Submitted by Julia Scott the 2024 Spring program in Paris, France…
As I spend my last week in Paris, I realize just how transformative this time has been for me. The friends I’ve made here, the people who have touched my life and improved my perception of friendship and perseverance, have a special place in my heart. Our last day together was simple – no big museums, no crazy late-night adventures, just the three of us cleaning and preparing for our exit. We started the day with a pastry from my roommate and I’s local boulangerie of choice. The ladies who worked there had seen us order our single shot espressos and pain au chocolats every other morning for four months. She was kind enough to send us away with three complimentary pastries, and we thanked her profusely. The French get a bad rap for being unkind, but it is simply untrue – whoever started that myth probably never took the time to be respectful of local customs and annoyed the locals. It’s not easy to have your home be one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world! My roommate, our friend who is also our neighbor and I all helped each other with deep cleaning. The weather was mild, we played music out loud and reminisced about our favorite moments together. My roommate and I got along famously, but sadly for our friend her roommates were not as kind and left their shared space absolutely trashed and expected her to clean it for them. What normally would have been sad brought us together to clean that apartment in under two hours! When we were finished, we went out for ice cream at our favorite shop and got to work on our apartment. When we were finished, we had pizza in the shop that we shared a wall with that we had frequented often. Our local pizza shop owner had gotten to know us, and it was the first place we had eaten on night one of the study abroad program. We said our goodbyes, and we realized we had never actually visited the eiffel tower at night. So weird! We packed ourselves into the metro, and invited some other friends to meet us there for final good-byes. It was lightly raining and windy, so there really wasn’t anyone else visiting the eiffel tower that night. The rain and wind fluttering the trees that line the gardens around the eiffel tower brought me a weird amount of peace, and melancholy. We stood there silently for a while, just looking at this big metal structure that lights up the Paris sky. Seeing pictures of it does not do it justice, it is an incredible and elegant feat of architecture. When others met up, we took lots of silly pictures and videos in the rain as the tower sparkled behind us and I knew I was ready to go home. Life has a way of pushing us along our paths because we cannot stay in the same place forever. I love you, Paris! Au revoir. (Submitted on May 9,2024)