{"id":7959,"date":"2011-09-09T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T18:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=7959"},"modified":"2011-09-09T01:24:24","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T06:24:24","slug":"apsu-students-meet-prime-minister-of-quebec-during-study-abroad-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2011\/09\/09\/apsu-students-meet-prime-minister-of-quebec-during-study-abroad-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU Students Meet Prime Minister of Quebec During Study Abroad Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Late one evening, a hotel clerk slid a slip of paper under Dr. Karen Sorenson\u2019s door. The Austin Peay State University professor of French was staying at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City, and the next afternoon she was going to embark on an intense study abroad program with a group of APSU students. For the next five weeks, the students would only be allowed to speak French.<\/p>\n

To have a bit of fun before they left, Sorenson arranged for a morning of sightseeing through the historic, 400-year-old city. But shortly after waking up, she noticed the note under her door.<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU professor Dr. Karen Sorenson, APSU student Phillip Reinert, Jean Charest, premier of Quebec, APSU student Shea Osborne and APSU student Sarah Simpson pose for a picture together in Quebec this summer.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt said, \u2018Sorry but circulation in the city will be disrupted in the morning due to the visitation of the Duke and Duchess,\u2019\u201d Sorenson said.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s most famous royal couple, Will and Kate, was in town, effectively shutting down Quebec City. The APSU students were scheduled to get on a bus and head east to the \u00c9cole de langue fran\u00e7aise et de culture qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise later that afternoon. Sorenson looked out the front window of the hotel to see what their options were that morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out there were barricades, and we were inside the barricades,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t just wander around. So we hunkered down, grabbed a great window and watched with our cameras ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

After hours of monotony, they finally saw the royal couple drive past the hotel, waving at onlookers. Sorenson watched most of it on the television in the hotel lobby. When it was over, everyone grabbed their luggage and went out to find a taxi to take them to the bus station.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf the streets were still barricaded,\u201d Sorenson said. She was worried they\u2019d miss the bus. But then a familiar looking man appeared on the sidewalk, distracting her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked the concierge of the hotel, \u2018Isn\u2019t that the prime minster?\u2019\u201d Sorenson said. \u201cShe said yes. He was just standing there with a tall man wearing an earpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Jean Charest, the premier of Quebec. He wore a dark blazer and a blue button-down shirt, and his trademark blonde hair was tousled from the wind on the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grabbed as many students as I could in a hurry, and whispered, \u2018come with me,\u2019\u201d Sorenson said. \u201cWe walked up to him and I said, \u2018bonjour\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She proceeded to introduce herself and her students in French. The prime minister smiled politely.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe turned to me in perfect English and said, \u2018Oh, what state are you from?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The students shouted, \u201cTennessee.\u201d Sorenson explained that APSU was a small liberal arts college about 45 minutes north of Nashville.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, we did not know if he would talk to us, but he did and he actually knew the former governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen,\u201d Sarah Simpson, an APSU student on the study abroad trip, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Oh Tennessee, I\u2019ve had such a good working relationship with your former governor, Gov. Bredesen,\u2019\u201d Sorenson said. \u201c\u2019We worked on numerous projects together. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The APSU students then asked if they could have their picture taken with Charest. He smiled again, wrapped his arms around the students and let his tall, imposing bodyguard snap a few pictures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I was meeting a celebrity,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cAnd he was nice enough to take a picture with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe asked why we were in Quebec,\u201d Phillip Reinert, another APSU student on the trip, said, \u201cand he encouraged us in our goal of speaking French and wished us a good trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversation with the prime minster was cordial but brief, and it marked one of the last times the students would speak English in more than a month. Once the bus took them to the \u00c9cole de langue fran\u00e7aise, they signed a contract requiring that they only speak French.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real immersion program,\u201d Sorenson said. \u201cTheir courses are taught all in French. They live with families that speak to them all in French. Their afternoon activities are all in French. They go rappelling, biking, canoeing. Or they join a choral group or work on a journal or do photography. You can do sports activities or arts activities, depending on what you want, but all in French.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sorenson has taken APSU students to the scenic Saguenay region of Quebec since 1994, and during those five weeks in the summer, she\u2019s seen dramatic changes in their foreign language skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have had students who literally doubled their scores,\u201d she said. \u201cI have students who did more than a year\u2019s worth of language development in five weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u00c9cole de langue fran\u00e7aise et de culture qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise is located at the Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Chicoutimi. The program is open to students with a basic knowledge of French.<\/p>\n

For more information, contact Sorenson at 931.221.6246 or the APSU Office of International Education at 931.221.6851.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Late one evening, a hotel clerk slid a slip of paper under Dr. Karen Sorenson\u2019s door. The Austin Peay State University professor of French was staying at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City, and the next afternoon she was going to embark on an intense study abroad program with a group of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,10359,7207,262,10358,7964,6716,10352,10355,5761,1756,10354,10353,10357,10356,1758],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-24n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7960,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959\/revisions\/7960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}