A First Experience of Home Exchange

Bonjour Kath,
As promised a small article about our first home-exchange in Australia.

HOME-EXCHANGE Just do it!!
About 18 months ago, I read an article about home-exchanges and decided to have a look on Internet.

We are a retired couple, live 45 km north of Paris. I am half English, half Dutch and my husband is French. My motivation was to revisit Australia; I have a brother and family there. In the beginning my husband was somewhat hesitant. We enrolled and thought "wait & see".

In our member's file we filled in: "Open to Offers". Over a short time we received quite some offers from the USA, CANADA and the UK. So we changed and selected AUSTRALIA. Soon after, two or three swappers sent us offers; one in particular interested us, so I started to converse and get more information. They were a retired couple from the Sunshine-Coast; this couple: Rex & Nancy had already performed 5 successful home-exchanges. After having e-mailed for quite a while together, we came to an agreement for a home and car-exchange for October 2004. Rex & Nancy had arranged a double home-exchange this time:
1) September in Brittany,
2) October in Othis/Paris area.

They were due to arrive in France 28 August, for their Brittany home-exchange. As we don't live far from the Airport, we invited them to come and stay with us for 2 days. A unique chance, to meet each other and show them around. We instantly got on well together. We introduced them to our sons and families and also our neighbours. They didn't speak very much French, but were good in communication. On the 3rd day, they left for Nantes, we drove them to Gare Montparnasse, and kept in contact via e-mails.

Four weeks later, we left for Australia. My brother met us at Brisbane Airport, and drove us to our destination, a lovely comfortable home situated in a beautiful area not far from Mooloolaba, a well-known town on the Sunshine-Coast. We were able to live at our own pace, cooked the food we liked and discover Australia as "Aussis". Again we kept a regular contact with our home-swappers by computer and told each other about our different outings and excursions. Our stay was a 100% success, both in human and cultural ways.

Today we consider, through this successful home-exchange, we gained two new friends. We intend to try again somewhere else.

Louise COLETTE
www.chez.com/aquabears
HE13942
Travel