Our multicultural team

As a mother of four children who have all participated in exchanges with En Famille International, I have always believed that traveling shapes youth by broadening the horizons of our world. For my children, family exchanges have not only been a means of personal development and enrichment but have also influenced their future lives. They have acquired the ability to better understand cultural differences, to show tolerance and patience, to acquire self-confidence and to adapt to all kind of circumstances.
I like to travel, discover and meet people. Music is an integral part of my daily life. I have been playing the piano since I was young, and I also like to sing and dance. For my physical and mental well-being, I practice, in an assiduous and joyful way, water walking (a sport common in the North of France) and Nordic walking.
I love the unexpected and unforeseen, the “last minute” and the emergency. I like to live based on the motto “Carpe Diem”! For me, communication is a vital need. Companionship is a great fit for me!
For my friends, my house is the house of happiness. For me, if you smile at life, life will smile back at you...

I feel that this mantra is me! I'm open minded, love living in the moment, enjoy meeting new people, trying new activities, exploring new places and generally experimenting with life in ways which take me out of my comfort zone, often, in order to grow and feel alive. There's never a dull moment.

I love being immersed in a nail biting film, a page turning read, a nutty bar of chocolate, a French baguette or a traditional Cornish pasty but my real passion lies in International travel. I recently moved with my family from the UK to Rossland in BC Canada, a wonderful community with an eclectic mix of people who have also orchestrated their lives to live at the base of a ski hill with a mountain playground on their doorstep.

I feel like I've really made the most of my day when I've done something outdoors and enjoy filling my time snowboarding, hiking, paddle boarding, camping, walking the dog and mountain biking. I believe that you can only truly experience a different culture by living in it, like a local! That's what's so great about the EFI exchange programme and being part of it has enriched my whole family in so many ways.

I will definitely look back on life and say “I can’t believe I did that”
but I'll never be in the position to say “I wish I did that" which makes me happy because the biggest winners in life are always the ones with the biggest smiles and, my one is huge.

Hello! My name is Jeni Cross, and I live in Incline Village, Nevada, near the shores of beautiful Lake Tahoe.  My love affair with French started when I was 19 and lived in Pau for a scholastic year.  After finishing my bachelor’s degree in French, I was hired by American Airlines as a flight attendant, thanks in part to my language skills. However, becoming a teacher was my ultimate calling, and I went back to school to not only earn my teaching credential, but also a master’s in linguistics from l’Université d’Aix-en-Provence.  I taught in public and private schools, from kindergarten to 12th grade, both French and Spanish, for 22-years before deciding recently to do other things. I have a wonderful husband, Art, and together, we have twin sons who completed six-month exchanges to France at the age of 10 and who are currently at university in Utah and Pennsylvania. I am excited to bring short U.S. exchanges to En Famille and, hopefully, help to create more worldly and open-minded biliguals like my own kids and all the EFI children before and after them.  I love to travel, learn new things, read in French and Spanish, listen to current French music, spend time with loved ones, and enjoy outdoor activities and FOOD.

After a two-year trip to South America and Asia, I put down my backpack and started my family. I passed on my taste for adventure to my four children. My eldest children have benefited from En Famille exchanges with England, Germany, Spain and California. They tell me that beyond the fluency in the foreign language, the exchange gave them an open mind, strength and self-confidence.They are still benefiting from it in their studies and in their adult lives.
In my spare time I enjoy horse riding, swimming, reading, and spending time with family and friends. My favourite sweet temptation? Dark chocolate!
Through En Famille Internationale, I seek to bring young people together to discover new horizons and to be enriched by cultural diversity. I want families to thrive on differences and for long lasting friendships to blossom between families across borders.

Discovering the beauty of the world and the difference of values such as respect, discovery

I like to walk in the soft rain, to smell the wet earth, to look at the stars, to imagine and to dream. I like to travel the world, to be one more wherever I go. I like to sing, I like a good book that makes me fly, and I like to enjoy. I am lucky enough to be a teacher, so I will never stop learning from everything and everyone. Along the way, life gave me a companion, and we continue our journey together, dreaming, living, loving. We have three children to whom we will leave as an inheritance the experiences, adventures and knowledge that we have been able to give them. “En Famille” helped us, lent us its wings, they flew, and new children came, with other languages and other names, but who have stayed forever in our hearts.
Our children were never the same again, they were better, they are now citizens of a country called the World.

I have loved the French language and culture since my own exchange with En Famille in 2008, and to this day it remains one of the most valuable experiences I have had. I live in a mountainous region of Lower Saxony, near Hameln, and enjoy the countryside for extensive road bike rides and walks with my dog.
Empathy, composure and open-mindedness are particularly important to me in coordinating and accompanying the exchanges. Thanks to my training and previous professional activity as a speech-language pathologist, I also bring with me both pedagogical and language know-how.

I love people and especially, of course, my family (my husband and my two grown-up daughters), which has grown a lot thanks to six exchanges with En Famille and several years as a foster family.
Cross-cultural encounters and a wide variety of social contacts make my life exciting.
I live in the far north of Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein, and I love the sea and nature. I am always open to new things and I am a very patient and spontaneous person.