Getting back into my Northwestern paced life in Evanston, it’s easy to sometimes feel like I never even
went to Paris or like it’s a distant memory. Although I might not think about Paris or French culture every day, when I take a second to stop and think about my time there it’s hard not to get nostalgic. Living in Paris was honestly the dream I thought it would be.
When I applied to study abroad I wanted to meet people whose experiences, stories, and perspective varied greatly from mine while building a life in a new city and finding little things and places to call my own. While I’m not going to say there weren’t challenges of living in a new country, after all, everything familiar to me was an ocean away, I barely spoke the language, and didn’t have common cultural ties to the people around me; I will say I found what I was looking for and more. I had the privilege of being free to spend an afternoon getting lost in a new place, explore a neighboring country for the weekend, or find a damn good baguette or croissant for roughly a euro anywhere I went, and that’s not something I take for granted, especially now that I am back in Evanston.
For me study abroad was more than just sight seeing, building language skills, or the things I learned in my classes. It showed me that I have the capability to build a life from scratch, how to rebuild when tragedy strikes, and what it feels like to be a part of a community that overcomes.
My first day in Paris
The Eiffel Tower with the city motto “Fluctuat Nec Mergitur”