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Most of my vacations end up being almost as much work as work. There’s always a long list of home improvement projects to do if we’re not going out of town, and if we do hit the road, well, that can be work, too.

This year, I’m taking a couple weeks off, and, naturally, it’ll be another working holiday. But I’m putting the home improvement projects on hold — OK, maybe I’ll do a little caulking — and taking on a new task: teaching.

Saturday night, we met Inés, a 15-year-old from a small town near Epinal, France. For three weeks, she will live with us. Then next summer, my 15-year-old daughter, Becca, will live with Inés and her family in France for three weeks.

Naturally, we want to leave Inés with a favorable impression not only of us but of our community and our country. We’d like her to go home thinking, “I wish I didn’t have to leave.”

The exchange is meant in part to help the students learn some English (or French) by immersion in the culture. As a writer and a lover of language, I really take this part of the mission seriously. Maybe too seriously.

Her first morning, Inés woke up to a breakfast of waffles, cantaloupe and strawberries, words I had her repeat back to me (along with napkin, fork, spoon and butter knife).

After breakfast, she went for a walk with my wife, Katherine, and me, and all along the walk I kept pointing out things and telling Inés the English words for them: mailbox, sidewalk, flowers, neighbor, baseball, pickup truck.

I also explained that we have many ways of saying “yes,” including yeah, yup, yuppers, uh-huh and OK.

Despite having flown across an ocean and half a continent and still being a little tired, Inés put up with the lessons with patience and a good sense of humor. I can’t even imagine going off to live with a strange family somewhere with only a basic knowledge of the language. I’d be lost, so I have to admire Inés — and my daughter — for taking the plunge.

I took a year of French in college, and the thing I remember most is the funny way of saying “he is crazy” in French — “Il est tombé sur la tete,” which literally means “he fell on his head.”

Our language is full of even crazier phases. Just imagine trying to explain all our weird American English phrases. Over the past couple days I have become very conscious of just how strangely we talk sometimes.

For one thing, we don’t speak textbook English most of the time. Believe it or not, even I, a professional writer, don’t speak the way they taught in school.

After our walk, Inés brought out a card game from France called Jungle Speed, in which the players take turns turning up a card. If there is a match, the two players with matches try to grab a totem in the center of the table. The person who grabs it gets to give their pile of cards to the other player.

I was not so great at this game and after one match I ended up with a thick stack of additional cards, at which I exclaimed, “Ooh, I got got good.”

Inés gave me the international facial expression for “huh?” — something I’ll probably have to get used to over the next few weeks. It’ll be fun, though, to see “huh?” replaced more often by the spark of recognition.

I haven’t tried explaining yet that La Crosse normally doesn’t have so many motorcycles and people with leather and tattoos. Nor have I figured out how to explain Evelyn Pertzsch getting up to conduct the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra at the Salute to the Fourth — maybe I’ll just have to say it’s because she’s “cool.”

Wish me luck explaining baseball. I tried to tell Inés why the team is called the Loggers, giving her a brief history of the lumber industry in Wisconsin. I’ll probably have better luck explaining the infield fly rule.

Besides the “huh?” look, though, Inés also is fluent in another language: laughter. I don’t think we’ve ever had so much giggling in the house, with all of us pitching in our share. Maybe this “working vacation” won’t really seem like work after all.

Randy Erickson is the editor of the Coulee News, Holmen Courier and Onalaska Community Life. Contact him at randy.erickson@lee.net or 786-6812.