France, take two

So I'm back again, but this time I have 30 students and 4 other adults. There's nothing to stop your heart quite like getting 30 students through luggage check, security check and boarded on a plane. Even more is when one of the students can't find a passport when you're about to go through customs in Frankfurt. It's very difficult to communicate with German security officials when you only speak English and a little bit of French. Let's just say "Dankeschön" goes a long way. Disaster averted, all is good--the passport was located on the airplane. Everyone made it to France in one piece, though amazingly exhausted. It was tremendous to finally see this part of a global vision come to fruition. The battle to make this happen was uphill all of the way; there were times when my fellow chaperons and I would look at each other and wonder exactly what we had gotten ourselves into. Luckily I had a group of colleagues who believed as strongly as I do that experiences such as these can permanently change a student. Many of our students on this exchange have not ever left the country; some have never even been on an airplane. How much is it going to rock their world to see the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, different power outlets, and eat fromage blanc? So our sixteen day journey begins--A la vôtre!