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I've known since October that I was going to England with one of my schools to visit their penpals. I was really excited about it at first, but as we got closer and closer to the departure date, I got more and more anxious. Honestly, who thought taking 23 ten-year-olds to another country was a good idea?!
In typical French fashion, I had almost no information or even an up-to-date itinerary. I remember going on school trips in junior high, and there were tons of parent meetings, permission slips, information sessions, etc. Not so much for this trip. I was told about two weeks before we left to make sure to pack my sleeping bag and pillow and show up at 11am. Sleeping bag and pillow? Great...
We managed to get all twenty-seven of us (23 fifth graders and 4 adult chaperones) and all of our luggage (your baggage gets quite voluminous when you have to pack a sleeping bag, pillow, a gift for English families, as well as clothing) on the bus and we hit the road about 11:30am.
We nearly missed the ferry from Calais to Dover because there was a really long line of buses
waiting to go through immigration. Florence (the English teacher and the organizer of this trip), told the immigration officer that everyone on the bus was French. Clearly she forgot that I'm American. Normally I wouldn't care, but England is pretty tough on passport control and all that jazz, so I jumped up and quickly explained to the nice English lady what my situation is, she checked my visa, and told me she'd enter a note in the computer that there was an American girl stowed away on a French bus so that I could reenter France without a problem. We pulled onto the ferry about three minutes before they closed everything up and set off towards the White Cliffs of Dover.
I've never been on the ferry to England, so this was exciting for me. But this is also where the stress began. The kids were overwhelmed and squealed loudly every time you could feel the boat move. Also, they all wanted to exchange their euros for pounds, so I was in charge of that. Trying to corral twenty-three kids on a boat was not easy...they all wanted to go different places and see different things. I was very
happy when we landed at Dover. Turns out the White Cliffs are really only white from a distance...up close, they're rather ugly. Oh well.
After driving about three hours to get to the village, we got really lost. The map wasn't very clear, and the bus driver was very frustrated. We pulled up next to a convenience store and all eyes turned to me. As the only native English-speaker (which clearly also makes me an expert on England), I was responsible for asking for, remembering, translating, and making sure we correctly followed all directions. Great. After asking about forty people for directions, the bus driver deciding his GPS was better at directions than me (it wasn't), getting stuck in the hedgerows in the tiny lane the GPS told us to take, and asking about forty more people for directions, we made it to the school.
I knew the school was throwing a barbecue for us, and I explained to the French kids that this probably meant hamburgers and hot dogs. They were appalled. French barbecues are typically sausages and merguez (a spicy type of sausage) eaten with (surprise!) baguettes and mayonnaise. You can imagine my horror when I
was first presented with this in France, so I was looking forward to expanding the cultural and culinary horizons of my little students. Lo and behold, there were indeed hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner, and the kids complained about how the hamburgers tasted different from French hamburgers and there were raisins in the grated carrots and how they thought the juice drinks were weird. Oh lord.
Fortunately, the kids didn't stay so picky (I think they were just tired from the eight hour journey from Raimbeaucourt to Curridge), and the rest of the food we ate was pretty universally kid-friendly. Well, except for the traditional English breakfast. The kids think eating baked beans for breakfast is the most disgusting idea ever, though once we convinced many of them to try it, they rather enjoyed them. We also got split up into small groups and ate dinner with English families the next night. My three French girls were really well behaved, and the English mother was so happy I spoke English and could translate. She pretty much fed us to bursting: tea and cakes when we first got home, shepherd's pie and tons of vegetables, and TWO desserts.
The village of Curridge is rather wealthy, and it's very small and quaint. We went on a few walks through pastures with horses, through the woods, past meadows full of yellow flowers, and we stopped every so often so the kids could draw the scenes. They also worked with an artist to do a bilingual art project, and now each school has a copy of their work. I missed this art workshop, though, since Monsieur Dupuis (the director of my school) and I went shopping for breakfast and lunch food. While I was calculating how many slices of bread we'd need, he was perusing the alcohol aisle trying to locate the perfect apératif for the teachers. He settled on a bottle of sparkling wine, which we drank on our last night while making sandwiches for the next day's lunch. He sent all the kids upstairs to pack, closed the door to the kitchen, and if anyone knocked, he yelled back saying we were busy and to come back later.
Oh, I should explain where we were staying. They had rented Thirtover Place, a Girl Guiding campsite. Basically, we were sleeping in a big house-cabin-type building. The kids slept in
four dorm-style rooms, and there were three showers and four toilets for all of us. Plus there was a kitchen, and we had to prepare about half of our meals. You can imagine the amount of organization required to make this work. The French teachers, however, were VERY laid back. They kept saying things would work out, everything would be fine. Well, let me tell you, letting things "work out" doesn't really cut it when you've got 23 hungry, tired, and dirty ten-year-olds. I made shopping lists, organized meal preparation, assigned tasks to the other teachers, came up with a showering schedule for the kids, and was in charge of translating pretty much everything. Thank God I was a Girl Scout for all those years! The teachers joked about how I took charge and got things done because I tend to be on the quiet side at school (it's hard to be my usual outgoing (and, okay, occasionally bossy) self when I'm speaking French and in a still somewhat unfamiliar setting).
We managed to survive the trip, even though we were all sleep-deprived (the French teachers didn't feel it was necessary to enforce a bedtime, and I was up
at 6am to start preparing breakfast for the kids). We spent our evenings playing football (soccer to all you Americans out there), though I quickly retired from that sport. My career was very short-lived. First, Maxence (one of my favorites) whacked me in the ankle...I still have a purple bruise three weeks later. Then, they kicked the ball down a slope, and they were all hesitant to go get it. I thought this was because it was a steep slope that ended abruptly with a barbed wire fence. So I volunteer to get it, jump down the slope, and immediately feel like someone is stabbing my ankles with a knife. Turns out the ball was in a massive patch of stinging nettles. Fabulous. Then, after our football match, the kids would perform skits for us until nearly midnight.
Our last day there, the English kids had a goodbye disco for us. One of their kids is a DJ, so he played pop music and set up his colored, flashing lights. Watching the kids, awkward and shy regardless of their nationality, interact and dance despite not speaking the same language was really interesting. That night, though, we had to deal
with many crying girls. Apparently they all fell in love with an English boy. I overheard one of the girls say, "I've never loved someone like I love Mitchell!" Oy. Fortunately the tears ended that night, and we had a low-key tour of Newbury (the nearby "big" town) the next day. The kids had an hour to spend their money, but none of them were familiar with English money, so I counted and recounted their money for them. Thankfully the shopkeepers were really patient with us, as I made all the kids say hello, please, thank you, goodbye, etc.
All in all, it was a great trip - lots of fun, if not completely exhausting. Florence and M. Dupuis have already asked if I'd come back next year just to go on the trip. I'm going to write up a survival guide for next year's assistant, though they might not have one staying a full nine months like I am. That could be disastrous...
Now I must run to my afternoon classes, but at least I can eat some Jelly Babies or Dairy Milk that I brought back from England 😊
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Wendy Walker Cushing
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Perfect!!
Wow Kate! I loved your commentary on this great adventure that you enjoyed! School children and field trip in the same sentence is enough to give someone a great visual and to make them happy they were not in charge! So much fun but so many different obstacles to overcome and new experiences! You are my hero!! Pictures are beautiful! Stories are great! Those memories are priceless! That school and those children are lucky to have you! Thanks for sharing this story!!