North Vermilion High School French teacher Michelle Fontenot
is seeking host families for a first year immersion program for French students
in Acadiana. The United States with Meetings and Discoveries Association
operates immersion programs for French high school students in a dozen U.S.
cities, with Lafayette having just been added to the list. Fontenot says
Louisiana’s historical ties to France make Lafayette a natural host city.
Fontenot still is in need of six families to take in students, who will be in
the hub city June 7 - 27. “The only qualification is that you have
a high school age teenager in your home,” she says. “The French students are
excited about coming to Lafayette and this should be a great experience for any
family to establish these international friendships." For more information, visit Fontenot’s Web site or call her at 255-5713.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.