That's how Carrie Van Huss feels after spending a week in Guadeloupe, a former French territory among the Lesser Antilles Islands in the Caribbean. Still, at the end of the week, she found it hard to go back home. Kathy Lattimer, a French teacher at North Central, has taken two previous school trips to Guadeloupe. For many of our students the trip is a first very intimate experience coping with a diverse population and a first opportunity to learn about another culture. Preparations include workshops with parents and after-school meetings for students only.
Teenagers also learn about foreign survival skills.
It was the language itself that stumped some. Doug Maurer is in his third year of French. His grammar is not perfect, but he is not shy about talking. In spite of that, he had a hard time speaking to his correspondent and getting into conversations with the rest of the family. Once there, I froze.