BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) - Traveling abroad for the first time, especially without parents along, can be an eye-opening experience for teenagers.
For 19 students from Bristol Central and Bristol Eastern high schools who spent a week in France recently it was a unique experience in learning about cultural differences - and similarities.
Ashley Watson, a BCHS sophomore, said she quickly became great friends with Amandine, the French teenager who stayed with her family in Bristol last year. This year Ashley got to chance to live with Amandine’s family. “My favorite part of the trip was when we would get home late from activities of the day and I’d walk in the house with my French friend,” she said. “There was always a hot, fresh meal on the table and we would all sit down together, eat, share stories, and joke with each other. Those are the times that I will always remember.”
She contrasted the calm meals with her own family, where everyone seems to be rushing around so much, saying “we don’t get to sit down for a nice meal every single day like that.” ’’Participating in this exchange my freshman and sophomore years makes me want to do it again my junior and senior years!” she added.
For 14 years now, BCHS has a student exchange system with the village of La Queue lez Yvelines, located about 40 minutes outside of Paris, in which French students visit here in even numbered years and Bristol students travel there in odd-numbered ones.
Anya Rochester, BCHS French/Spanish teacher who was one of the chaperones for the trip, said this year for the first time they invited BEHS students to come along. Six of them did, along with BEHS world languages teacher Kelly Lynne Thibodeau.
They stayed with families in a quiet agricultural area that BCHS junior Ryan DiNoia (son of chaperone and Latin teacher Kelly Monahan-DiNoia) said was as different from the hustle-bustle of Paris as “New York and Wyoming.”
Ryan stayed with the family of a French teenager named Paul. One day he, Paul, fellow Bristol student Hunter Damon-Smith, and Hunter’s host teenager Antoine, went into Paris to hang out and watch a major league soccer game at the Stade de France. “It was pretty cool,” Ryan said. “It was the Paris team playing Toulouse. It was a tie at the end of the game but it was still really intense.” ’’Their English is really good. I don’t take French, but I learned a few French words,” he said, admitting that there were a few he couldn’t repeat.
As a group, the Bristol students and their chaperones visited the Eiffel Tower, took a cruise down the Seine River, rode the Roue de Paris Ferris Wheel, visited the Louvre Museum and Versailles, and took a field trip to Normandy to visit the historic sites of World War II.
Monahan-DiNoia and Rochester noted that armed security guards were more noticeable than ever in Paris this year but the residents don’t let the threat of terrorism affect their everyday lives. “You definitely see that security is ramped up, but you don’t see a difference in the people,” Rochester said.
BCHS junior Nana Ekau Affainie said she enjoyed going to the Eiffel Tower, “because it has always been a dream of mine to go to the top of it, even though I’m terrified of heights!”
However, Affainie’s favorite activity was going to the regional high school, Lycee Jean Monnet, with her French counterpart Laetitia. “The day at the school exposed me to a new perspective of viewing people and it also helped improve my social skills,” she said. “Even though most students spoke English, some didn’t. I had to come up with creative ways of communicating with those students.”
Affainie said her host family was Vietnamese-French, and she really enjoyed the French and Vietnamese food she had with them. She discovered she particularly likes baguettes. “Every morning the family would wake up really early and go to the bakery to go get me baguettes, really fresh,” she said. “Today my friend sent me a picture of one. She was like ’hey, do you miss this baguette?’ Yeah, I really do.”
Brandi Pinette, BCHS senior who has participated in the French trip twice now, said like Ashley Watson’s experience the most surprising thing for her this time was sitting down to a nice dinner with her host family.
Her French counterpart Melissa would start her school day around 9 a.m. and get out around 5 p.m. Once her homework was done, she could do whatever she wanted because French teenagers usually don’t have jobs, until the family sat down to eat at about 8 or 9 p.m., Pinette said. “They waited until everyone was home. It was really nice,” she said.
Nancy Ongany, BCHS senior, said she loved staying with a family instead of a hotel, because of the chance it gave for spending time with French kids her own age.
She also found the Parisians to be more laid back compared to New Yorkers. “In New York City people would be rushing and pushing people out of the way to get where they want to go. In Paris, people were just walking around enjoying themselves.” ’’I love traveling and this trip made me want to travel even more in my future,” Ongany said. “This trip also made me want to experience more cultures by learning new languages. If there is one thing I would change about this trip, I would make it longer.”
In contrast, Matt Ligi, BCHS senior, said he was surprised how similar his host family was to his own family, including the age of the kids and their interests. His French counterpart Jeremy and he shared an interest in soccer, and they both had brothers who were interested in engineering and architecture. “I thought they were going to be different but everything was the same,” he joked.
Rochester and Monahan-DiNoia passed on a message from Frances Sfeir, the mother of the French family that hosted BCHS freshman Nadine Masayda.
Sfeir said Nadine proved to be “very kind and thoughtful and impressively bright for her young age,” and her own daughter Ashley enjoyed her visit to Bristol the year before. “These are memories that will last for many years to come and will help them to want to broaden their horizons and open their minds to others,” Sfeir wrote.
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Information from: The Bristol Press, https://www.bristolpress.com
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