It was a bitter Friday the 13th for Nina Lacroix.<\/p>\n
Sitting in U.S. history class, 16-year-old Lacroix received a message from a friend back in her native France alerting her to the terrorist attack unfolding in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to see all of the news,\u201d said Lacroix, speaking after class at Ketchikan High School. \u201cThere was 40 dead people, and then 60 and then 80 and it kept increasing, and I was just crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Late-night terrorist attacks claimed 129 lives and wounded hundreds more on Friday in several areas of Paris. The Islamic State is taking credit for the attacks.<\/p>\n
Lacroix is Rotary\u2019s lone French exchange student in Alaska, and on Monday she wore all black clothing to school. Students throughout France did the same.<\/p>\n
She traveled to Ketchikan in August from Sallanches, a town of about 16,000 in the Alps near the border with Switzerland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very sad,\u201d said Kirsten Streefkerk, a fellow Rotary exchange student from South Africa. \u201cI feel sorry for Nina, because it did hurt her, and I could see that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lacroix reached her family after getting word of the attacks, she said, and talked with a close cousin and his wife who live in Neuilly, a community in the western suburbs of Paris several blocks away from where the attacks took place.<\/p>\n
Lacroix said her sister in France is too scared to watch the news.<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019s happy to be safe in Alaska, but frustrated to be so separated from the events in her country. The teenager said she was concerned that with France\u2019s declaration of war, more attacks will come.<\/p>\n
For now, Lacroix said she\u2019s trying to understand why the attacks happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just killed for killing,\u201d she said. \u201cIn January, there were the first attacks with Charlie Hebdo, which is a journal. So they killed journalists \u2014 they knew who they were going to kill. But now? They were just killing to kill people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy Paris? Why now? Why these people?\u201d she said later. \u201cI\u2019m really angry because I can\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker ordered flags to be flown at half staff in response to the attacks, and public events across the country through the weekend included moments of silence or showings of support for France.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really nice to see that the world is with us, is with France,\u201d Lacroix said. \u201cWe\u2019re not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosie Roppel, a member of First City Rotary who is looking after exchange students this year, said Lacroix well represents the goal of Rotary\u2019s exchange program. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the reasons that the youth exchange did start was so that we could place kids around the world,\u201d Roppel said. \u201cWe want to create peace one by one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The French teenager speaks three languages \u2014 Spanish is her third \u2014 and is learning Russian. She wants to be a translater with the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re exchange students,\u201d she said of fellow Rotarians. \u201cWe\u2019re here to discover the culture and avoid that \u2014 avoid these kinds of attacks. Because if you know someone in a country, you don\u2019t want to attack him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a bitter Friday the 13th for Nina Lacroix. Sitting in U.S. history class, 16-year-old Lacroix received a message from a friend back in her native France alerting her to the terrorist attack unfolding in the nation\u2019s capital. \u201cI tried to see all of the news<\/a>,\u201d said Lacroix, speaking after class at Ketchikan High […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15859"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}