The City of Vision could soon have a sister city across the pond.
Rio Rancho Mayor Tom Swisstack visited with a group of French high school students and their chaperones, who were in the area to partake in the 37th annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
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Rio Rancho High School teacher Nancy Oakes, who’s been at the school since it opened in 1997, and Highland High teacher Marie Levy Ryan, who both teach French, organized the Wednesday morning visit to Balloon Fiesta Park for a few dozen American and French high school students.
It’s the fifth year Oakes and Levy Ryan have entertained French students but the first time they herded them around the fiesta.
“Sure, they’ve seen balloons before,” Oakes said. “But nothing like the spectacle of the Albuquerque festival.”
“We try to encourage them to come in the fall,” added Levy Ryan, an Eldorado High School grad more than familiar with the balloon fiesta’s history.
The delegation met with Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez on Monday, after eating pizza at the duck pond on the University of New Mexico campus. Last Saturday, many of them participated in the Rio Rancho High School homecoming dance.
The French kids hail from Annonay and are proud of their hometown, which stages an annual reenactment of the Montgolfier brothers’ flight.
The town is planning to send 20 or so balloonists here next year, said Jean-Louis Mourin, a teacher who accompanied the students overseas.
After being greeted with an enthusiastic “bonjour” from a guy who took French in high school four decades ago, two of the French girls chatted in their best English about their trip so far.
New Mexico is “very different,” said 15-year-old Alice Dufour. “It’s very green. The houses are different … being the roofs are flat.”
Asked what the highlight had been thus far, with countless balloons in various stages of inflation all around her, Solene Jourdain, 16, replied, “I think it’s now.”
The students have been staying with host families during their two weeks in the U.S., “and they are very friendly,” she said.
Oakes said she and Levy Ryan never tire of planning such excursions and escorting teenagers to various sites, including a shopping trip to Santa Fe, where the French kids were encouraged to have their own adventure, plus a tour of the opera house.
“I help kids,” Oakes, a Wyoming native and a 33-year teaching veteran, said. “I’m planting seeds. It’s just part of my life. It’s our commitment to education.”
Levy Ryan agreed. “We started talking about it when we were in France.”
Asked what they’d noticed about the interaction between the French and American teens, the two answered, almost in unison, “They’re teenagers: They like the same music — and history.”
And, apparently, hamburgers.
Later Wednesday, Mourin served as an ambassador for Annonay’s mayor, who is seeking a sister city.
“We had a good meeting,” Swisstack said. “We look forward to building closer relationships, see if we can be sister cities and co-share a balloon fiesta here.
“I gave him all kinds of information about Rio Rancho, they gave me a letter indicating they wanted to work with us,” he said. “We would like to do an international call, see what we can do to build a relationship. We want to join both of our families together.”
Swisstack said he was given a book with information about Annonay.
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