By Angel Perkins Editor
Four Triton students made up the majority of a group that got to experiences parts of history firsthand during an Art Club study trip that took them through France and Italy. In a letter of the proposal to the Triton School Board, Triton Jr. Sr. High School Art Teacher Diana Westphal said she believed that students learned better through experience.
“They’ll be able to attend workshops in the artists’ shops in Italy,” she had explained to the board January of 2007. Approval so far in advance was needed in order to lock in travel expenses, which were a little more than $2,000 each, and which included stops in Assissi, Florence, Vatican City and Rome in Italy, and Giverny and Paris in France via planes, trains, subways and buses.

“We took every mode of transportation possible,” explained Westphal after the trip. “We walked for miles and miles.”
The Triton students, Renee Baker, Paige Davis, Brent Ross and Kayla Tutorow traveled with parent chaperones Laura Baker, Mendy Davis; Westphal and her niece, Brianna Wildermuth from Winamac High School; Plymouth Art teacher Ashley Boardman and one of her students, Kasey Litts. For 10 days (June 9 through June 18) the tour group followed a guide who led them through visits to the Louvre, to see the original Mona Lisa and other precious historical art pieces, as well as the structural science it took to create the Pantheon and Coliseum in Rome, and the decorative architecture demonstrated by visiting the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame Cathedral.
“It was nice to actually see the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s sculpture David in person as well as the many other Renaissance masterpieces and architecture,” Westphal said. “It was like living in a history book seeing all of the places and things that you read about, saw on TV and were taught in school.”
She said she felt that Florence, Italy was “by far” her favorite city her tour visited. Westphal said, “Rome wasn't particularly my favorite but the Coliseum was simply amazing.” “Being at the top of the Eiffel Tower was one of the highlights of Paris,” she explained. “It is an enormous structure and you truly get the feel for how large a city Paris is.”  
Ross, who will be a senior at Triton this fall, and the only male on the trip, agreed. “The Eiffel Tower was definitely the best,” he said. “You see this stuff in pictures but it’s really cool when you see it in person. I would have loved to stay longer.”
“The pictures that you see in books, they  give you a general idea but it’s phenomenal to see it in person,” said Mendy Davis. “In pictures, it looks nice, it looks really neat, but in person it takes your breath away. I loved Florence, Italy. It is absolutely beautiful.”
The Coliseum was her daughter Paige’s favorite attraction. She explained, “You see it in the movies but to see it in person; you’re just like, wow! We had tour guides that took us on educational tours but we had free time to tour the place and just take pictures.”
In Giverny, France they visited famed impressionist painter (Claude) Monet's house, studio and garden. “It was amazing to see all of the gardens that he planted still intact and maintained with his house and original Japanese prints that he owned still hanging on the walls,” Westphal said. “The water garden with the lilies are just as they look in his paintings.”
Though Westphal admits that the whirlwind tour was a bit of an “art and culture overload,” she said it was an experience that pictures cannot capture the real image or beauty of.
“When we went to Vatican City, it was more commercialized that I thought it would be, but once you got inside the walls of the Vatican itself it was breathtaking,” Westphal explained. “The Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica, and actually all of the Vatican were lavishly decorated with marble, bronze and major masterpieces. It was very evident that the Catholic Church had money and power.”
Westphal said that there was one form of “art” that she hadn’t expected to see while touring Europe. “I was surprised by all the graffiti on everything—even centuries old buildings in both France and Italy,” she said. “It's like they see these things every day so they don't appreciate them.”
“What surprised me was how many street vendors there were,” Paige Davis said. “People would just beg for your money or try to get you to buy everything they had.” Another unexpected lesson she learned while on the trip was the diversity of politeness.
“People were more rude in France than in Florence and Rome,” she explained. “You didn’t notice it as much there but in France, in the restaurants, they weren’t big on tourists.”
One thing Ross said he was surprised to find was that there was no ice. “We had to drink warm pop and water,” he said.
The only thing he said he would have done differently was a suggestion that he shared for those heading for the country to follow: “Check out more places to eat besides McDonald’s.”  Paige seconded the theme. “I would advise them to take snacks from home because it really is a culture shock,” she explained. “The food isn’t what you’d expect.”
Apparently mealtimes were an interesting state of affairs on their trip and a learning experience too. “Our meals were preselected,” Mendy Davis said. “But we have Americanized the foreign (French and Italian) cuisine so much that it’s not what you’re used to. It’s not really as spicy. We use oregano, basil and other spices but they just really didn’t.”
She explained that the “inside joke” of their group was the irony, “here we are in Europe and we’re eating at McDonald’s.”