Study Abroad Diaries: Au Revoir

At first I was shocked. Then I was shocked that I was shocked, and after that I was just simply excited. The sight of a baseball diamond from a birds eye view as my plane approached Newark International Airport literally hit me close to home. The outline of the field is a common sight from airplanes when flying domestically in the United States, but it was a shape I didn’t even notice was absent during my travels over the past five months. 

 

Once again I was shocked, excited, and shocked that I was shocked at my continuing tendency to overhype the ordinary elements of an American landscape. Skyscrapers. A whole island of them took place of the suburbs I was gawking at before. Taxiing in Paris only provided one skyscraper in the whole city to stare at—here there were hundreds. 

 

 

So all it took was Baseball and Buildings to make me feel like I was finally back home, and thank goodness for that. In many ways, I was ready to leave Paris. I finished packing up my apartment early in the week so I spent my last few days just wandering around the city, grabbing a noisette at a café here and there and eating an almond croissant from the bakery by school every day. I’d already seen all the famous monuments, been to more museums than I can count on two hands, and knew how to get from the flea market at Port Clingancourt to the Galleries Lafayette on the metro without even having to look it up on my iPhone. I had my last L’entrecote and could finally make jokes in French with the locals. I had done what I came to Paris to do—live like a Parisian. 

 

 

But despite living the life, I will forever be an expat when traveling abroad, a label that is both distancing from the locals, yet gives a needed sense of belonging when out of touch from ones native country for so long. Expats have to go home sometime. I think this is the reason I’m so okay with the end of my study abroad experience. The return to reality is also a return home. A return to my friends and family and my favorite restaurants since childhood. But I know I’ll also always have a home in Paris. I know I’ll be back. And I know if I keep telling myself I’ll be back then I probably will be, and that makes saying Au Revoir so much easier than saying A Dieu. The French have two ways of saying goodbye—a dieu literally translates as “to god” and is only used when one does not expect to say bonjour ever again. Au revoir on the other hand, literally translated means “until we see again”. So au revoir, Paris, I’ll see you soon—but first, I need to go eat a hot dog at a Yankees game.