- Four students getting ready to go for a ride on the toboggan slide.
On Sunday, February 15, twenty-four NFA World Language students traveled to Quebec City, Canada for three days with French teacher Ms. Fisher-Orzolek and former NFA French teacher Mrs. Feldman. They had lots of fun visiting the Château Frontenac and the famous Ice Hotel, taking a ride on the toboggan slide constructed on the boardwalk outside the Château Frontenac, sledding and ice skating at the Village Vacances, eating a hearty Québécois dinner and dancing at La Cabane à Pierre, an authentic French-Canadian sugar shack, followed by maple taffy on real snow (la tire), and lastly, sight-seeing in Old Quebec before departing on the ferry across the St. Lawrence River to meet our bus and return home. This trip abroad provided these NFA students with a wonderful opportunity to practice their French as they shopped, ordered food, and conversed with the locals while also immersing them in French-Canadian culture and history.
In October, we hosted twenty-six Italian students from Fano, Italy. We had a great time hosting them and their two instructors. They visited Boston, New York City, New Hampshire, and Newport. Additionally, two of the American host families brought their Italian exchange students on trips to Washington, D.C. and showed them much of the capitol city.
In April we traveled to Fano, Italy for two weeks. There were some sad goodbyes when we left NFA for the airport but the tears evaporated quickly and all was forgotten when our bus rolled up in Fano to the cheering crowd of the Italian host families. Our kids flew off the bus into the arms of their friends and host families.
Over the two weeks we attended school with the Italian students and went on numerous excursions. In Fano, we went on a tour of the old city with one of the English classes. Members of the English class presented information on different sites within the city. We also took a tour of the port, which is still a very important part of the culture and the economy of the city. We saw the fishermen’s neighborhood and learned about the social divisions within the town (which was rather small). We also met with the Commissioner of Education for the town of Fano who welcomed us and gave the students mementos of their visit.
The host families held a dinner in honor of our visit. We met at a restaurant and they did a beautiful job. All of the families attended and the food was delicious. It was a pleasure to talk with the parents and hear them say so many kind things about our students. Additionally, parent/teacher meetings were held the first week we were there. Every parent involved in the exchange had wonderful things to say about our students. So many of them have expressed their hopes to have the American students back in their homes. Most of the Americans left Italy with an open invitation to return to their ‘families’ at any time.
On our field trips we traveled to many places. We visited Florence, where we saw Michelangelo’s David and Michelangelo’s Slaves (sometimes called the Prisoners). We walked over the entire city, admiring Renaissance architecture, Roman arches, and a beautiful panorama of the city. The next trip was to Venice, which is a museum in and of itself. We started off with a boat ride through the grand canal, then a walk over the Ponte Rialto, through the markets, and out to St. Mark’s Square. Over the weekend the students visited different sites with their host families, from hiking in a nature preserve to visiting San Marino, a sovereign nation in the middle of Italy. The second week brought us to Urbino on Monday, where we did an art history tour of the city. We had a guide take us through the Palazzo Ducale explaining paintings by Rafael and other important renaissance artists. On Wednesday we visited Ravenna, where we traveled in Dante’s footsteps and visited his tomb. Most of the students had studied Dante or are studying him now with me so it was a really great visit. Friday morning we left with some very sad goodbyes for Rome, where we had a private walking tour through the Coliseum and the Roman Forum.
The students worked a great deal at improving their Italian, as well as learning about the culture. They are now experts on gelato, pizza, and cappuccino. I watched them interact with their host partners, families, teachers, as well as different people around town. They worked hard to speak carefully and understandably. Instead of asking their host students or me to say something for them, they asked how to say something and then went to the person and spoke to them in Italian. It was wonderful to see.
This trip is without a doubt the best two weeks I have ever had as a teacher. NFA’s students were polite, friendly, hard-working, gracious, brave, and appreciative. I am incredibly proud to have taken them to Italy and to have them as representatives of our school and our country.
