Study Abroad Diaries: The City of Lights

So far, it has been everything I expected.

 

It has been red wine, fresh baguettes, and lots of cheese. It has been passing the Eiffel Tower everyday on my way to class and old, beret-clad, French men walking their petit chien. It has kept me up all night on Friday searching for a 24-hour creperie and left me stuffed inside my apartment all day Sunday, still depressed that I could not find a 24-hour creperie open on Sunday.

 

 

It hasn’t been 4 a.m. Artichoke Pizza slices or everything bagels with cream cheese. It hasn’t been quickly walking past the Washington Square Park pigeon man on my way to Bobst or hailing a taxicab on the corner of Waverly and Mercer.

 

 

It hasn’t been New York. It sounds like an obvious statement, but it is still something that needs to be stated. Maybe I was expecting Paris to be like New York. How can Paris, a city so similar in structure and purpose, in breadth and fame, be so different from New York? Between moving from New York to Paris, I spent three weeks in my hometown–Los Angeles, California–for winter break. Every time I go home for a break I need a mentality reset. At home, there is no need to wear head-to-toe black and wait silently for the downtown 6 when I can eat a delightful brunch at the Ocean View Café down the block from my house that does indeed have an ocean view. Different types of people inhabit these two metropolitan cities because they are built in two different ways. And so of course Paris isn’t going to be like California, or Manhattan. It’s a third city, a third mentality, to add to my repertoire. It has been what it’s supposed to be: Paris.

 

And it is exactly what I signed up for. NYU Paris was really the only study abroad option I ever had. I’ve been taking French since I was twelve years old, and so, I already know how to ask where the bathroom is. This is also isn’t my first trip to Paris. I think I’ve been here a total of eight times? Maybe nine. Two of those trips were spent living with different families in different regions of the country for a few weeks over the summer, and so complete immersion is a lifestyle I’ve briefly experienced. And yet, it is not a summer exchange that people talk about as life changing. It is the four-month, one full semester abroad that gets all the attention. “It’ll change your life!”, “You will never forget your time there!”, “You’re going to meet so many cute French boys!” Or so my aunt, my best friends mom, and the banker at Wells Fargo told me when I was exchanging dollars for euros the Saturday before my departure from America.

 

 

So right my now my “Semester Abroad Preparation Checklist” is essentially complete. I’ve packed my bags, exchanged my money, and bought a map of Paris. What more could I do to prepare myself for these four months? Logistically I may be ready, but is it actually possible to prepare oneself for a so-called “life-changing” event? And now I’m a lot more terrified than excited. Not because of the threat of pickpockets at the Louvre or getting “Taken” at the airport without Liam Neeson there to save me, but of how this trip will change me. Undoubtedly it will, just as any experience does. Everyday is something different and definitive of who I am. I just have no clue what that definition will be, come May 19th.

 

However, since it is only février, bientôt mes amis! I’ll just have to wait and see what this city of lights actually has to offer me.