and I’m sitting on my bed in my room at my homestay for the last time. 
I’m leaving shortly to go check into a hostel for the remainder of my time in Paris. Yesterday was the last day of the program. We took our last final, had a goodbye lunch at the IES center, spent a while on the River Seine and said our goodbyes. I didn’t get to say goodbye to everyone I should have, which is in and of itself disappointing. 

Most people left this morning to fly back to the United States and are in the air as I type. Some went traveling to places like Barcelona, London and Rome. I’m staying in Paris another week, which is weird because I feel as though everything should be ending. I am excited to spend another week, of course, but it won’t be quite the same without my classmates. 

I have to leave my French family, who have been amazing over these six weeks. We had a final dinner together last night and my host mother told us we’re not allowed to cry when we leave because then she’ll cry— I’ll try my best. 

Well, I have to cross Paris via the Metro with this large suitcase, and the longer I sit and stare, the less I want to move, so I suppose I should get going.  

but there are strikes in Paris today that left a lot of the museums closed and cancelled the performance. Luckily, the people at IES (my program) think they can exchange our tickets for another performance next week. Whoo! 

Tomorrow we’re going to Giverny with IES, which is where Monet lived and did his water lilly paintings. It should be really pretty, and I think the weather is going to be nice, which is a plus. =)

Lately I feel like all I’ve been doing is visiting one breathtaking place after another. I’ve been to the Louvre twice, Chantilly and Versailles and the Opera House. All of these places are so breathtaking that upon walking in, I feel as though I’ve transcended into another world. My brain can barely process the beauty and interpret it as something real and tangible only a few feet from my face. 

One of the reason’s I’ve decided I love Europe so much is all the amazing history behind every building. It really makes me recognize what it means that “America is a young country.” I’ve stood in rooms where treaties were signed, royalty lived, ruled and died, and who knows what else. 

So insane. 

I’ve been in Europe for just a little under a month with almost exactly a month left before I have to go back to the US. Studying abroad is great because I actually get an accurate taste of what it’s like to be a citizen here. At the same time, I have opportunities to be an educated tourist. I can’t imagine this experience would be nearly as exciting if I hadn’t studied French before coming. I feel like I am somewhere between a tourist and a resident. 

I can’t believe my time here is halfway over. It obviously would have been more opportune to spend at least a semester here, but as it turned out, that just was not a viable option for me. But at the same time, I feel like I am spending just enough time here. Any more than I have might just have been wasted by falling into a monotonous routine as we all tend to do in life. Even now I have to constantly remind myself to seek out the best that this city has to offer. I don’t want to leave only to get back home and hear about something great that was just a few Metro stops away from me for six weeks. 

I love how new and challenging this experience is. In general, I am cautious in my nature. I always have to push myself a little through the uncomfortable start of new experiences. I do consider myself quite a city girl, particularly after spending so much time in Chicago over the past few years. I love being surrounded by a lot of people and a lot of activity. It intrigues and excites me. So coming to Paris was both an exhilarating and terrifying prospect. The language here is not one I grew up knowing or have ever really used outside of an isolated classroom. I didn’t know anyone (though that changed quickly). It was truly me, myself and I heading into this experience. But Paris is an amazing city, full of history and charm, and that won me over almost instantly.

I can already pinpoint how this experience has helped me grow in confidence, both in general and specifically in the language. Every sentence I say in French makes it that much easier to say the next one. I know I’m going to have a difficult time speaking solely in English again when I get home. 

I’m not really entirely positive what the goal of this blog post was. I suppose I just wanted to reflect a little. I can’t wait to see what the second half of this trip brings. And now, enough with the deep thinking and onto a sweet pique-nique on the River Seine with mes amies. 

It’s really cool when people assume you’re a native and really disappointing when you hear, “you speak English?” For example, often times going to/from the Metro, people will stop and ask me and my roommate Kelsey for directions. In those cases, we do a little victory dance. But then perhaps not twenty minutes later, we’ll walk into a shop and after asking for something in French, we’ll get a response in English. Just like that, we’re back to square one. When we walk out of the store, we look at each other and go, “Damn it! Merde!” 

I really appreciate it when people work with us in French instead of just defaulting to English when there’s a little slip up. Sometimes I just won’t hear someone and need them to repeat what they said, but as soon as I say “quoi?” they assume I don’t understand and translate it for me. But then there are people like a waiter we had about a week ago. When we sat down, he asked if we spoke French or English and we told him both. So he brought us menus in French then just one in English and helped us with our words in French instead of just speaking in English. 

It’s weird how much more comfortable I feel using French now, but how foolish I feel when my brain defaults to English. We were ordering food the other day and when the man said, “et vous?” I reacted in English and said, “Can I have a…?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted so badly to just take them back, but it was too late. The damage was done.

Overall, the people here have been much more helpful than I expected. I heard so many warnings about rude Parisiens before I left that I was expecting everyone to scoff at me for being American, even when I tried to speak French. This is hardly the case. 

