Students began selling poinsettias as one of the many fundraisers for the FFA’s 2022 trip to Europe. 

“The trip is not just FFA. A majority of the students going are not in agriculture classes or FFA. The trip does have a little bit of an agriculture focus, like some of the activities and special tours and activities we have set up are a little more agriculture based,” FFA Adviser Kim Dehn said.

The trip is available to all students, and will be the largest trip that FFA has hosted and the furthest that they have traveled.

“I’m not nervous about the trip now, but I probably will be since it’s overseas,” freshman Kate Femali said.

With the trip being in 2022, there was a bit of confusion around how having upperclassmen on the trip would work.

“For me it dosen’t really hinder much, or change anything cause it’s the summer directly after my senior year. For me it’s just kind of a weird limbo between students that are still in high school when I’ve just graduated. It’ll be kind of weird to say goodbye to the high school experience in a sense and then jump right back in,” junior Alexandria Rosin-Borland said.

Students will be attending a number of popular tourist attractions in Europe.

“We’re going to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, so we will do things like visit the Eiffel Tower, and Ann Frank’s house, but were also going to do things like visit a floating dairy. We are going to go to a university whose main focus is food science, we have a couple of chocolate workshops set up and we are going to visit the flower market in Amsterdam which is the world’s largest fresh flower market so it does have a little bit of an ag focus,” Dehn said.

For some students on the trip it will be their first time outside of the United States or even outside of the state.

“I’ve never been out of the immediate states surrounding Wisconsin before, so I’m a bit nervous, but the reward outweighs the risk when it comes to trips like this,” Borland said.

Poinsettias are just one of the fundraisers planned for the $5,000 Europe trip.

“We are planning to do other fundraisers. COVID-19 has kind of hindered what exactly were going to do and how were going to do it, but we definitely have a couple of things that are going to work out either spring or summer next year as well,” Dehn said.

The exact date for the Europe trip is not known yet, but will be sometime in June 2022.

“The trip is planned for June of 2022. Tentatively, it’s the middle of the month, but we don’t have exact departure dates yet,” Dehn said.