So September is wrapping up and I have posted…once since I’ve gotten here… I own up to my lack of posts. Sorry. But now I’m back. I will be posting about current events of my study abroad experience as well as backtracking. That way, you won’t miss out on all the things I did the last two months! Yay! But first, a quick update on my current state of affairs:
I start school today, on September 30th. Wow. All of my friends back home are well into their semester already and I am only just beginning. What a strange feeling. Yesterday, I went to the ballet, Le Lac des Cygnes (known as Swan Lake, in English), performed by Le Ballet National de Chine at Le Théâtre du Châtelet. It was magnificent! But another post on that later.
I paid my rent on Saturday! Wow, I’ve been living in my apartment for a month already. It’s been over a month since I packed my bags and settled down in Paris. Time sure does fly fast. And I’m finally blogging again! I have so much to say, but I’ll break it down into several (and by several, I mean A LOT of) posts. This post is going to delve into my first impressions of Paris.
I started off my study abroad experience with a two-week vacation touring Europe and visiting extended family with my nuclear family. We went to Paris, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. (Paris is the only city on this list because in France, we only went to Paris, whereas in all the other countries, we visited multiple cities/towns.) Then, my family dropped me off in Paris and boarded their return flight to NYC. I cried, of course. This is the first time I’ve ever been away from home for more than three days. I felt homesick while reading my dad’s emails and listening to my mom’s voice when we talked over the phone. Too much for me to handle. But I was still completely functional. Within a day or two, that feeling subsided. On with the rest of my life!
For the first week, I stayed at a distant relative’s house in L’Häy-les-Roses, a southern suburb of Paris. Here, I started speaking a bit of French mixed with Vietnamese to them. At the end of everyday, I would get so exhausted. Talking in French and Vietnamese, neither of which are my mother tongue and neither in which I am fluent, was exhausting on my brain. And, dinners are so long! We would set the table at 9:30 and eat until 11-something. Wow. I was constantly searching for ways to express myself without sounding incompetent and to be the most polite and helpful boarder I could be. I shall not bring shame onto the family! But during this time, just ONE WEEK, my comprehension skills improved drastically. My speaking skills also improved from terrified-to-speak-in-French to can-speak-in-elementary-level-French. I say that’s pretty darn good, for now.
Then, for the first few days, I met up with my friends Jacqui and Cali, who both came from Macaulay Honors at Brooklyn College with me on this CUNY Paris Exchange program, to look for an apartment. This was difficult work. I’ll leave the details for another post though. Our goal was to to find a place for the three of us. But in the end (a week later), we couldn’t find a place that would accommodate three lodgers. So we split, Cali and me in one apartment, Jacqui in another. I know, this sounds terrible, but a month has passed and everything is still fine between the three of us. 🙂
During my first month or so, I also:
- opened a bank account,
- traveled a bit,
- took an intensive French course,
- learned how to cook,
- did a lot of grocery shopping,
- registered for classes,
- saw a play,
- visited the French president’s bureau,
- waited on long lines,
- “hosted” a house party,
- suffered from daily migraines,
- and got a job.
So much. I’ll go into detail about these different items in separate posts. But back to the main point of this post: my first impression of Paris.
After all that I’ve been through, I have not really experienced culture shock. All the obstacles that I’ve faced, I just breeze right through them. I know many people who were stressing out and couldn’t cope with the difficulties of settling in France, but I’ve just kept a very calm attitude about most things. You just gotta do whatcha gotta do. So, I’ve felt very comfortable in my first month so far. (It does help that my apartment is extra cozy.) As for falling in love with the city? One of my friends told me that she didn’t really like Paris when she visited last year. I thought, hm, since we do have similar tastes, would that be me too? And then, when I first landed in Paris with my family, I knew then that there was no spark between Paris and me. As I visited landmarks and whatnot, it did not once hit me that I was in another country. Really, I felt nothing. A bit disappointing, but hey, ’tis life. To this day, Paris still hasn’t won me over. We have a weird relationship. I don’t love Paris, but I don’t dislike it either. It’s just there. (One place that I visited and really loved though was Rome. Maybe I’m a Rome kind-of-girl.) Hopefully this is a gradually growing relationship and that one day, I will come to love Paris. After all, Paris has been treating me well thus far. The weird rainy weather doesn’t even get to me!
