Picture-perfect weather, a Rhine River boat trip, and a cheerful wine festival are a few of the pleasures German students enjoy between visits to banks, large corporations like Bayer Chemical and Siemens, small companies, a radio station and a technical university in Aachen. The French students tour France under the same sunny sky and a similar itinerary of mixing business and pleasure. Parisian cafes, country inns and companies hold equal fascination. They visit museums and savor French food. In Lyons, they tour the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the international airport, and they learn about the Albertville Olympics at the regional center for the lodging of athletes.
Every French student keeps a journal, writing two pages nightly about the day's events.
The next day, each student must find a French person of any age to go through the two pages of journal and make corrections. But they make more than corrections, they make friends. The trip challenges more than just the students' facility with the language. For Laurie Brown, whose trip to France was her first abroad, the experience was a revelation. When you can understand the language, it doesn't feel foreign.