Next month, the French Club will take their journey to Quebec City in Canada.

The Quebec trip will be overseen by French teacher Madame Burich, who has scheduled a plethora of activities for the trip, such as snowshoeing, dog sledding, ice skating, and visiting an ice hotel. Burich said, “We also make maple taffy in the snow where you take warm maple syrup and you let it sit for 20 seconds, and you take a popsicle stick and roll it and it tastes like taffy.

“We go to something called a sugar shack – it’s an old school restaurant like a cabin where there’s folk music and the kids eat ham and potatoes with maple syrup-drenched on top of it,” Burich said.

This year, Burich has also planned to incorporate new activities into the Quebec trip, such as touring an artillery museum. Burich said, “We are going to walk the plains of Abraham where the battle for Quebec was fought with the British.”

Burich felt very fortunate when she learned that the Quebec trip was back this year after it was canceled last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Burich said, “Mayfield has been very gracious with letting us go.”

Canada’s Covid-19 rules have caused some challenges for Burich and the group, such as required vaccinations.
Burich said, “Some parents didn’t want to vaccinate their child so they weren’t able to go. After being vaccinated, you have to prove a negative Covid test 72 hours before entry into Canada. Some of those challenges caused issues for parents who just couldn’t guarantee those things in a timely fashion.”

French Club member Tigran Baghdasaryan isn’t too concerned about any challenges regarding Covid-19. He said, “I know Canada is crazy about Covid and mandating and stuff but I don’t think there will be much to worry about other than keeping a mask on and whatnot.”

Baghdasaryan wanted to go on the Quebec trip because Quebec is a French-speaking, as well as an English-speaking, part of Canada. Baghdasaryan said, “We’re learning French, so I think it’d be cool to try speaking French in public.”

The activity Baghdasaryan is most excited to participate in at Quebec is dogsledding. Baghdasaryan said, “That seems like something you wouldn’t do at all in the US, it’s something you’d do in Alaska or something. It sounds super cool, and it sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

French Club member Steven Ribovich is also most interested in sledding in Quebec. He said, “We spend a lot of time outside, and last time the weather was really good for it.”

This will be Ribovich’s second trip to Quebec, as he went on the trip in 2020 as a sophomore, and he hopes that the navigation and mapping goes as well as it did during his first trip. Ribovich said, “We didn’t get lost at all there during my first trip.”

The French Club leaves for Quebec on the Thurday before Presidents’ Day weekend.