{"id":5911,"date":"2016-01-25T09:44:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T14:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/?p=5911"},"modified":"2016-01-13T12:45:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T17:45:33","slug":"davena_france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/davena_france","title":{"rendered":"Group Leader Spotlight: Davena"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Davena, French teacher<\/p><\/div>\n

For Davena, travel and education go hand in hand. Her first trip to France was a two-year stay with her university\u2019s exchange program, which inspired her career as a French teacher. So when it came to sharing her love of French culture as an educator, taking her students to France was almost a given.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t truly understand the culture without going there,\u201d says Davena, who credits her affinity for all things French to living with a local family during her university exchange. As such, she couldn\u2019t imagine an educational tour to France without a home-stay\u2014not exactly a standard component on most student tours.
\n\u201cMy predecessor designed and organized the trips herself,\u201d Davena explains, \u201cbut the thought of being responsible for all the planning and logistics for a group was really scary to me.\u201d After a false start with another company, Davena found Explorica. \u201cThe pricing was better, and my program consultant made it easy to work in a home-stay in the middle of the tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davena\u2019s trips begin like most Explorica tours, touring French cities and staying in hotels. \u201cThen we stop in Savenay, the town of our sister high school, and spend three to five days living with local families.\u201d Davena\u2019s students accompany their hosts to school, attend classes, and go out on the weekends. \u201cIt makes the tour for my students,\u201d says Davena, \u201cand we couldn\u2019t do it without Explorica\u2019s flexibility. The competitive pricing makes the trip possible\u2014no other company would work with us on that\u2014and the tour directors are incredible. They\u2019re great about suggesting additional freebies they think the kids will like. And they always do. It\u2019s wonderful to have such a unique, customized experience, without having to worry about all the details.\u201d<\/p>\n

To start planning a customized tour like this one visit\u00a0explorica.com\/customize<\/a><\/strong> or call 1.888.310.7120.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Davena, travel and education go hand in hand. Her first trip to France was a two-year stay with her university\u2019s exchange program, which inspired her career as a French teacher. So when it came to sharing her love of French culture as an educator, taking her students to France was almost a given. \u201cYou Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,172],"tags":[410,345,58,40,176,128,425],"class_list":["post-5911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-explorica-news","category-teachers","tag-cultural-immersion","tag-educational-tours","tag-educational-travel","tag-france","tag-paris","tag-student-travel","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5911"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5972,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5911\/revisions\/5972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}