French foreign exchange students get a tour of Elgin City Hall Wednesday by Mayor Dave Kaptain. The group also took a tour of the police station. August 10, 2011 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: October 3, 2011 11:38AM

ELGIN — A group of 10 teenagers and young adults visiting Elgin said they have been surprised at how friendly people in Elgin and the Chicago area have been.

“We can learn from you how kind people are,” said Antione Midant, 16, of Paris. French people, he admitted, don’t have the best history of showing kindness to foreigners. Here, however, their host families treat them as their own family.

“You don’t find a place in France with people who are so nice with strangers,” Midant said.

The group of students — from all over France — is staying in and around Elgin for three weeks, here with a group sponsored by the Center for Cultural Interchange, said Elizabeth Berent, one of the Elgin host families and a cross-culture consultant who helped bring the group here.

She had suggested that the center send a group to Elgin and the Fox Valley, rather than some of the North Shore communities it has sent students in the past, because of its diversity.

“Elgin has a diversity is really interesting. It is much more integrated than other cities, and progressive in ways that are different than Chicago. Elgin can stand on its own,” Berent said.

“There are also tons of things going on in the summer, and the people in Elgin are really down-to-earth. I think it is a unique community,” she added.

During their visit, the 10 students and their French chaperone are staying with 11 families, touring Elgin and the Chicago area. For the families, Berent said, having a French student stay with them is a way to get an experience they never had themselves. When interviewing host families, she asked why they wanted to have an exchange student. “Some said, ‘I always wanted to have the opportunity but was never offered it’ as teens themselves. “So they are living vicariously through the kids,” she said.

At the same time, she hopes it shows Elgin teens that foreign exchange programs are possible, and possible no matter what their socioeconomic status may be. “They can contact the Center for Cultural Interchange for more information. That was a part of my mission — we want them to practice their English but also to expose our community to these opportunities,” she said.

Students are doing more than just hanging out with their host families. They have been taken to Chicago museums, lakefront tours and shopping excursions, and will be volunteering at the Elgin’s Hawthorne Hill Nature Center as well.

This past week, their day included a sit-down with Elgin Mayor David Kaptain and a tour of the Elgin Police Department.

Kaptain talked with the students about Elgin’s efforts to be more green, as well as plans to reach out to a French city to create a sister city program in that country.

The next step in the sister city process is to invite presidents of French-owned companies to the Elgin Symphony next spring. That event will include French music and is designed to help lure companies to Elgin.

Several German companies are already here, Kaptain said, and a Scottish firm just located here as well. “We are working hard in Elgin to establish relationships with European countries,” Kaptain said.

Sister city relationships help both countries develop economic development and share ideas and information. “It works as far as the communities want to take them,” Kaptain said.

At the Elgin Police Department, the French students may have been the most excited about the weapons used by police here. In France, they said, hunting guns are allowed, but one does not see handguns or other arms. Neither, they said, can one get a tour of the police department and jail.

Sgt. Dan O’Shea showed them — after several safety checks and with instruction on how to hold a weapon — the shotguns, rifles and service weapons used in Elgin.

“I really liked learning about American police,” said Amand Libier, 17, of Aix-en-Provence, France. He was the first to ask Chief Jeff Swoboda if the guns were something they could see. “In France, you couldn’t visit the jail.”

They both said they enjoyed the afternoon visit and the information they got. “And, without advertising for the mayor, he is a nice guy,” Midant said.