DELTA, B.C. -- Instead of learning Canada's language and attending its schools, some international students in B.C. are getting to appreciate the country's outdoors by visiting parks and lakes.

Deneka Michaud, spokeswoman for the Delta School District, says administrators will be taking students for several more days of field trips that would get them to appreciate Canadian culture and geography.

The district is trying to keep its international students busy because a provincewide teachers strike has delayed the start of school indefinitely, and students will not get refunded their annual $13,000 payment for time missed.

Students may get 50 per cent of their cash back if they withdraw before the end of September, but no refunds will be given afterwards, Michaud said.

But she added the district will probably make plans to adapt to the situation if the strike forces the students -- which number in the hundreds -- to keep missing class.

Extending annual orientations into the second week of school is one of those adaptations.

"There's a variety of different activities they will do," said Michaud. "Field trips to places like local lakes, not only to get outside and meet each other but also to do things that are Canadian like canoeing."

She said the district will not be losing money because of the added orientations since the cash will be coming from the international student fund as opposed to the one for domestic students.

Staff taking students on the trips would be working regardless of whether the strike was happening, Michaud said.

Last year, the district received about $7 million from international students, $4 million of which was net revenue.

There were about 950 international students who attended the district and roughly half of them paid and stayed for an entire school year.

Michaud said the district is expecting similar, if not bigger numbers this year.

This week's set of orientation activities comes after yet another failed attempt at bargaining between teachers and government.

On Saturday, Education Minister Peter Fassbender turned down a proposal from the teachers that would try to end -- or at least suspend -- the ongoing strike.

Fassbender said government would not enter binding arbitration with the union, saying the proposal was not serious, but teachers fired back, saying government was being inflexible.

Jim Iker, president of the BC Teachers' Federation, said the union would ask members to vote on ending the strike if the province agreed to the idea.

But government negotiator Peter Cameron said the idea was questionable since the province did not receive a written proposal nor did it get a guarantee to end the job action.

If the both sides had agreed, they would have appointed a third party to hammer out contract details teachers and government would be forced to agree on.

Fassbender also said he was reluctant to arbitration and alluded to a costly dispute between doctors and government where an arbitrator awarded doctors hundreds of millions of dollars.

To pay the bills, the province was then forced to raise the provincial sales tax in 2002.

Cameron has said his best hope in ending the strike lies in talks with a veteran mediator.

Vince Ready is in contact with both sides and is monitoring the situation, Cameron said.

Ready has a reputation for solving even the toughest labour disputes, but he had previously walked away from bargaining just before school was supposed to start, saying government and teachers were too far apart.

The province's 40,000 teachers went on strike two weeks before the summer break and pay, class size and support staff levels are the sticking points.