Au revoir France!
Place Royale in Nantes
Well I’m finishing up my very last days here in France and am so sleep deprived I’m half delirious. But I can sleep when I’m in the states! There’s just so much I still want to do and see before I leave, how can I waste this precious time sleeping?! This last week has really been something special! First of all, it was finals week – I said special not necessarily fun! And as international students were starting to return to their respective countries of origin, nearly every night of this last week there was a goodbye party for my new friends (hence the lack of sleep). Also something very special happened Friday morning – it snowed in Nantes! Something I was told almost never happens. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me and it was mostly melted away by the time I got out of my final. That’s one or two monumental photo opportunities missed because I did not have my camera with me. The other? A Heineken beer truck back up to Audencia and off loading – priceless!
But I brought my camera with me for my last day trip to Paris where there was still snow on the ground in the parks – another first for me! That was amazing, because I
A picture of one of the last school-wide parties. In here, there are 13 people representing 8 countries (France, Germany, Finland, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay, the Czech Republic and the United States).
was running on only two hours of sleep but had enough energy to run around the city buying the last of my Christmas presents, return to Nantes and at exactly 12am today ventured forth to the last “last party” in Nantes. As I said, we had a lot of those that week. I honestly don’t know how I did that! The rest of today has been spent packing as I leave tomorrow.
I have to admit I’m looking forward to returning to the US for Christmas, but am immensely jealous of the international students I know who are studying in Nantes for a whole year. After Christmas, I want to come back!
Looking back on my whole experience, if I could pin-point the single best reason to study abroad with this program, it would be for the people that you get to meet, French and foreign. You learn about so many other cultures! Talking about political perspectives with people from Russia and Turkey, discussing philosophy with a guy from Finland, gossiping with girls from Belgium and Germany, mocking international accents with Moroccans and telling jokes with the French (or more accurately trying to understand the jokes told). You learn something from every interaction. And while I don’t regret a single mile I traveled in Europe and look forward to exploring more in the future, some of my fondest memories of my experience here consist simply of long conversations over a café au lait.
Snow in Paris
