A fifteen-student Redwood group visited France for nine days this June and was chaperoned by French teacher Bernadette Rattet and former campus supervisor Levi Hooks.
“We went to Paris and Nice in Provence and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was incredible,” junior Victoria Gioia said.
The group boarded a high speed train to travel to Nice where they took bocce ball lessons, a typical French pastime, and visited a large musical festival, the Fête de la musique, which everyone enjoyed, said Rattet, a native of France.
While in Paris, prior to journeying to Nice, the group engaged in traditional tourist activities that entailed seeing the Eiffel Tower, visiting the Louvre, and exploring the streets of Paris.
“My favorite part of the trip is always to see the joy on the student’s faces. To see their smiles and see how amazed they are when we are in the bus and we turn a corner and suddenly the Eiffel tower is right there,” Rattet said. “To me that is worth all the work in the world…[the student’s] enthusiasm and their joy and the happiness that this brings everybody is just totally valuable.”
The trip was Levi’s first visit to France, and Rattet said that he picked up the basics of the language very well and had a grin on his face from morning to night.
“On a scale of one to ten, it’s closer to 11,” Levi said of the trip.
This most recent visit was the largest group Rattet had taken in her three trips to France with Redwood students since the first one in 2009.
