Every two summers I travel with a group of my students to Europe. I find that the experience makes them better students and that they grow and mature in immeasurable ways during the trip. I often tell people that I come back with a completely different group of students—same bodies, of course, just very changed young people!
This summer was my travel summer. I was off with a group of seventeen for a two week tour in France and Italy. As we landed in Paris, I thought of all the new experiences that awaited my students.
The first adventure was the trip to the ATM. For many of my students, the trip to Europe is their first experience handling their own finances. For some, they blow several hundred dollars the first day, not realizing that their money needs to last for ten to twelve days more. They also learn that the euro and the dollar do not have the same monetary value. When they check bank balances online, this is a quick realization.
Many of my students are very eager to try out their language skills. It’s usually about that time that they realize how very fast people talk. I love the stories about how they used their language skills to find their way back to the meeting place or negotiate a price at an open-air market. Their confidence levels increase dramatically, and their grins let me know that they are quite proud of their accomplishments.
My students also experience new foods. I always tell them that they cannot say that they don’t like something unless they try it. They know that I’ll accept and “I don’t like this” if they’ve experienced it. This trip, I had several brave ones try the escargots in France. They eagerly ordered, but once the plate of shelled creatures arrived at the table, some were a bit hesitant. A few of the boys were the first to try. Their reports of “it’s good” were the springboard for others to try. Not everyone liked, but those who were adventurous did try.
We saw many beautiful sites on the trip, and I think my students began to realize what a wonderful place this world on which we live truly is. They saw natural beauty and the beauty of structures that were thousands of years old. I heard more than once that we didn’t have anything like what they were seeing in the U.S.
The kids traveled by bus, train, plane, and boat. They toted luggage from place to place, and drank and ate many new things. Some things they liked, and some they didn’t, but they experienced them. My students encountered people of different colors who spoke very different languages and wore very different types of clothes, and they began to realize that while people are all very different, we are still the same in so many ways.
And with all of these learning experiences, I also think that they soon realized “there’s no place like home.”
This blog post ran as my column, "The Empty Nest," in the Sunday, August 7th edition of the Frederick News Post.
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