I arrived in Paris last Tuesday, September 1st in the afternoon, after taking three different flights-- from LA to St. Paul, Minnesota to Amsterdam to Paris! After waiting around forever for the shuttle to come pick me up (it was an hour late.. an HOUR!), I finally was taken to my home stay family's apartment in the 3e arrondisement, in the heart of Paris. My family lives on the 6th floor of the apartment and owns the entire floor-- I think they have 7 rooms! My host mom, Marie, has 5 kids-- 4 daughters and 1 son-- but only 3 of the daughters are living at home right now: Josephine, Sophie, and Clementine.
The first couple of days abroad were tougher than I thought it would be. It took me a couple of days to get over jetlag, and consequently, I felt really tired and overwhelmed. Additionally, after not speaking French for so long, my French was very rusty and I felt scared to even try speaking French. I felt like I was disabled or mute since I couldn't really communicate in French, plus, everyone here speaks French SO fast!
On my second day in Paris, Wednesday, I had to go exploring and find an adapter because the one I had brought wasn't a round adapter (I brought a rectangular one). I ended up finding a place called Darty's and getting a universal adapter for 29 Euros- that's about $46 USD! I will definitely be using this adapter when I'm in Morocco in February. Later in the afternoon, we had an orientation for our study abroad program. I knew some of the people in the program from previous classes, but I wasn't close friends with them, so it was a little awkward trying to mingle with each other, since no one really knew anyone else. I was pretty tired during orientation, so I went straight home afterward and took a long nap until dinner. Dinner is at 8pm. At Northwestern, I sometimes eat dinner at 4:30pm. Luckily, I think adjusting to the different meal times in France hasn't been too hard for me. In fact, adjusting to eating barely anything all day hasn't been that hard. I mean, I still feel hungry occasionally during the days, but it's not too bad.. well, more on that later!
The following day, Thursday, we had a French placement exam in the morning, and our first class later in the afternoon. The class was on the Political Economy of the European Union, and our professor, Francesco Saraceno, is an Italian who has lived in France for a while now, but he lectures the class in English! I'm pretty impressed, his English is quite fluid, and fast, and his lecture was pretty interesting. I didn't feel too tired after class, but I decided to go home. I made an effort to talk to my host mom when I got back since I saw that she was in the kitchen and I told her how my classes were. I mentioned that I didn't feel so tired and perhaps I was getting over jetlag. My host mom wasn't able to stay around for long- she had to go back to work- so I headed back to my room and went online for a bit. Since I still had an hour before dinner, I thought I might take a nap since there really was nothing else to do. I ended up waking up at 1 AM!! When I woke up, I was kind of confused and slowly realized I had slept for 6 hours AND skipped dinner! I felt soo embarrassed since I had told my host mom that I was getting over jetlag! I decided to go back to sleep since I needed to wake up early the next day, but I wasn't able to get any more good sleep.
The next morning, Friday, our program and the Public Health program (also a Northwestern program) left early in the morning for Normandy! We met at a 7AM and took a charter bus to Caen, the northwest region of France. I got to know some people on the bus ride over to Caen, which made the whole trip a lot more fun! We spent the day visiting the D Day Museum, the American cemetery in Normandy, Omaha beach, where American troops landed 65 years ago, and seeing the German cemetery.
D Day Museum
American Cemetery in Normandie
D Day beaches
German cemetery in Caens
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