Counsel on foreign relations

This is an undertaking that we did not decide upon lightly. After all, our last experience as hosts to a French teen left us feeling - well, I don't quite know what we were feeling.

After a summer with Pierre, aka Le Dud, we sure didn't embrace the idea of dealing with yet another sullen, ambivalent 15-year-old whose limited means of communications chiefly included the Gallic shrug and a sort of Neanderthal grunt that was the standard reply for 'most any question we asked him.

We'd have had a better chance of striking up a lively conversation with Helen Keller.

We had high hopes for our student. This despite being suckered into what we would later learn was a clever ploy by the foreign exchange program to enlist pity hosts like us because the "poor French students would not be able to fulfill their lifelong dreams of coming to the U.S. due to a lack of host homes." I almost felt like it was my fault no one offered to keep them.

So despite being busy enough, thank you, with three kids under the age of 4, we gamely took on the cause. How fun it would be to brush up on that rusty high school French, to show our guest the highs (and lows) of the D.C. area. To leave him with a lasting impression of how wonderful Americans are and how much he would yearn to return one day with his own family. Yeah, right.

Don't get me wrong. I love France. I love French wine, French food, the French language, and French people. Some of my best friends are French. Well, not really. I don't know a soul who's French. But nevertheless, if I did, I'm sure we'd get along fine. After all, I'm the sort of person who chats up strangers in elevators.

So we decided that this time, things would be different. First off, my kids are teens now; we had to vet the list with them.

Last week, as we perused the descriptive mini-blurbs about each student, we shared a few good laughs: Some of these kids had, uh, issues. Allergies galore: to pollen, pets, veggies, mites (but not vegemite!), slovenliness. OK, maybe not quite an allergy, but any kid requesting "tidiness" would no doubt develop allergies (or at least hives) at my house.

"Man, if we were ever to declare war on France, all we'd have to do is carpet-bomb their country with dog hair and dust mites and they'd surrender by dinnertime," my 17-year-old son joked. He, by the way, read and annotated Carl von Clausewitz last summer. He knows whereof he speaks.

We eliminated the allergy-prone and anyone with "Lord of the Rings" references in their e-mail addresses. Dungeons and Dragons, ditto. Then we got down to parsing the few remainders.

Jean-Claude sounded great, what with his love of soccer and piano (maybe he could even bang out something on that expensive picture frame holder/instrument that sits idle in our living room!). But then it said his hobbies included turtledoves. Turtledoves- To eat- Let's hope this was just a mistaque in translation!

One girl described herself as "cool but can become extroverted." Sounds like a weather forecast: partly cloudy with a chance of friendship by mid-week.

The accordion player sounded charming - I pictured her squeezing out a rousing round of "La Vie en Rose" each night as we dined al fresco on our back deck, assuming she'd pack her cumbersome instrument. But our kids soundly vetoed her - too nerdy.

Shame it didn't just say "hottie" next to the kids' descriptions, because then our choices would have been quite clear. After all, our teens were picking this time.

We finally picked two kids who sounded good enough in 10 words or less. Julia, who also plays piano, loves music and the beach. I love music and the beach, too! I'm sure we'll hit it off royally. And she says she's open-minded. Always a plus.

Gerard, who got tossed into the mix for lack of a host, well, he seems perfectly lovely as well. Granted, he avoids tomatoes (a staple in my home at this time of year), and his hobby is speaking Swedish, which won't go far here unless he wants to go to Ikea and converse with upper-level management.

But Julia says he's great and she sounded awfully excited when we told her that he'd also be in our home. Perhaps a little too enthusiastic. Which might not be such a good thing, on second thought. And now that we've exchanged e-mails and e-photos, I can only say yikes. We could be in for more than we bargained for.

Because now I realize that, including our own brood, we will be under the roof with five - count 'em, five - hormonally overloaded teens. We will be outnumbered, outwitted and unable to communicate with some of them. Mon dieu!

Come to think of it, Pierre the Dud and his Gallic shrug don't sound all that bad after all. Hmmm- Is it too late to pick that kid who loves "Lord of the Rings" role-playing games-

Jenny Gardiner is a commentator for WVTF and author of the upcoming novel "Sleeping with Ward Cleaver."