There’s no easy way to say “trick or treat” in French, but that didn’t stop 30 5th-grade exchange students from a Paris suburb from donning Halloween costumes and going door to door demanding goodies from residents of Sturges Parkway.
Accompanied by costumed American hosts from Elmhurst schools, the students also bobbed for apples, bit at doughnuts dangling from strings, and ate their way through dozens of decorated Halloween cupcakes and taffy apples last week at the home of host parent Marta Davy and her son Jimmy, a 5th grader at Hawthorne School. A few days earlier, the Elmhurst students had introduced their French counterparts to several other American customs, including a 1950s-style sock hop and potluck supper at Jackson School.
“We wanted to give the French kids a little taste of American culture,” explained Marta Davy, who decorated the family home at 340 Sturges Pkwy. with jack-o’-lanterns, skeletons and cobwebs and asked neighbors to have Halloween treats on hand. “But it was hard finding taffy apples this time of year.”
The French students, who arrived May 23 from Ville D’Avray and will leave for home on Wednesday, traveled to DuPage County as part of a French-American exchange program in its 20th year in Elmhurst. Earlier this spring, 27 5th-grade students from eight Elmhurst school districts spent three weeks with French host families in Ville D’Avray, near Paris.
During their stay in France, the Elmhurst group visited the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre Dame and learned how to make French baguettes at a boulangerie, said Connie Chester, an exchange program coordinator who teaches French at Bryan Middle School.
French 5th grader Nathalie Mariaux, sporting a pointy, black hat, long black dress and green paint on her face, explained in French that she thought that Halloween was a “very nice” American custom.
“I had heard of it before,” she said.
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Before leaving for home, the French students were scheduled to spend Tuesday touring Elmhurst City Hall, the Lizzadro Museum, the Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst Historical Museum and Elmhurst College. Their American heartland experiences also included a field day at Wilder Park and a Kane County Cougars baseball game.