Euro Trip

<span>A group of Steeleville students and teachers recently took a trip through Europe, visiting four cities and four countries on 11 days from June 12 to 22.</span>

<span>The trip was affiliated through Education First (EF), which focuses on "providing life-changing education for global citizens" according to its website, and was not a school-sponsored trip.</span>

<span>"All of the participants have been in my class or are in my class now," said Steeleville High School teacher Michelle Mohr, who help coordinate the trip. "I had heard about this company through Pinckneyville and I thought I'd try it."</span>

<span>The group of 15 spent two days in Amsterdam, three in Paris and finished the trip with a three-day excursion in London.</span>

<span>"What really got my attention on this tour was Amsterdam," Mohr said. "I wanted to take the students to the Anne Frank House."</span>

<span>Anne Frank is one of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust and hid from German police with her family from 1942 to 1944 in a building where her father worked in Amsterdam.</span>

<span>She penned a diary, "The Diary of a Young Girl," that chronicled her life in hiding.</span>

<span>"We were actually with three other groups," said Mohr, who added all the groups shared an evening meal together every day that featuring local cuisine. "We were with a group from Virginia, Idaho and Utah.</span>

<span>"We were all together in the same bus and we started out with a walking tour and then a bus tour of Amsterdam."</span>

<span>Prior to arrival in Paris on June 16, the Steeleville group had a one-day excursion in Brussels, where the students got to tour European Union buildings and the Rijksmusem, which is a national Netherlands museum dedicated to arts and history.</span>

<span>"To break up the drive from Amsterdam to Paris, which was eight hours, EF set us up with a night in Brussels," Mohr said.</span>

<span>For the next three days, the group spent time visiting the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Arc de Triomphe and other landmarks.</span>

<span>"I've been to Paris before, but I love London," Mohr said. "A lot of the group climbed the Eiffel Tower and that was a cool experience.</span>

<span>The group opted to take the extra three-day excursion to London, during which the students visited Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and other locations.</span>

<span>"One of the things the students had to adjust to is ice is not common, even if you ask for it," Mohr said. "It drove them crazy. I had a lot of Harry Potter fans on this trip and that made (London) that much more fun."</span>