Sitting in the Gardens of Luxembourg, in front of the French Senate, (left to right) Annika Hillmer, William Beebe, Brooklyn Beebe, Cora Hall, Savannah Morey, Jackson Lint, Zuri Moss and Hazel Marquardt have a picnic with pastries and sandwiches they bought from a local French brasserie. “I remember all of us being like, ‘Oh my God, these are so good’ because we all had been wanting to get pastries,” William said. “I just remember it being the first pastry I had, and I was like ‘oh my God’.”
While walking through the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, French III student Zuri Moss and Spanish II student Hazel Marquardt share a laugh over a funny joke. When the students took a tour of the interior of the palace, they stopped in the most famous room of the tour, which featured 17 mirrors and corresponding arched windows, overlooking the greenery of Versailles’s gardens. “I love the palace,” Moss said. “It was beautiful.”
Junior Zuri Moss, in the open gardens of the Palace of Versailles, takes a photo of Sophomore Hazel Marquardt as she poses in front of Latona’s Fountain. The students visited the palace on their second full day in Paris, and were given the opportunity to explore the vast 2000 acres of the gardens located behind the palace. “We took photos of each other the entire trip. It was a lot of fun to have somebody take photos of me while I was taking photos of them,” Moss said. “We got a lot of good photos, Instagram stories, and everything, so it was a lot of fun.”
Trying to keep her balance in front of a well-kept patch of greenery in the Gardens of Luxembourg, Annika Hillmer poses while Cora Hall snaps a photo using a digital camera. Throughout the trip, the group went to many different places that were perfect for pictures and social media. “Basically, we just had a ton of free time, and so Cora and I decided to take photos in front of these trees,” Hillmer said. “They’re very well-shaped and so all the trees are square, and so it just made this really pretty background, so we took some photos in front of [the trees].”
While taking a break for the group to use the restrooms, Cora Hall (front), Zuri Moss (middle), and Jackson Lint (back) sit on a bench in a tranquil, Parisian park. During the trip, the students were constantly on the move, so many used the little time they had to sit down and relax. “At the park, I felt very calm and at peace because it [had] beautiful scenery, and there were a lot of people, but not too many people, like it was still fun and I had all my friends around me and I was having a great time,” Moss said.
With one foot of each student on the circle, the whole group stands at the exact center of Spain. After five days in Paris, where the French learners were able to use their skills, the travelers flew to Madrid, Spain, where the Spanish students were able to use their language for the first time. “Then, when we went to Spain, everyone was like, ‘It’s a different language. Oh no!’, and I was like, ‘now you know what I felt for 5 days’,” Hazel Marquardt, a Spanish II student, said. “I’m pretty sure I was like this 5 days ago, but it was so fun to switch places. . . That was probably the best part about [the trip].”
After the first long day in Spain, Cora Hall (left) and Annika Hillmer (right) indulge in paella. Paella, a cultural Spanish dish, is made of rice, chicken, and seafood and was one of the many opportunities for the travelers to eat popular food in the countries they were visiting. “I was proud of myself for going out and trying it [paella] because I don’t try a lot of new foods, but I was in Europe, so I’m going to try new foods, so that was really fun,” Hall said. “And I was with my best friend Annika.”
Grooving to the flamenco music on stage, French III student Annika Hillmer dances with the performers. On the last day in Spain, and Hillmer’s birthday, the group attended a flamenco show, a common cultural genre of Spanish music. “We had already eaten dessert and all of a sudden they asked, ‘donde esta Annika?’, and I’m like ‘oh my God’, so I walk around, and I go up on the stage, and then they start dancing, and I don’t know how to dance, so I just started copying them,” Hillmer said.
