Geoyia Nightengale, Public Health in Europe, 2013
So I have been in Paris for over a month and it has been great! It will definitely be one of those experiences that I will tell my children and grandchildren for many years to come.
For about the first 2 and a half weeks, I was your typical American tourist. I was eager to see every tourist attraction that Paris had to offer. The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the Louvre and other art museums, the Arc de Triomphe. Anything that was on Yahoo Travel and Trip Advisor’s Top 20 Things to do in Paris I made sure was on my list of things to do and sites see. These first few weeks were extremely exhausting as I eagerly tried to see and do everything before classes started and life in Paris began to get real.
My first impressions were that Paris is beautiful. Everything here is amazing, everything was beautiful and I was excitedly planning future trips in my mind where I can share this city with family and friends. Most of my family and some of my friends have never been out of the United States and I wanted them to experience this great city and see everything that was making me quickly fall in love with Paris.
However, everything in this city of love is not lovely. One thing that I could not get over was the amount of smoking done by Parisians. Although many people say there is significantly less smokers now than in the past, there is still a lot of secondhand smoking going on in my case. Parisians smoke everywhere, especially in places where people are restricted in the US. This makes me wonder how much of a public health risk this is and what is being done to combat this problem. Another interesting thing that is common in Paris that I do not care for is the amount of dog wastes left on the streets and sidewalks. I recently read in Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, that there are many injuries a year that occur because of people slipping and falling from stepping on dog wastes. I don’t like watching the ground as I walk, but in Paris I guess this is just the norm and not many people seem to mind.
After a month, I am still not Parisian…yet. Things are starting to settle down and I am definitely falling into the rhythm of living in Paris and acting like the Parisians. There are some things I love about Paris but some things that I just cannot look pass. The food is great, the Sciences Po students are pretty cool, and the city overall is amazing. However, I do not always feel at home in Paris. At least once a day, I think of home. I think of my friends, my family and American food. But I guess that is normal for an American student studying abroad; especially when you are trying to survive off of microwaveable meals.