J'aime Quebec
Categories: Press Releases Archive
October 2008 welcomed 12 Canadian students from Québec and their teachers to New College Telford. Their stay began in London, taking them through to Telford where they stayed a week with host students and their families whereby seeds had been planted to develop into future friendships. Their stay took them on many adventures and they returned home anticipating our arrival during the early part of 2009.
10 French and English students boarded the plane, excitedly foreseeing the cultural, linguistic experience which lay ahead, and the long awaited reunion with their partners. Dressed in layers upon layers of warm clothing to fight the winter temperatures, they wondered what they were yetto learn about the Québécois way of life.
The students began to realise how this trip, a six hour plane journey could reveal such a new world and completely transform their appreciation for varying cultural assets. They embarked upon many activities of which included snowshoeing, tobogganing, ice skating on the canal (the world’s largest ice rink!), and trips to museums, sampling the local cuisine – chips, cheese and gravy! - and most of all, taking part in the college day to day routine, whilst learning how different it was to our own education system.
The ten days went more quickly than they had imagined and saying goodbye at the end of the trip proved to be very emotional. Nobody predicted that it would be such a thought provoking experience and that the partners they stayed with would become such close friends. Since returning, they have learnt more about themselves as individuals and their ambitions which they wish to follow in the future, perhaps even for some working and living in the beautiful, rich province of Québec later in life.
“If you’ve ever been to a place before and come back home feeling like something inside you has changed, something that had been longing to break free from you has awoken and you feel alive inside, and that you have all this energy waiting to burst out, to explode into one big supernova of emotion, you’ll understand how we feel.” – Becky Allen and Amy Smith. Second year French students at the college and wrote this piece.
