Many blogs later, local high school students return from France

The Cape Fear Global Club has returned from their trip to France, and they have plenty of stories to tell. "For many of our students, it was the first time they'd been out of the country, some of them had never been on an airplane before,” said teacher chaperone Kelli Kidwell. “For the first time ever, they realized the world was bigger than Wilmington, or North Carolina, or the United States." While traveling through Europe, students documented the details of their adventures in an online blog. Keith Fraser, a senior in high school, reported, "Going to Paris and picnicking at the bottom of the Eiffel tower and just looking up and seeing the skyline, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre was just so unbelievable and I just think we all couldn't imagine we're eating lunch at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower in France." The students’ fondest memory was undoubtedly seeing President Obama speak. The President was visiting Strasbourg for the NATO summit. According to ninth grader Cole Carter, "The police were all over the city we were in for the first week. I think it was three-fourths of the total police force of France in that one city.” One of the teachers compares blogging to growing up writing about her travels in a journal. "You begin to think what it really meant to you and if someone does read this, what do you need to tell them, as oppose to just telling yourself what you wanted to know or what you wanted to remember. It's almost like you could teach other people through your journal,” said Hilary Peoples. The trip had a few challenges, but the biggest challenge for students seemed to be getting used to French technology. "The keyboards, the letters are all mixed up compared to ours,” said Rianne Whittington. “So we would sit there and we would attempt to type and we would be really slow and they would laugh at us, but you know we tried." This wasn't the students’ only television interview. They were also interviewed about their travels by a national television station in France. They said this trip was the trip of a lifetime, and they have the blogs to prove it!