Usually when I am coming home from Northwestern I am super excited, this time when I was coming home from Paris, I was dreading it. It was different this time because I don’t know when I will return to Paris, whereas when I come home from northwestern, I know I will be returning at most in a couple of months. I’ll get to see my college friends again, I’ll get to visit places in Chicago that I’ll miss; it’s never a full goodbye when I come home from Northwestern. This time, it was. I saw the Eiffel Tower twinkle for the last time, I ate my last French baguette, I took the metro for the last time, I said bonjour to the homeless man at my corner for the last time, I went up the stairs to my apartment for the last time, there were all these lasts happening at once, and I didn’t know if I would ever get to experience these moments again. It was these intimate parts of Paris that made me love it the most, it wasn’t the pomp and circumstance that comes with the Louvre, with the Champs Elysees, with a boat ride along the seine, it was the small moments that made me really feel like it was home. I wish I had a few more days in Paris at the end to really say goodbye to the city, I feel like I didn’t have enough time at the end with finals and everything school related to really go out and appreciate Paris for the last time. That made saying goodbye really hard. Now, writing this in my bed at home in Seattle, I feel sad and a little in shock that this experience is already over, but I also feel nothing but gratitude for the experience and love that Paris brought me.