Walking through the halls of Southmoreland Senior High school wearing top of the line pieces from Tommy Hilfiger boots to a Louis Vuitton bomber jacket, Scarlett Davidovich celebrates Paris Fashion Week in the small town of Scottdale.
When you encounter her, you’re most likely greeted by the French words “bonjour” with a wide smile.
You can overhear her speaking of the Eiffel Tower and her friends with foreign names.
As most teens were with their friends over the summer, dreading to go back to school, 17-year-old Davidovich took on a 6-week excursion by herself and left everything she has know to travel to Paris.
“I went to Paris so I could explore Europe and do things on my own,” she said. From having lunch at the Eiffel Tower to attending classes, Davidovich took on France as a “challenge.” She was in a foreign country, in which she didn’t know anyone, and only took French III – an intermediate form of the language – at Southmoreland High School.
However, Davidovich said making friends in France “was easy for me. We were all put into the same position of leaving home and going to a different country.”
This made the travelers closer, especially since they all attended the same school and classes.
“My favorite thing about traveling is being in the different culture,” Davidovich said.
When visiting France, Davidovich didn’t get an “Utopian experience.” She stayed with a “Muslim family that was very kind and showed me the true way of life in Paris.”
One might ask how a 17-year-old girl afforded to stay in France for six weeks.
“Going to Paris wasn’t the cheapest thing,” Davidovich said. “ But after working all last summer without getting paid for our family business, they funded my way there.”
There she attended school that was set up much like college classes.
“I didn’t have the same class every day, and I had either morning classes or evening classes,” she said.
Davidovich now considers herself to be “fluent”in French.
She describes her trip as “the absolute best” when looking back on it today.
This was only the beginning of the traveling endeavor for Davidovich. She plans to visit the friends she made from all over the world, and she’s not sure what she wants to do after high school yet, but she knows that she “plans on traveling a lot for work.”