Erm…eeek!
I’ve been thinking about this En Famille exchange thing. Briefly, a child from the UK (or wherever) is matched with a similarly-aged child in a similarly-minded French family, and the UK child goes to live with that family for six months, after which he/she and the French child come back and live with the UK family for six months. They live as siblings, the visiting child is expected to speak the visited country’s language the entire time, etc. There are all sorts of rules about not visiting and not having too many phone conversations and things like that.
My feeling is that it’s a fabulous opportunity, but that six months is a very long time in the life of an eleven-year-old, never mind an eight- or nine-year-old, which is, according to the organisation, the best age to do it. However they do offer one-way deals, where a French child lives with an English-speaking family for six months (being a French-based organisation, they have more French children looking for exchanges than they do children from elsewhere). If the hosting family later decides that their child should go to France, that can be arranged.
Scratchy and I discussed it briefly, and I decided to raise the possibility with Barney, to see what he thought.
Not only does he think that, while he’d miss us, he’d quite like to go - he’s already planning what he should pack! Help! 
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he’s really agonising over this decision isn’t he? rofl.
He doesn’t need to - I’m doing it for him!
How lucky he would be! Excellent plan! (but not for my children even when they would be 11 years old! LOL, six months without them would be an eternity, LOL)