Our newly developed troop began in a little town. A small, special place in all of our hearts… Normandy, France. The simple and short stay created friendships and a family bonding of sorts. We refer to ourselves as a family because though we may not be blood-related, to live with a complete stranger for two weeks is traumatizing. So, therefore, the term “family”, refers to a continuous strengthening bond that will occur over the next two weeks. And, also important, we support each other.
We take into consideration what every single individual member of our group wants to do. We would start the mornings off with a French cuisine of breakfast. Croissants, croissants, croissants! When we say continental breakfast in France we really mean… Croissants. And you would think that it’s a food one may get tired of after a short period of time, but that was not the case. Rather, we would scurry to breakfast and stuff our faces UNTIL Karl & Drew (our troop leaders) would demand we start our daily adventures.
In Normandy, our adventures consisted of walking around the town and pretending we understand or… “speak” French. The quotation marks represent the fact that, none of us really understood a word of French. Most of the time, Karl had to read us the French menu’s in English but that’s a minor detail we won’t dwell on (LOL). When we began our descent into Paris, our fun really took off. Even though it was only the second or third day on the trip, our entire group had already completely bonded. And the moment of Grace was when we reached Paris, France. Our faces were animated and our hopes were high.
Paris ended up being everything a girl dreamed about when she was younger. The streets were constantly full, the people themselves were… Beautiful. That term, beautiful, defined the entire city of Paris itself! It was lively in every sense of the word. When I first saw the Eiffel Tower, I felt like this was a dream. I was surrounded by newly found friends and I was in one of the most amazing cities in the world. I honestly didn’t think anything would be better. France was everything I wanted it to be, and more.
-Jacqueline H.
