Submitted by Kayla Dickens on the 2014 fall semester study abroad program in Paris, France…
Well, I am starting to hit those bumps in the road, finally, and I have to say I would not have been offended if they never came despite all my anticipation of them. It feels as though these bumps in the road have started to flood all aspects of my life here but when I really think about it most things are still going very well and it seems I am just letting a few things get to me more than I should. The part that is getting rough right now is honestly just making travel plans because things are starting to get extremely complicated in the logistical sense. Given that the opportunity to travel outside of France (or even within France for that matter) was rather low on the prioritized list of reasons I applied to the program and decided to come here, this really shouldn’t bother me so much. But I know that I won’t necessarily have an opportunity to come back to Europe for a while, so now that I’m here I have so many things I want to see and so little time to see it all in. Regardless of where I go I know that I will leave Paris knowing that I had an amazing experience, but looking at travel and making decisions about where to go and when to go there is making me hope that I don’t make decisions I regret later—either visiting the wrong place or spending way too much money on a given trip, or even not spending enough time in Paris by the time I have to go home.
Other than that stress (which I know seems rather petty), everything is going very well still. Last weekend I visited Barcelona which was an incredible experience. I felt as though Barcelona was the most classically European city I’ve seen so far based on my preconceptions of what Europe was like based on media in the States. I loved the Mediterranean feel of the city, but I’m not sure if that was the only factor that made the city so appealing to me. Highlights of the weekend were visiting the Sagrada Familia Basilica, a church whose construction was starting in 1882 and remains incomplete (and definitely one of the things I wanted to see most in Europe outside of Paris) and stepping in the Mediterranean for the first time! While I do not recommend taking a 15-hour trajectory on the bus from Paris to Barcelona, I definitely recommend visiting the city to anyone who wants to see Europe, it was incredible.
But back to business: academics. My cinema class was definitely becoming the most difficult, and I believe it still is, but this week I was definitely on top of things. I usually feel a little behind in that class (not necessary lost, I understand what people are saying, but I feel behind in my analyses of the films since that is a new skill I am developing as this is my first cinema course). This week, however, I had a lot to say and was able to participate a lot which felt great! And beyond feeling like I was on top of my game to begin with, I even came up with a few ideas that elicited a “très bien” from the professor which is a real rarity (usually it’s a compliment to get a “pas mal,” so “très bien” is really stepping it up). So that was definitely a good start to my week on Monday. My language class is starting to get a little more interesting, and I’m definitely starting to notice bigger differences in my speaking skills, for instance I’ve had moments where sentence comes out of me so quickly I’m shocked by my own fluency and I start second guessing if I really said all the parts that I needed, but it turns out that usually I was right. I’m also running into a lot of times now when I am speaking English where not only do I just try to insert a French word, but I have immense difficulties trying to think of the English word to replace it, so that’s definitely a good indication that my brain is being taken over by the French language. We had our first exam in Society Through Televised Journalism yesterday and it was a piece of cake; I’m pretty sure I got at least an 18/20 which is like an A++ here, so the loads of studying definitely paid off. And my literature class is also a piece of cake most of the time; it is very different from the French literature course I took at Delaware before coming here. My Introduction to Prose course at UD was a real challenge as it was one of my first literature courses ever, not to mention that it was in a foreign language, and I admittedly had times when I was very frustrated but at the end of the semester I felt as though all the frustration was worth it because of the amount I learned in the class. We did a lot of reading and analyzing texts in that class, and that is what I expected in the literature class here, but in fact this class at the ILCF is more about studying literary movements and becoming familiar with a few major authors from each one as well as their key works and themes. So it is more like a “history of literature” class than a literature class in the sense that we would think of it at home, and I am finding it rather interesting despite my different expectations.
Something of interest this week was the conversation I had with a classmate in my French Language class yesterday. For the first time in that class, I actually had a conversation with someone during the break. The class was at first slightly intimidating because most of the students are adults who have already finished their education and are either permanently living in France and have their own families or studying in France for a long period of time in order to boost their language skills for a career they have already started. I am one of only two students who is there for just a semester, and giving my unique education path I am still the youngest at only 18. So I generally figured that outside of the academic portion of class, most of those classmates would not be ones who wanted to talk to me much or be long-term friends. But yesterday as I was scrolling through emails on my phone during the break the student sitting next to me struck up a conversation about what I was doing in France (how long I’ve studied French, other classes I’m taking, my career and education goals, etc.). It was great to get to talk to someone, and to get to know a classmate a little better. I don’t know why I let the initial intimidation of being the youngest and least experienced with French get the best of me from the beginning and trick me into thinking that the other students weren’t interested in having anything to do with me, I definitely know better than that and yesterday’s conversation just proved my fears wrong.
Outside of academics, I am starting to feel the homesickness kick in a little more. There are a lot of adjustments here, especially since I am living in an apartment with three other students and although I have my bedroom to myself I am not used to having other students around since I live at home and commute to UD. While I usually make my own schedule (within the boundaries of being respectful to my parents and my sister, that is), here I have found it an interesting adjustment to have other students who want to plan things that I would ordinarily do on my own such as riding the metro to school or grabbing lunch or running to the grocery store together. Given my independent personality, I am finding myself making a lot of tweaks to my lifestyle in that sense, at least to my mindset. While those are not necessarily the kind of adjustments study abroad is supposed to push you into, it just goes to show that the whole experience of study abroad is a chance for more growth and learning than anyone really expects.
Last night I called my aunt and uncle because I haven’t talked to them since I left the U.S., and my aunt pointed out that I have less than two months left here (in fact, exactly two months left from Monday). It was rather shocking as I had been counting how long I’ve been here, at least in weeks, and been considering proportions (for instance right now the semester is already 3/7 of the way over), but I hadn’t yet started counting down and I didn’t realize how quickly the time was ticking by. There is still so much to look forward to (and to stress about a little, like presentations and exams) that it feels like the time is going to fly by, and at the same time that I am anxious to get home to my family and friends I also do not want to wish away the time that I have here, so I will definitely be appreciating every second of it to the fullest in order to take home the best experience possible.
