Girl Scouts get taste of France

By Leticia Gonzales
The Free Press

LE SUEUR February 28, 2007 10:30 pm

— While most kids rush home to eat their after-school snack, more than 60 girls crowd together in the Park Elementary School cafeteria learning about French croissants from an exchange student from Nantes, France.
“Do you eat croissants every day?” asks a Girl Scout.
“Sunday mornings after church,” answers Juliette Verdier.
“What is the smallest city in France?” asks another girl.
“Do you know what the smallest city in Minnesota is?” countered Juliette amid laughter. Verdier, 18, has been in Le Sueur since August and is a senior at Le Sueur-Henderson High School.
Verdier, who was also a Girl Scout growing up in France, shared her experiences with Le Sueur Girl Scouts as part of the Girl Scout World Thinking Day, an annual event that helps recognize scouting as a worldwide organization.
Girl Scout Terry Eischens said World Thinking Day was important to help “people learn about other cultures instead of their own.” The 10-year-old says it helps others to know “that Girl Scouts is all over the world and not just in one spot.”
Thinking Day is only one of the many events and celebrations the Girl Scouts include in their various activities. The 78 girl scouts and 23 adult volunteers in Le Sueur are only a small portion of the Girl Scouts’ membership. The troops in Le Sueur are part of the Cannon Valley Girl Scout Council in Northfield, which includes 4,500 Girl Scouts and 1,300 adult volunteers.
The Girl Scouts in Le Sueur provide a lot of service to the area. One of their recent projects involved making more than 60 fleece blankets for the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association. Sheriffs, and their deputies, carry the blankets in their car trunks for accident victims.
Peggy Eischens, who just started her fifth year as a troop leader, said Girl Scouts has allowed her daughter as well as other girls the opportunity to participate in many activities, such as spending the night at the Metrodome in Minneapolis and at the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota.
“Some girls never knew what to expect until we got there,” Eischens said. “The biggest thing, especially in Le Sueur, is they get to benefit from things that with their families they would never get to do.”
Some of the girls in her troop are saving their cookie sale profits for a trip to Washington, D.C. “Families can’t afford trips like that,” Eischens said.
And other valuable experiences, such as the Thinking Day activity, can be enjoyed in their own backyard.
Before the Thinking Day celebration ended, Terry and her fellow Scouts begged to hear something in French. The chosen word? Hamburger.
But when Verdier responded back by saying “hamburger” with a French accent, the girls realized they had a lot more in common with the French then they originally thought.

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