TAHS group due in Barcelona Thursday
Ten Tracy Area High School seniors are en route to Spain.
The group, accompanied by chaperones Pam Anderson and Shorty Engel, left the high school parking lot at 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, for a 5:10 a.m. Wednesday connecting flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.
After flying to Miami, the travelers were ticketed for a non-stop trip to Spain. American Airlines Flight 112 was scheduled to arrive in Barcelona at 8:50 a.m. Thursday.
TAHS students on the trip are Hannah Brockway, Courtney Horner, Hannah Jensen, Anna Johnston, Jessica Meyer, Katrina Olson, Victoria Schons, Anna Soupir, Alexis Tauer, and Lucas Timmerman. The delegation is traveling with 27 students and three adults from Maple Lake through the Language and Friendship organization.
The Minnesota travelers will spend a week touring sites in Barcelona, Madrid, and Segovia. On March 27, the Tracy Area students are scheduled to begin stays with families in Valladolid.
Return flights are scheduled April 4, with a 7:45 p.m. arrival targeted in the Twin Cities.
All of the TAHS students are third-year Spanish students, in a class taught by Anderson. Engel is a retired TAHS French teacher, who led many student study trips to France.
Tracy students spent their last days before departure packing bags. Each student was required to weigh their luggage to ensure that it didn’t exceed airline limits.
While in Spain, students will be able to test the Spanish-speaking skills they have acquired in class. Anderson expressed confidence that they would all get along just fine with their second language.
Students have raised money to help defray expenses for the trip.
The trip resumes a long tradition of TAHS language students taking a spring study trip to Europe. Last year, due to a lack of student sign-ups, a trip wasn’t held, snapping a decades-long string of TAHS language trips to Spain and France.