Bonne année!!!  

I hope you have all had a stress-free Christmas and break so far!  

Just a reminder that room assignments for non-students and families are due to our trip coordinator by December 31st. We will take care of student rooming during our tour. 

I found another cool website to share with you regarding Paris: http://girlsguidetoparis.com/paris-travel-resources#.UN8JsVJ3Go0  It has some beautiful pictures and blogs that are unique to this site. Hopefully you have a chance to give it a glance. Starting today I will start my webquest for interesting Italy sites. 

My best wishes to you and your families for a happy, healthy 2013!!

The Countdown Continues

Buon giorno tutti!

We are officially 100 days away from departure, it is definitely going quickly.

When you get a chance, please verify all Emergency Contact information and change anything that may need to be changed. It is vital that I have correct information with us during our adventure.

Don't forget, we have a meeting on Thursday, December 13th at 5:00 in room 249 at Burges High School.

In the meantime, I hope you are all doing well and looking forward to the Holidays.  I found this in one of the EF blogs earlier today and thought it was a cool article to share, especially at this time of the year:

All my best! Ciao!!

Bonjour les voyageurs!!

We are 122 days out from travel and I just want to make sure that everyone is on the way to getting documents in order. According to EF Tours, at this point, we should have passports in hand or have applied for them. At the very least, please have appointments made in order to apply.

If you have any special travel arrangements, stay ahead or stay behinds, we need to submit those requests with EF immediately.

Anyone who is not on the monthly payment plan with EF, please make sure that payments are being made. I do not want anyone to be cancelled. All paying participants balances are due in full, unless on the automatic payment plan. If you have any questions or concerns, please call EF customer service, 877-205-9909, they are amazingly helpful.

110 days prior to departure (November 25th) is the LAST day to change names without minimum $200 fee! Please confirm that all first, middle and last names are spelled correctly on your enrollment and match EXACTLY as they appear on their passports. Also, confirm all birth dates are listed and correct.

I would like to have a meeting on Thursday, December 13 at 5 pm in room 249 at Burges. This will give everyone a chance to get together and ask anymore questions that may have come up. I realize that December is a busy time and if you can not make it, that is completely understandable. I will send all information after the meeting. If you are able to make the meeting, and have not already given me a copy of the picture page of your passport, please bring it in December.

Until then, please enjoy your Thanksgiving and your time with family.
A la prochaine!! (until next time)

We are officially less than 160 days from our departure. I hope that everyone is doing well.  Just a couple of reminders before we go...

1. I will need a copy of your passport photo page before we leave, always good to have just in case
2. I am also asking everyone for tip money in advance of departure - $10 per person per day that we are in Europe - so $80 in total from each traveler.

We have spent some time in the library talking about e-books and audio books, both excellent items to have for the time spent in airports, on airplanes and maybe even in the hotel (in case of jetlag). If you have a compatible device (phone, tablet, laptop), take advantage of the free items available for loan from the Burges library or public library. Some books are even available to own for free from amazon.com (if you own a Kindle or have the Kindle app). Using these electronic options makes traveling easier and makes carry-ons a whole lot lighter. 

As always, if you have any questions, please contact me...chances are if you have a question, someone else is wondering the same thing!!!

Ciao!!

Passports

Bonjour tout le monde!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summers. Just wanted to double check that everyone is working on obtaining passports. We are fortunate that we have several locations in El Paso where we can apply for passports: UTEP Office of International Studies, El Paso passport agency and the United States Post Office.  
For those of you who already have passports, please double check the expiration date, just to be sure that it will be valid during our trip.

From time to time, I will be including some websites on here that may be of interest to you. They will be from both France and Italy and will hopefully help get you more excited about our voyage.

I would really like to have a get together in the next few weeks to discuss some things that I need to get to  our trip coordinator. I will try to meet with those of you at Burges during the first week of school and with parents after school one of those days.

~à la prochaine!~ (until next time)

The countdown begins

We are 8 months away from our departure. I am creating this blog to help all of us along the way. I plan to use this to keep parents, family and friends up to date during our voyage in the spring. Please check back frequently to see any added information that is relevant to our trip.