PARIS, Jan 20, 2009 (AFP) - Barack Obama may have gotten average marks at school but America's first black president was a "student of life," able to reach out to classmates, a teacher from his Hawaii high school said Tuesday.
    Joan Helbling joined several dozen students at the American Business School in Paris to celebrate Obama's inauguration as the 44th US president and talk about life at Punahou school in Honolulu, where Obama spent seven years.
    "He was a very average student and yet he was so intelligent he didn't have to do much to get by," said Helbling, now 70, whose husband teaches at the Paris business school.
    "I like to think of him as a student of life. He was able to transcend the high school cliques and groups: the brains, the jocks, the techies, the nerds, the geeks. Somehow he was welcomed and could go from group to group."
    Obama's Kenyan father and white mother from Texas were married in Honolulu and Barack was born there, but after their marriage fell apart, he went to live with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia.
    His mother sent him back to Hawaii when he was 10 years old to live with his white grandparents and attend Punahou, a private school with a large Asian student body.
    At Punahou, he went by the name of Barry, played basketball and tennis, and was one of only two black students at the school.
    "I think it was the beginning of him exploring his own identity as a black American," said Helbling. "It was interesting for him to confront their images of him because of the colour of his skin."
    Red-white-and-blue balloons hung from the main hall at the business school as students celebrated the beginning of a new era under Obama, far from home.
    "I'm proud. I feel like finally it's a change," said Stella Nguyien, 20, an American student in Paris.