Thirty-four miles to the southeast of Paris lies majestic Fontainebleau. The Palace of Fontainebleau (where Louis IV met Leonardo da Vinci and Napoleon left his troops to go into exile) and the Forest of Fontainebleau (a national park and the former hunting grounds of the French royals) make this Paris metropolitan area popular among tourists and Parisians on day trips. The elite business school draws students from all around the world. To eight CHS students, however, the residential areas and local high schools are the real appeal of this historic city.
On March 29, members of the CHS French Club will fly to France for ten days of linguistic and cultural immersion. For the first five days, students will live with local families and attend school with a host sibling.
Liz Stern and Danelle Mosher will lead the trip together. “Liz has lead this same trip twice before… [so she] has the experience. I am teaching the French classes right now so I have more of a relationship with the students,” Mosher said.
After the family stay, the students will meet up with the trip leaders to take the train into Paris for five days of sightseeing. Mosher said, “[I am most excited about] being in Paris with the students and having them discover what it’s like to be in a different country, and different culture and speaking a different language. I think it’s going to be the most exciting seeing it through the eyes of the students.”
In preparation for the trip, the French Club has been holding regular meetings after school and during lunch since the spring of last year. “[We] meet once a week or so to prepare the scrapbooks that [the students] are going to take to families and to speak French,” said Mosher. Junior Isabelle McMullen sees the scrapbooks as “an easier way for us to explain the more thorough details of our lives…. Obviously we don’t know all the words of French so it is easier to explain using the pictures.”
Senior Cassidy Moravy-Penchansky, in addition to three years of French classes, is taking a CR more specific to the trip. “[The class] is unofficially called ‘Gallivanting Through France.’ We basically just talk about like slang stuff, how to order in a restaurant, how to use the metro… just learning about how to get by in France,” said Moravy-Penchansky. The class meets weekly. Moravy-Penchansky is nervous about “…speaking French to the natives. They speak it all the time and they are just going to laugh because I can’t speak really really well. It [will be] really nerve-racking but at the same time really thrilling.”
The trip was organized through International Student Exchange (ISE), a Long-Island based nonprofit that sends students abroad on academic year, semester and summer programs in addition to small group trips. An ISE liaison in Fontainebleau has helped make reservations and will be available as an emergency contact.
The group will return to Detroit on Sunday, April 8.
