Exploring the City and My Two New Families
June 23, 2019
Tourist Destinations On Monday, Richard who is another student from APA, invited me to go downtown with his host family. His host sister has a car, and after our class, she drove us to our first stop: the African Renaissance Monument. With us were also her adorable son Theo, and Richard’s host brother Alex. The stairs that lead up to the monument are less daunting than they look, and it didn’t take us long to get to climb up the 400 stairs to get to the base of the monument. From the base, we could see the entire city bask in the late afternoon sun, the buildings giving off a soft orange glow, the heat visibly trapped in the yellow sky. The stacks of concrete blocks seemed to sprawl until the ends of the earth, drowning out the faint line where the ocean meets the earth. We were standing on top of Dakar, with three towering bronze figures gazing towards New York, a familiar skyline that was now miles away. The finger of the child points directly at the Statue of Liberty, perhaps... Read More
Intro to Dakar!
June 23, 2019
Senegal was one of the first countries I learned to identify on a map. My mom always said that it looked like Pacman, engulfing Gambia whole. Our apartment was always filled with art from Senegal, an allusion to my mother’s time in the Peace Corps and a reminder of my own... Read More
Castles and Princesses
May 8, 2019
One of my absolute favorite things about studying abroad with APA is that they have built in pre-paid trips to other cities in France for us to further explore the culture and history. Our first one was to the north of France to Normandie, which I had already visited in high... Read More
Cheers to the Freakin’ Weekend
April 10, 2019
H A P P Y A P R I L ! It’s our second to last month but we couldn’t be happier to be here! This past weekend in Paris was one for the books! I’m definitely paying the price as I’m sick in bed typing this but definitely worth it. Friday night I... Read More
Dinner Time Chez Isabelle
March 25, 2019
Let’s just start out with that I love food. So much. She is the shoulder I cry on, the friend to laugh at my jokes, the comforting hug in the middle of the night. Because of my commitment to my relationship to food I have since our first week evolved to a dairy machine,... Read More
Morocco: Almost kidnapped… Spas.. and Stitches!
March 18, 2019
For the first half of winter break some of the other students in the program (Greg, Yuki, Chris, Lexi) and I travelled all the way to Fez, MOROCCO! A RyanAir flight later and booking an AirBNB with just one bed we were on our way. Since there are just so many photos I thought... Read More
New Year, New Semester, Who dis?
January 25, 2019
On January 24th he asked me what day it is. “C’est 24 Janvier” Wait.. Wait.. Wait.. Let me just stop right there. This daydream of me reinacting this iconic Mean Girls scene with the French equivalent of Aaron Samuels is not what happened today …or... Read More
For the Time Being
November 20, 2018
There are only so many more times I am going to be able to look out of the train window and watch the Paris streets come alive below, so I put down my book. It’s kind of like I don’t want to take any moment for granted at this point, and I’ve found that just... Read More
In the Spirit of Cake…
October 15, 2018
It was very late. Too late for dinner, but I’d stuffed myself with a gas station sandwich, compote de pomme, and about a thousand Bugle chips, so I’m doing pretty okay as I stepped inside of the apartment on Sunday night. I felt like I’d spent all day on a bus (I had) and... Read More
Paris: a city for a romantic, or a romanticizer?
September 26, 2018
It had gotten to the point of the evening where I had become engulfed in the exhaustion of the travel day, the newness of the city, and the chaos of the language-shift. We had been walking walking walking, and dinner was still a few hours away (because the French eat dinner at... Read More
Dispatches from Dakar #2
June 21, 2018
Writing in Wolof by Boubacar Boris Diop, Concert at Almadies with Ma & Cie featuring Kemit, A homage to Sembene Ousmane with a viewing of his film Xala, Meet Professor Carina Yervasi and the Feast of the Korite for Dispatch from Dakar... Read More
Dispatches from Dakar
June 7, 2018
News of our inaugural launch of APA Dakar 2018 Welcome to the APA office hosted at the Superior Institute of Management (ISM). We have been welcomed by ISM with generosity and support. Sophie Corbeau directs this first edition of the program with the support of Cecilia and... Read More
Clara’s Guide to Paris
April 26, 2018
Today while I was procrastinating starting one of my five (five!!!!!!!) papers due next week, I decided to instead start writing a guide to the city of Paris. And now I share this list with you, cos I love you. Things to see: Museums Musée de l’Orangerie Giant Monet water... Read More
Picnic
April 10, 2018
When I think of Paris, one of the first images that comes to mind is a picnic along the Seine. As the city turns to Springtime, that dream finally came true. Last Friday, some friends and I took a baguette, some chèvre, and a tomato to the banks of the Seine. We sat on a... Read More
Managing Expectations
February 16, 2018
One of the biggest tropes of preparing to study abroad is having incredibly lofty expectations about your time in another country. I had romantic visions of myself riding a bike with a baguette in the basket and picnicking in a different country every weekend. Me as I imagined... Read More
