Fourteen Jr. High French Immersion students from St. Mary of the Lake School spent a week in Quebec last month, polishing up their French while they polished off large pancakes and other aspects of the local culture. It was the second such trip for St. Mary students, and by all accounts it was a huge success.
One of the main purposes of the trip was to immerse the Immersion kids even further into the language. Their goal was to speak French to as many people as possible.
“They did,” says their teacher and chaperone Martine Moore. “They were amazing ambassadors of Slave Lake and really impressed our hosts with their skills in French.”
It did wonders for their confidence.
“When we got back we couldn’t stop talking French!” says Emily Fisher, one of the fearless 14.
The group stayed at the Auberge Du Mont, a former boarding school residence in the mountains outside Quebec City. The adjacent school is where they met their pen pals, a group of students they’d been corresponding with in the months leading up to the visit.
“Meeting our pen pals was a lot of fun,” says Georgia Keaveny. “We were really scared about it. Our French wasn’t as good as theirs, but they really weren’t good at English. They struggled a lot.”
When they weren’t having fun with their pen pals, they were being shown the sights in the company of guides who made things educational and fun. They took them to museums, showed them around Le Vieux Quebec, escorted them to a ‘cabane a sucre’ for a traditional meal and square dancing (“We danced so much,” says Eric Williams), and also to lots of big churches.
“You could put our church in Notre Dame about 20 times,” says Georgia.
“It makes your neck hurt to look at it because it’s so high,” adds Emily.
Another cultural episode was eating crepes in a creperie.
“The pancakes are this big!” says Garret Meyer.
It wasn’t entirely an urban excursion. The kids went snowshoeing in the bush where the snow was still two metres deep.
The group also spent a day in Montreal, visiting the Biodome, Old Montreal and the Olympic Stadium.
How much fun was the trip? Well, at least one student tried to talk her parents into moving to Quebec when she got home.
Students who made the trip were: Chelsea Mitchell, Emily Fisher, Renee Cameron, Shauna Kristoff, Danielle Denoncourt, Jaymee Tanasiuk, Georgia Keaveny, Asha Sargunaraj, Keltie Pratt, Eric Williams, Joshua Sholtz, Jonathan Thompson, Garret Meyer and Justin Sarrasin. Accompanying them were Martine Moore and parent volunteers Terry Kristoff and Elaine Thompson.

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