Welcome in Wisconsin

"Wisconsin welcomes you" on a large sign as you cross the St. Croix River on Highway 94 from Minnesota, and the state's other slogan: "Wisconsin - you're among friends," sums up the visit that some young people from Our Lady and St Edward's Impact Group in Preston made in July to the parish of St Patrick's in Hudson. The visit was the result of contacts originally made between some Preston primary schools and Wisconsin. After a year of preparation and fund-raising, two visits from a family who had a daughter studying in Wales and frequent e-mail and internet communication with host families, the party of 20 arrived to a warm welcome at Minneapolis airport for the 25 mile drive to Hudson.

The city of Hudson has only about 7000 inhabitants,

but the surrounding rural area which St Patrick's covers has a population of 25,000 - an area with no public transport and a total reliance on cars, something we found rather strange, especially as they use cars for even the shortest journeys ! The church is a huge new building on the edge of the town that holds 800 and includes a hall, meeting rooms and parish offices.

The host families were fantastic; they went out of their way to make our stay as comfortable and enjoyable as possible and our concern about staying with families rather than all together as we have done on previous trips abroad was unnecessary. Staying in their houses gave us an insight into the culture of the country and gave us an experience of what normal life is like. By the end of the visit we felt really part of the family.

Hudson is in Superior Diocese and we spent three days there with the young people from St Patrick's and slept in the basement of the cathedral. We had the use of one of the famous yellow school buses, an experience in itself ! These few days helped the whole group to come together and get to know each other very well; some of us felt that this was the best part of the whole visit. We met Bishop Fliss of Superior, visited a state park with a swimming area in a lake (very welcome with temperatures constantly in the mid 90s) and travelled part of the way round Lake Superior with the option of an evening cruise on the lake. On our return journey to Hudson we enjoyed a ten mile canoe trip on the St Croix River.

On the second Sunday we were in Hudson, along with the young people from the parish, we provided the music, eucharistic ministers and readers for three of their four Masses. This took a lot of preparation but we enjoyed doing it and the parishioners clearly appreciated what we did - they applauded us at the end!

It gave us a chance to come together as a Catholic community to give thanks for everything we had experienced on the exchange.

Among the other highlights of the fortnight was a day spent at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, which claims to be the largest shopping mall in the world, and a day at Valleyfair theme park where the emphasis was on getting wet - not a problem in the heat.

There was a more serious side to our visit as well because both groups had prepared some workshops (some organised jointly by e-mail beforehand) on topics like cultural and language differences between England and America, global issues and school systems.

The visit was a wonderful experience that enabled us not only to form good friendships with our hosts but also strengthened friendships within our own group. Now we have to get busy and organise things for the return visit to Preston in July 2003