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
“And then he said…welcome to Paris”
January 7, 2019
The goal here is not to be too mushy. But saying goodbye is hard. We’ve all heard it: “It’s not the place, it’s the people.” And that could not have been a more true statement for the end of my semester abroad. That and the color yellow. And 80s pop... Read More
Of finals and news reports…
December 11, 2018
Under the red and gold holiday decorations, the barista keeps his eyes glued to the tv screen above the booths where a group is sipping coffee, necks craned to hear the news on l’Assemblée Nationale. In the 14th, life outside the café windows proceeds as normal, afternoon... Read More
Meal Times
December 3, 2018
Now, I’m no cook, baker, food blogger, culinary expert…but I do love food. To be honest, baking/cooking kind of stresses me out. Even if I put on some good music, have a recipe prepared, and feel confident, something always ends up getting burned. I suppose I’m... 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
The Not-Enough-Time Stressin’
November 13, 2018
So it’s Novemeber, huh? No idea how that happened. It’s been rainy and…humid (?) here in Paris as October melded away and the colors of the leaves really arrived and I had to start thinking about my winter coat situatuation. This past week was jam-packed with... Read More
Travel: some Non-Wisdoms
November 5, 2018
In my list of reasons to study abroad in Paris, “getting anywhere from there” was very near the top. I’ve been trying not to treat these four months like my last time ever in Europe, but I also want to take advantage of the time, the place, the motion (ahem). I have taken... Read More
One Morning
October 22, 2018
One morning, I was sat at the dining room table across from my host mom. We both had out laptops out, typing furiously. She had her café, I had an empty tasse du thé. It was quiet in the house, with warm sunlight just beginning to stream through the front windows, and... 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
