Who's idea was this?" I wondered wearily, as one more e-mail arrived saying, "Thank you but we've already connected with someone else." 

It looked like our plans to exchange homes with a family in France were falling through. Just one week earlier, we were finalizing an agreement with a Parisian family expressing "great interest in visiting your beautiful country." But family problems forced them to cancel at the last minute. 

It was the middle of May and we wanted to fly to Paris at the end of June. We had received offers to exchange from England, the Netherlands and Ontario but we had our hearts set on Paris. 

We were learning the first hard lesson in home exchange: Don't be stingy with those e-mails and letters. We'd listed our home with a home exchange company which said that a successful exchange might require up to 50 letters. We'd sent out only about a dozen e-mails. 

Now, still "homeless," we wondered if we should abandon plans to stay in Paris and consider other offers. 

We were glum about it but it is, in fact, the joy and surprise of considering places you might not have thought of visiting,  that's one of the beauties of home exchange. 

It's what spurred Antoine Reverchon of Paris to respond to our e-mail, one of dozens my husband fired off after our initial Paris contact backed out. 

Antoine, a business reporter for Le Monde newspaper, his wife Marina, also a journalist, and their two children had signed up for a second home exchange. They hoped to go to Italy. 

But our letter describing the attractions of Canada instantly seduced them. They wanted to travel with their good friends Valerie and Marc and their two children. 

No problem, we said, delighted that Paris was still in the picture. 

Our large B.C. home always has room for visitors -- enough for eight -- something we emphasized in our  listing. 

We, too, planned to travel with friends and were seeking a place big enough for six. 

Our friends, meanwhile, were arranging an exchange in southern France so we'd have two places, one in Paris and one in the south. So, as we were finalizing the exchange with the Reverchons, our friends were closing a deal with Jean-Claude Delgal in Seilh, a village just north of Toulouse. 

It was all coming together. 

But then I got cold feet. I began to worry about letting total strangers into our home. Would they wreck the house? Would they rob us blind? 

I tried reasoning with myself: They are opening their home to us and surely have exactly the same worries. And even if their hearts weren't entirely pure, they weren't going to be able to carry much away since they lived nine time zones and one ocean away. Besides, I told myself, our neighbors had assured us they'd look after any problems. 

Still, it went against the grain of everything we'd been conditioned to think: Dead-bolt those doors, install motion sensitive lights, don't open the door to strangers. Now we were doing just the opposite, inviting strangers into the very heart of our home. I soothed my fears by locking away all that was precious and personal. 

We met the Reverchons for the first time in Paris. They weren't leaving until two days later but had their lovely three-bedroom apartment on Avenue du Maine ready for us when we arrived. 

Antoine, trailed by eight-year-old Marie on her bicycle, then walked us through their Montparnasse neighborhood to lead us to the best bakery, the best cheese and meat shops and the most interesting restaurants. 

That afternoon, we had lunch in their "garden," a tiny green sheltered place where Marc and Valerie joined us for a delightful afternoon, talking about places we should visit, places to avoid, how to use the transit system. 

I began to feel a little guilty about my initial fears. And when, after a week in Paris, we took the Reverchon's Renault to head for Toulouse and our second exchange, I felt convinced that this is the only way to travel. 

Southern France was a completely different experience from Paris and having a car allowed us to see places we otherwise would never have seen: Drouilles, Beau-lieu-sur-Dordogne, Ora-dour, Andorra, Bruniquel, Mauriac, and Saint-Sulpice-sur-Leze.

We came to try a home exchange through friends who first signed up three years ago and became instantly hooked. "It's changed our lives," they both crowed after returning from two months in Europe.  Now I know exactly what they mean! 

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