Cancelled School Trips Stay Cancelled

This year was full of unexpected changes and changes of expectations, especially for students who had plans for the summer/school year, but none more expensive than HUHS’s international school exchanges.

In 2020, three Hartford Union-backed trips were planned to travel over the course of the second semester of 2019’s school year and it’s following summer: the French Exchange, the Dominican Republic Trip, and the Choir trip to New York. While all those trips were cancelled, the French Summer trip this summer and the Rome and Athens trip, both which were set for 2021, were also called off.

“At first, I was pretty optimistic. I was thinking that next year is going to be fine, things are going to go back to normal after the summer. Everything’s going to be good. And we weren’t, obviously. And we still aren’t,” senior Alexis Wetzel said, one of the 26 students signed up for the Rome and Athens trip, a ten day trip to Greece and Italy which would explore Greek mythology places and other tourist areas.

According to Sheila Parker, one of the advisors going on the Rome and Athens trip, the group of students have three choices: ask for a refund now and receive the majority of the bill, delay the trip as much as possible but still continue it or take a voucher till 2023. Both Wetzel and Parker were disappointed that they weren’t able to go this coming year, however, Wetzel would still go if given the chance.

“I think that if everyone said [going on the Rome and Athens trip in 2021] was okay, I’d be okay,” Wetzel said.

While the Rome and Athens trip is still grey in terms of final plans, the trips to the Dominican Republic and to France are for sure cancelled, disappointing many students like senior Victoria Burns.

“I am still upset, but more about the entire situation rather than just the French trip getting cancelled,” Burns said. “I was very excited to be staying with her [French student host] and meeting her family, I was probably most excited just to meet my host family and go to school with them.”

The French trip, albeit smaller than the Rome and Athens trip with just 8 students, was just as anticipated. The French Exchange was fought hard for back in March of 2020, a time where the US did not know how big, or dangerous, COVID-19 truly was.

“Our colleagues in France were working desperately to create a way for us to come but it just became clearer and clearer especially as we got into March that this was not going to occur,” French teacher and co-leader of the French Trips Coral Loebel said. “Mrs. Piittmann and I made the decision that we were probably going to have to cancel and we had canceled [the Exchange] 3-4 days before they shut the country down.”

Like Loebel and Piittmann with the French Exchange Trip, Kelly Shultz, head of the Dominican Republic Trip, also had to plan for the future of their trip.

“We were contacted by the travel company saying that we had the option to postpone our trip and push it back to June 2021,” Shultz said. “We made the final decision knowing that unfortunately, the COVID-19 situation would not be over by the time we would travel again in June of 2021.”

The Dominican Republic trip had 30 students signed up with both educational and leisurely activities planned.

While all of these trips are educational upfront, there is something more, something a bit more personal and different from the information one receives in class, something a bit more special.

For Wetzel, a student who’s been studying Greek mythology for years in multiple classes, going on a trip aimed at the ancient myths would be worth something more than just a better understanding of material.

“It’s not even for school.It’s not at all,” Wetzel said. “It’s for myself. I have seen these things in pictures and think it'd just be so amazing to see them in person after learning about them. Not even to learn more for class but just because i think it’d be an amazing experience to see them in person, then.”

For Ellen Heimermann, it’s about fun and life time firsts.

“I was excited about just going and living the experience. I have never been out of this country or on an airplane and I love to travel. It would have been especially fun to live the experience with friends instead of family.”

Even the teachers believe there is something about travelling internationally that transcends just information gathering. It is a clarity that is bigger than a simple grasp of information. It’s comprehension. Appreciation. A full well rounded understanding.

“I don’t care if it’s for a week or whether it's for a month or whatever it has an impact in your ability to produce the language a little bit more accurately,” Loebel said.. “You have a much better understanding of that this is a global society that we’re in and that while people are different from us, they’re still the same. People are people. I think that helps to broaden someone’s horizons, to make them think a little bit more outside the box of their own existence.”

These trips work like an open door. In a society where people know only what they know, trips to places students only get to see in pictures and read in textbooks makes the information real.

“I believe that our world is becoming so much smaller with all of the technology,” Parker said. “We still have [the] monuments that were put to the gods, and the idea that the Europeans retained this history and embraced it and the fact that we can read about these places and you go there and they’re really there.”