The two Bachelor of Social Work degree majors participated in the College’s Summer Study Abroad Program in Paris where they were first introduced to the City of Light, and they consider themselves forever changed.

“The world becomes so much smaller when you travel,” says Luz, 21, noting that dreams of adventure and international travel no longer seem impossible once you’ve made the first trip.

And, agrees Perla, 19, “You develop a wider view of the world. It becomes easy to see how narrow-minded your views of the world are, and you can understand what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes.”

Both coeds have been in “someone else’s” shoes before. Both are natives of Mexico, and each immigrated to the U.S. at around the age of 13. They remember what it’s like to immerse themselves in a new language in a “foreign” culture.

“In order to learn another language, you have to be forced to speak it,” says Perla, who says she’s loved the French language since she was in high school where she took several levels of it.

“I’ve always loved the sounds of the French language, so I enrolled in French III last summer,” she says.

Studying French in France had the added benefit of providing the necessary immersion process, she says. In field trips with Dalton State’s Nick Carty, Associate Professor of Speech who taught in the Summer Study Abroad in Paris Program, students were required to communicate in the language as much as possible, ordering food in French and conversing in the language as much as possible.

“We would order baguettes and cheese and have picnics at the cemetery,” recalls Luz, who says the students “educated” their palettes by sampling escargot and other French delicacies. They attended movies in small French movie theaters, learned to navigate the bus schedules around town, and visited the palace of Versailles.

One of the highlights of the trip came when they visited Mademoiselle Mimi Bopp, who served as the former assistant to French General Charles de Gaulle during World War II.

“Mr. Carty knew her, and he arranged for us to meet with her at her house,” says Perla, recalling that the visit was “very interesting. She told us all about having to go into hiding during the war.”

Luz’s favorite sightseeing trip was to the Louvre where she saw the famed portrait of the Mona Lisa. She also enjoyed weekend trips to Rome and Venice.

While the duo found Venice to be beautiful, they especially enjoyed visiting Rome and seeing the splendor of the Vatican.

“In Rome,” says Perla, “we saw the clash of two different cultures. On one side, there were lots of cars and noise, like a big modern city. But next to that we saw the ruins and buildings built thousands of years ago, like the Coliseum.”

They also enjoyed the adventure of staying in youth hostels during weekend trips to places like LaRochelle, a coastal town in the south of France.

Both Luz and Perla received Summer Study Abroad Program scholarships from Dalton State to help defray the costs of their trip. And they both agree that the cost of studying abroad was worth every penny.

“I want to go back,” says Perla, who is planning to study abroad again, perhaps as early as next summer, when she hopes to attend another Summer Study Abroad Program in France, next time in Tours.