Fromage. Vin. La tour Eiffel. Baguettes. France is synonymous with food, fashion and leaving visitors with a certain je ne sais quoi. This spring break, several MHS students will get to experience these French staples first hand.

From March 10 to March 19, 16 students from MHS enrolled in French courses two through five as well as chaperones, teachers and 29 other students from Lafayette and Rockwood Summit will travel to France to participate in a week-long French immersion program in Nice on the French Riviera. The trip will begin with a weekend of sightseeing in Paris, followed by a train ride on France’s renowned TGV railway to the south for a week of half day classes aimed to teach students about the local culture, cuisine and way of life.

“I’m excited to spend time with my friends and my teacher to enjoy some of the last moments of senior year,” Brooke Dunn, senior, said. “I hope to try new things, explore different places and try to speak French as much as I can.”

While the trip’s foremost purpose is to expose students to the French culture and way of life outside the walls of a traditional classroom, students will partake in French language courses at a local high school in Nice.

“Every day we have a different class at a French school and we learn a different thing,” Dunn said. “One day we might learn about cooking, then in the afternoon we’ll go out and we’ll cook something and use the new vocabulary we learned that day.

Even though some have been enrolled in French classes for several continuous years, the proposition of speaking a second language in the for an entire week can be a daunting task for some students.

“I’m going to try to speak French as much as possible, but I am a little worried about the strength of my French speaking abilities,” Hannah Bullington, senior, said.

Della Thompson, French teacher, has taken students abroad four times and hopes organizing this fifth trip instills a love of French language and culture into the hearts of the students she’s chaperoning.

“I think it’s important for students to have an experience like this and I love sharing the French culture and language with them,” Thompson said. “I hope they feel that they can communicate in French, not just with me, but with other people and that it’s possible for them to go back and do it on their own when they’re in college.

One thing Thompson is looking forward to is revisiting a place she hasn’t been to since her early years out of college.

“I went to Nice right after I got out of college as a teaching assistant at a French high school in 1989 and I haven’t been back since,” Thompson said. “It’ll be neat for me to see how things have changed because I have my memories of what it was like.