Every year each foreign language teacher on the trip committee leads out in planning a foreign language trip at the Berkeley Institute.

Previous years included going to Barcelona, London, Paris and last year to Lisbon and a few Spanish cities.

In 2017, Tiffany Smith-Richol, Spanish and French teacher, was nominated to plan and lead the 2018 foreign language trip seeing that she has recently lived in Paris while travelling throughout Europe for nearly six years.

Mrs Smith-Richol introduced her trip ideas to the students and they came up with the trip name “Fantastic Five Eurotrip 2018.”

The five destinations included London, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona and Venice. These destinations were chosen because out of the numerous European countries Mrs Smith-Richol spent time in, these five cities in particular were ideal for meeting our linguistic and cultural goals for many teenagers travelling to Europe for the first time.

The trip objectives were for both French and Spanish students to experience the language and culture taught in school in those mother countries, to be introduced to the English, French, Belgian, Spanish and Italian culture, and for all students to experience each country’s history, sightseeing opportunities, European shopping, traditional foods and art and learning to use the currency — the British Pound and the Euro which is used in the other four countries.

All objectives were met! We have just returned from our nine day intense but memorable journey.

Twenty-nine Berkeley Institute students attended this trip and six chaperones including principal Keisha Douglas, Spanish teachers Sandra Stowe and Shanee Grant, Mrs Watts (a student’s parent), and Mr Richol (Mrs Smith-Richol’s husband) who is from Paris and assisted in organising the trip.

The students ranged from age 15 to 18, there were four boys and 25 girls.

The means of transportation mainly included short flights, one high-speed train, the metro and walking, and coach transfers to and from the airports.

This trip was an authentic trip which did not include activities students are used to doing in the United States, there was no fast food nor a set touristic schedule made by a travel agency. It was a local European experience based on the activities and restaurants regularly visited by Mr and Mrs Richol during their time in Europe.

Students not only practised their French or Spanish but also learnt basic greetings in Chinese, Russian, German, Catalan and Arabic from friends of Mrs Smith-Richol who reside in those various European countries. The students were motivated and amazed to meet their teacher’s friends abroad because it showed them the importance of travelling and networking.

In Barcelona, Bermudian Trevor Johnstone had lunch with the group and spoke about his four-year experience living in Barcelona. He works there and speaks fluent Spanish.

Students experienced learning about and eating traditional foods from Morocco, Cuba, China, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion Island, and of course French, Spanish, Belgian, Italian and Catalan foods.

The cities visited are melting pots where you find lots of nationalities and cultures. It does not always snow during the winter in these cities; however it did this year in Paris and Brussels. A lot of the students saw snow for the very first time.

This trip was open to all students at the Berkeley Institute and quickly filled up within the first two months of advertising it. Although we had 90 students interested who signed up and close to 40 who officially registered, we had to establish a cut off point, which made our total 35 participants.

This amount of travellers is much larger than usual for our trips! The 29 students who travelled enjoyed the trip and many are curious to keep travelling and improving their foreign language skills.

For some students it was an eye-opener and different to see and experience how others live and eat outside of Bermuda.

A lot of students enjoyed it while a few others could not get used to it at all, however that is all a part of making experiences … discovering your likes and dislikes.

Students visited the London Eye, Madame Tussaud Wax Museum, indulged in a fine English afternoon tea and learnt about tea etiquette, saw the change of guards at Buckingham Palace, visited and learnt about the Eiffel Tower. They also had an opportunity to take the Metro, had a tour of the Versailles Palace, The Royal Opera House and the gardens where the grounds were beautifully covered in snow.

Other activities during the trip included eating escargots, shopping for European fashion trends, took a train to Belgium and learnt about Belgian chocolate at the museum, had authentic Belgian waffles.

Farther south, they saw an authentic flamenco show while eating tapas in Spain, visited the Barcelona football museum and stadium Camp Nou, visited the Picasso Museum. In Italy, they saw Venice’s famous carnival while riding gondolas and so much more!

“The Fantastic Five Eurotrip was an excellent, unique and authentic foreign language trip where students experienced five countries and did so much. This was an experience of a lifetime”, principal Douglas said.

Students are already preparing for the 2019 trip being organised by Mrs Stowe. In 2019 the trip destination is Cuba.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the general public in supporting our fundraising events such as the bake sales, tag days, Latin Nights, the codfish breakfast, among others throughout 2017. Many of you saw the motivated students, spoke to them about the trip, gave your own European travelling and language experiences, and just gave donations for those reasons. Your support is much appreciated.

• Tiffany L Smith-Richol teaches French and Spanish teacher in the Department of Foreign Languages at the Berkeley Institute