Update on life in general

I'm in the final stretch for my year abroad in Paris! I have a little over 2 months left before I go back to Atlanta, and it's definitely crunch time when it comes to seeing the rest of Paris.

Oh, and this past week was Sciences-PO's Spring Break, so Monica and I planned a little trip across Europe, which I'll cover in my next post- coming soon!

As for my life in Paris itself, I thought I'd give a little update since lately I've been posting series about people visiting me and not really talking about how I've been doing as much. So I'll do that now, before I start talking about this amazing trip I just returned from.

First of all, my French is definitely improving! I'm honestly a little worried that when I return to the US my level of French is going to go on the decline just because there will be hardly anyone to talk to. My goal for France was to get my level up to a native speaker, or at least to fluency. I think for US standards, I'm fluent in French, but for a native speaker, I tend to pause too much during conversation. But during the week before last, before my trip with Monica, I went to check out the Jardin des Plantes, a park I'd never seen before, and I randomly met a hip-hop music writer who wanted my help translating some of his lyrics to French. We sat in the park for a couple hours trying to translate the nuances of the lyrics and talking about his views on social life in Paris (he comes from the banlieue, or the suburbs of Paris, which is usually considered to be a lower social class than the people who own apartments in Paris). Our conversation was really interesting, and it wasn't until after I left that I realized that I'd been speaking French for the past few hours like it was natural. He also gave me his contact information so that if I need any more help with my own homework, he'll help me with the language part too. I actually might take up that offer since I have a presentation due next week in my French language class on the subject of the evolution of the French language itself (maybe he could help me out with the slang aspect since he uses a lot of it in his lyrics).

And by the way, the park was absolutely gorgeous! Here's proof:

Here I am relaxing on a park bench.

Panoramic view.

As far as my classes go, I find them all fairly interesting, except 2 of them. One is my course on international organizations, and I know I've said this before, but it's honestly not very challenging since the professor tends to skim over the subject material and not go into more depth. The entire class is a list of definitions, to be exact, and to me, a laundry list of international relations theories and organizations is boring. But maybe it will get more interesting as the semester progresses. I hope.

The other class is quite the opposite. It's in French and it covers liberal political philosophies. One thing I've learned in this class is about the French is that they love love love philosophy and they could analyze it and argue against it and glorify it all day if they had the chance. For me it's unfortunately not so easy to understand, so I have to turn my brain on maximum to follow not only the professor but also the French students. I swear, it's like philosophy is a drug to them, and I, along with every other Anglophone in the class, missed out on our share ha ha. But from what I do understand, it is interesting.

Speaking of that class, I had to give a press review recently, and the topic I chose was the Pope's message about condom usage in regards to preventing the spread of AIDS. I had to present all the liberal arguments for and against his statement, and I honestly found the topic very intriguing. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, or you want to learn more, here's a link I used in my presentation:

Pope and condoms

Now obviously since I'm so far from home and for so long, this whole process is affecting me mentally and emotionally. In fact, before I got on the plane for Paris in September, I had to attend a cross-cultural orientation seminar at Georgia Tech just to help us mentally prepare for the challenge of being surrounded by a completely different environment. I have to say that I think I'm doing better than what Georgia Tech expects of most students because I haven't had any major culture shocks here or huge bouts of depression. I have experienced some minor episodes of mental weakness every now and then, but I'm not worried because I suppose that's a normal thing to encounter when studying abroad. The only time I had severe culture shock was when I went home for Christmas- so I guess you could call that reverse culture shock since I was surprised by the US culture and not the French. But the good thing is that I'm aware of my mental state, and when I'm not feeling myself, I'm usually proactive about it- I'll take a walk outside, I'll meet up with Monica to talk about what's bothering me, or I'll chat online with my mom or with Hunter. So no worries, I deal with the weird phases as they occasionally come around. This whole experience is definitely helping me understand why people study the mental states of students abroad.

As I've said plenty of times before, the weather here is so so so beautiful! I can't say it enough because this past winter was unbearably cold most of the time, and it's really making me appreciate the feeling of sun on my skin and clear blue skies for a change. But because the weather is so wonderful, it really makes me want to ride a bike again! I loved riding bikes when Hunter was here, so my plan is to start using the city's biking system more often. It's called the Velib' (vay LEEB), and it's relatively inexpensive if you sign up to use it for a week at a time. So I'm definitely doing that. Paris by bike is much nicer than by Metro.

That's all for now, and I'll be posting stories about my Spring Break last week soon! (I also have to finish 2 presentations and a midterm paper this week, so bear with me.)

Bisous XOXO