On July 24 Cary Town Council members recognized five local high school students selected by the Sister Cities of Cary association to go to Le Touquet, France in August as part of a humanitarian and environmental visit.

Matt Cain, Jenna Everly, Elyse Elder, Emily Brown and Wesley Lo, all Cary juniors and seniors, will stay with host families Aug. 2-13, working on rebuilding sand dunes along Le Touquet beaches — and, of course, just plain hanging out.

The students will be helping to repair the Opal Coastline, which has been an ongoing restoration project in Le Touquet. In addition to working on the dunes and advancing their linguistic skills, they will be spending the rest of their 11-day stay orienteering, camping, horseback riding, kayaking, mountain biking and tree climbing.

“I’m excited to see people our own age living in France and practicing my French,” said Everly, 17, of Enloe High School.

Lo, the youngest participant at 16, has been to France before but is looking forward to experiencing it as a nontourist.

“You’re actually living the local life,” he said, noting that the beaches of Le Touquet offer kayaking, among other water sports. He learned of the program through the Cary Teen Council. “Hopefully we’ll come back and give a good presentation.”

While none of the students wanted to describe themselves as fluent in French, they all are confident that they can “get by.” They said they’re not nervous to be staying with strangers because they got to choose which host family they would be staying with after exchanging e-mails and reading their profiles. All the host families were screened by the Le Touquet government’s sister city liaison through a rigorous interview process.

“We’ve been talking to them on Facebook,” said Everly, referring to the popular social networking Web site. They also plan on creating a blog chronicling their experiences with their new French friends and host families.

The Cary Sister Cities organization, founded in 1989, follows the mission of the national People-to-People initiative started by President Dwight Eisenhower after World War II to promote personal relationships among nations as well as understanding and world peace. The organization is open to all local residents interested in being host families, assisting with fundraisers and furthering Sister Cities awareness throughout the Triangle Area.

This year the association is focusing its exchanges with Le Touquet and already sent a group to culinary school there in March. Each year they focus on one sister city of the four they foster in France, Taiwan, Ireland and Canada.

The selection process for the teen ambassadors took into consideration their community involvement, volunteer work and level of French language skills. The students will pay for their own airfare, but once they arrive, the Le Touquet government hosts them for the rest of their trip.

“We drew up an application that was pretty involved,” said Ginny Lou Laughlin, Sister Cities president for the past two years. “We also did personal interviews to assess their social skills.”

Parents also participated in the process, socializing with other participants’ families and sharing their fears about sending their teenagers to France unescorted. “The parents were cautious at first about sending their kids overseas alone,” said Laughlin. “But the Le Touquet government is sponsoring this, so we have no questions about how safe it is.”

The teens, asked if they knew the drinking age in France, were quick to answer that it is 16, but then became serious about how important this trip is for them. “We’ll be responsible,” said Elder, 17, of Athens High School. “We’re representing Cary.”