Audrey Cheng, Public Health in Europe, 2013
“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” ― Abraham Lincoln
Four hours ago, I stood in the middle of a local grocery store in my hometown of Plano, looking at boxes of fresh, plump persimmons meticulously stacked on top of each other. Just three and a half months ago, I had stood in the exact same spot, anxiously awaiting my journey to Paris. But today, my feeling was quite different: a sense of calmness, awareness and open-mindedness swept over me, despite my fatigued mental state from the 11-hour plane ride back from France.
This was my first indication that something inside of me had altered from my trip abroad. As reality sank in today that I had made a full start-to-finish trip in Europe, I was overwhelmed by the amount of experiences I was able to have in the past few months. Although I was a little disheartened knowing that I would never have an opportunity to study abroad again in my college career, I was thankful knowing that Northwestern made it possible for me to study abroad in the first place despite my financial challenges.
Just yesterday, I went to Père Lachaise–a famous cemetery boasting the tombs of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, etc.–walked the grand Champs-Élysées and its Christmas market, went to the beautiful Buttes-Chaumont park and watched the Eiffel Tower light up at night for the last time with friends. The amount that I had seen and took in just yesterday still baffles me, and as I look back at the gift that was the last 3 and a half months, there are a countless number of memories I will cherish forever. For one, my weekend trips provided extremely enriching experiences: from Stonehenge in the UK to the mezquita in Cordoba to Plaza de Espana in Sevilla to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul to a concentration camp in Berlin. And in Paris specifically, I was moved from the little things, like walking through the Luxembourg Gardens by my homestay to attending poetry readings at Spoken Word to trying new baked goods at corner ‘boulangeries’ (and discovering the most mouth-watering crême brulée) to enjoying the company of both French and Northwestern friends at school. I will forever have fond memories of Paris.
But like any other place, Paris also has its flaws, and I’m grateful to have the time to be able to experience and be aware of them. From an outsider’s perspective, visiting Paris for a short few days or a week gives people just what they want to see: the glamor, the historical sites, world-famous museums, etc. But living in Paris for an extended amount of time showed me the flaws, such as the striking disparities between rich in the city center and the poor in the suburban areas. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see this when I volunteered at Scooby Doo, a Sciences Po program to tutor disadvantaged children who live in the outskirts of Paris, or the ‘banlieues’/poor, suburban areas of the city. Although I could sense many of the students had the talent and the ability to learn and excel, the lack of opportunities they have show the disparity between the rich and the poor in the city. Living in the posh area around Saint Sulpice, I was right in the middle of the city, where one seldom saw the kind of lifestyle ‘banlieue’ students live.
Overall, seeing and experiencing Paris has opened my mind up to how I see the world. Before, Europe seemed almost like a figment of my imagination–although I didn’t doubt the existence of the continent with European history taught throughout my primary and secondary education years, it seemed like a land that I could only read about and experience through textbooks and novels. But living in Paris and experiencing the culture allowed me to conjure my own thoughts, instead of rely solely on others’ experiences and hard facts. It has taught me that while reading about a place, a people, a history is extremely important, it is also limiting–that everything we learn can only go so far, and the rest depends on our actual experience in a place and interaction with its people in order to truly understand it.
Through my abroad experience, I’ve learned that limiting my reality to what I see at home and at school is unfair if what I want is to better understand others and human nature as a whole. And interestingly enough, in understanding human nature through others’ experiences, I also understand myself better. The biggest lesson I’ve learned: one of our goals as humans is to always be stretching our realities so it can encompass, or at least accept, acknowledge and empathize with other realities. Like Lincoln’s quote above, if there’s ever something that irks me about others, it’s only because I’m resisting getting to know them better and I don’t truly understand where they’re coming from. It’s true, because from what I can tell with my experiences abroad, the more I get to know others and understand their background and what makes them who they are, the more my frustration subsides and the more I get to see them as the whole and wonderful human beings that they are.