St. Albert students in Boston amidst lockdown

A group of Grade 9 students from St. Albert currently on a school trip in Boston are staying outside the lockdown area but will remain in their hotel today.

"The supervisors have contacted us this morning to say that the kids and the supervisors will be staying at the hotel today just as a precaution," said Doug McDavid, deputy superintendent of St. Albert Public Schools.

The 19 students and four to five teachers and supervisors are from Sir George Simpson School.

All of Boston and its suburbs have been placed on lockdown while police search for one of the suspects in the Monday Boston Marathon bombings.

Asecond suspect was killed overnight in a gun battle with police.

McDavid said the bombings and the subsequent manhunt have affected where and what the students were able to do.

"These kinds of trips provide students with an opportunity to see the world and to experience some different things and I guess theyll come home with a different set of experiences than we kind of intended," he said.

Business owner Jared Smith traveled to Boston with 15 other entrepreneurs from Edmonton and Calgary.

The groupintended to spendFriday at Harvard University, but insteadfound themselvesconfined to their Boston hotel.

"Its quite eerie," Smith said.

"Im looking out my window right now from my hotel room. Its literally a vacant street through the town of Boston here, in a city thats normally, obviously extremely vibrant. Its been quite surreal in many ways."

Smith has been spending the day watching media coverage of the manhunt on TV and talking to family and friends back in Edmonton.