The French Exchange was Awesome!

10/19/2023

This past couple weeks BBA enjoyed the visit of our French friends from our sister school in Pau, France. They enjoyed attending classes with their American correspondents, climbing mountains all over the area, carving pumpkins, eating cider donuts, doing the slide at Bromley Mtn, trying a maple creamee, and seeing the fall foliage. They visited the Vermont Country Store, Orvis, Dutton’s, Bob’s Diner, and the Northshire Bookstore. Field trips were taken to Shelburne Museum, the Bennington Monument, the Robert Frost house, and the Maple Museum.

At BBA they toured Farm and Food Studies and Hildene and spent a day at the Mountain Campus. They were blown away by the facilities and the variety of activities going on here.

We finished off their visit with a full Thanksgiving themed potluck dinner to show off local American cuisine. Michelle Emery would like to thank all the faculty and staff who worked to make this visit possible. She is deeply grateful to work somewhere that places such a high value on these sorts of authentic experiences for the students that make learning exciting and meaningful.

BBA students will have their reciprocal visit in February 2024, spending a week in Pau in the Béarn region in south-western France plus a week in Paris.

One French participant reflected, “Vermont is a beautiful state that we were able to discover. Thankfully this trip was organized at this time of the year so we were lucky enough to see the beautiful colors of the trees. When we did the tour of BBA we were all completely shocked by everything this school has to offer. There’s subjects for all passions. You are lucky to be at this school and we were lucky to live our American high school experience here.”

Deepest thanks to all organizers, hosts, and participants of this special exchange!

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