Furthermore, a few days ago I explained to my host father that I have a lot of issues pronouncing the French R. Since then I’ve been forced to say the word “très” more times than I can count, and as far as I can tell all it’s done is make me feel like a fool. When a whole table full of people are looking at you while you fumble through a phrase, I’m not sure there’s a way to not feel foolish. I do hate being the center of attention like that in general, though. 

Overall, I’ve been swinging back and forth between confident in my abilities and quite less than confident. I think I’m going to leave this experience a lot more confident in them overall, and then go back to the US where the only place I really have to use them is inside a classroom three times a week. Quelle tristesse. Vraiment.

May 31, 2010

I arrived in Paris via a Eurostar train. I got into Gare du Nord and had to take the Metro to my host family’s house. I actually managed to get to my house without getting lost in the Metro or in the streets of Paris. When I got to the house, I could feel my nerves getting the best of me as I looked at the two buttons on the front gate. I wasn’t sure which to press, so I just picked the bottom one and heard a doorbell ring inside, followed by a door opening and footsteps. Then the gate in front of me opened and there was Madame Choné, greeting me with a kiss on each cheek. I followed her inside and was greeted the same way by her two daughters, Elisabeth (29) and Anne-Lorraine (17). Then I was taken around the house and up a staircase to what was to be my room for the next six weeks.

I met my roommate Kelsey and the family left us to get situated, promising that we’d meet everyone else at dinner. Everyone else? This family is huge! Hahaha. 

As promised, we went downstairs to help set the table for dinner and I met the two boys in the family, Augustin (23) and Stanislas (25). It was actually really funny because I met them separately but one after the other, and they both had the same reaction when I said my name was Paige. “Paige? Like a… page?” *mimicks turning a page in a book* I just said yes and then it was time for dinner. We had ten people total: Monsieur and Madame Choné, the four kids, and Elisabeth’s husband and two little daughters, who were visiting. It was overwhelming but really fun. The entire family is hilarious and very helpful when it comes to understanding and helping me with my French. And the meal itself was amazingly delicious. We had Quiche Lorraine. 

Then we both went up to bed because we had to be up and at orientation for the program the next morning. =)

Essentially, the last day I spent in the UK was a day trip to Oxford. There’s not a whole lot to say about Oxford other than it was really a beautiful city and I had a lot of fun exploring the town. We basically got off the train and decided to walk the route of the bus tour. One particularly memorable spot was the Natural History Museum, which had a lot of skeletons and, erm, preserved animals. 

We took in all the awesome gardens, buildings and lounged in the grass for a while.

We grabbed some dinner at a pub and went back to London for the night. It was a great way to end my time in the UK as my nerves built for my journey to Paris the next day and meeting my host family and everyone else in my program!

May 29, 2010

We woke up early and departed in the light rain for the Wellcome Collection. Henry Wellcome was a scientist and a pharmacist who collected tons of random awesome things during his lifetime. Now they’re all in this free museum. We saw things like an iron chastity belt, Napoleon’s toothbrush, and Charles Darwin’s walking stick. It was fun. 

Then we headed to King’s Cross Station because we needed to go to Hatsburg for the Slam Dunk music festival. Before our train we were able to actually get to Platform 9 and 3/4 and take pictures. 

Then we got on the train and were on our way! We made it to the university where the music festival was being held and we figured out that all the stages except one were inside one of the buildings. A little strange of a set up but they finally started letting people upstairs and we got on the barricade in front of one of the main stages.

First up was a British band called Out of Sight. They were pretty good. Then were Every Avenue and Hit The Lights, two of the bands I had come to see. I loved both of their performances, even though during Hit The Lights the crowd got really insane and there were so many crowd surfers that security almost couldn’t catch them in time. Then after their set I got the set list tossed to me by one of the band members and we proceeded to go grab food because we had some time. That turned out to be a rather big mistake because the food vendors were outside and security decided to close all the doors off to people entering the building. Long story short, an angry group of probably about half the attendees landed up standing outside, missing bands they paid to see, for three hours. We did manage to get in for the last band I wanted to see, The Rocket Summer, and all was well again. Overall it was fun, a frustrating mess, and then fun again. We made it back to London and begrudgingly landed up going to Burger King because it was still open then slept up for Oxford the next morning. 

I currently have over 200 pictures uploading to my computer right now to sort through, but while I wait for that to happen, I thought I’d share a moment I had on the Metro home today. 

I live on the Metro line 9 in Paris and in order to get home, I often have to take line 6 and switch to 9 at a later stop. Most of the Metro is underground, but for a period of time, line 6 goes above ground and past the Eiffel Tower and over the River Seine. 

Now often times street musicians will get on individual metro cars in touristy areas and play for the duration of two or three stops in hope of getting a spare Euro or two. Today I encountered such a case just as we got above ground. This particular street musician’s song of choice was “What A Wonderful World.”

As the car passed over the River Seine, the main line of the song hit. I looked out over gorgeous Paris, past the Eiffel Tower and sung along in my head. “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.” 

Every time I see the Eiffel Tower in particular, it’s like a smack in the face reminder that I am indeed in Paris and living a dream I’ve had since my first French class in 7th grade. And combining that moment with that particular line gave me chills, right there in the middle of a sweaty Metro car. 

Paris, je t’aime.