The Highs and Lows of Week #1

This week taught me that studying abroad, as cliché as it sounds, really is a roller coaster.

The months and eventual mere weeks leading up to your trip are filled with so much excitement; you don’t know what to do with yourself. You fall asleep wondering what’s going to happen, if it’s going to be what you expect it to be, what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into and endless other ridiculous thoughts.

As you can probably tell from the novel that was my last post, my first 30 hours or so in France were rough. I trekked through the mud to get to what I like to call French Wal-Mart (lol that Kenzie and I went back a second time and realized that we didn’t actually have to walk in the mud because there’s a path, we just didn’t notice it in the rain/fading sunlight), had to converse with an angry bus driver who told me he couldn't understand my bad French (thankfully the only mean French person I’ve met thus far) and had a hard time sleeping in my shoebox room, but a lot has happened between then and now.

Cookies = excitement for Kenzie and I.

My first weekend was a lot better than my first two days. Kenzie and I explored the city and spent a long time hanging out in the cathedral (Notre-Dame de Reims, where almost all of the kings of France were coronated) and bought some classic biscuits roses, which our city is known for. We were cute and touristy and ate them in the garden behind the cathedral, which was the best part of the scenario because the cookies definitely weren’t up to my expectations...basically, they’re really airy wafer cookies with little taste besides the coat of powdered sugar on top of them, but they’re pretty to look at and they’re a Reims staple, so I’m glad we tried them (the macaroon roses, on the other hand, were delightful. Yay for free samples).

Later, we were pathetic and spent at least 2.5 hours in fnac, the French equivalent of Best Buy, since we got free wifi, and bought my ethernet cord so I can have internet in my room. The whole mall we were in had spotty wifi so we loitered for so long that I was actually sitting outside an empty store on Instagram at one point and was told by a security guard to stand up and stop hanging out...haha.

Friday’s highlights also included dinner at Latino Cafe, where we both got Bruschetta-which is funny because it was basically just a variant of pizza, which we had the night before, again avoiding the mysterious unknown that is real French food-and I ordered my first drink ever. It was sangria. And it was a little less than a week before my 21st birthday. It was glorious.

Sangria is the root of all happiness, I think.

On Saturday the sun finally came out, so we met the others at the cathedral and took even more pics-with much better lighting this time-before exploring le centre ville, specifically Place d’Erlon, which is the pedestrian mall with the fnac store we went to the day before. Sadly, we visited French McDonald’s after only being away from the states for two days, but I only ordered small fries for 1 euro and I got to use the wicked awesome machine thingy that allows you to order in English, without ever having to speak to a French person (which is my biggest source of anxiety here) so that was great. I’m not proud to say that I’ve returned to that McDonald’s a second time since then and I haven’t even been in France for two weeks yet. I promise that this won’t become a regular thing.

Curse McDonald's for being so convenient.

Saturday night was definitely one of my favorite memories in Reims so far. Five of us went to Sherlock’s, which is this super chill little English pub on the main drag of Place d’Erlon, and we sat for hours and just talked about life over drinks. I’m a freak and ordered a margherita (at an English pub, mind you) because it sounded good and I didn’t want the first drink I bought for myself at a bar to be something I wasn’t sure if I would like. It wasn’t bad, but the sips I’ve had of other’s back home were much better. Note to self: order a drink that a pub is known for when at a pub. So basically, order anything other than a margherita.

Apparently marshmallows in drinks is a thing.

Other than my poor drink choice, the night was awesome. I’m convinced that there’s no better way to acclimate to European culture than experiencing bar culture. You don’t have to party, just sipping casually on a drink or two for hours on end and getting to know the people around you-which we made sure to do by asking the people next to us in broken French if people here enjoy shots/what’s their favorite-makes it easy to understand why Europeans move at a slower pace.

Take today, for example. It was my first day of school, but I just had one class and it was from 5:30-7pm. One of my new friends asked if a bunch of us wanted to grab a drink afterwards to celebrate the end of the first day, so I went to the brasserie across from school and chatted over a half a glass of wine for two hours. I didn’t feel the need to drink the night away, I was just being social and spending some time getting to know my new classmates, and it was nice to see that drinking is associated with relaxing and socializing more than forgetting your problems and binging like it is so often back home.

Anyway, back to my roller coaster theme.

Honestly, moving here wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I guess the literal moving part was hard, but the living in a different country thing isn’t too terrible. French people don’t believe in public garbage cans, water fountains (or cheap, plentiful water for that matter) or promptly-delivered checks at restaurants, but otherwise, they’re not completely different than Americans. They’re obsessed with Beyoncé and Michael Jackson (sometimes we think they just realized recently that he died), drink caffeine and eat lots of carbs. They dress a little nicer, but very few of them look like they just walked off a runway (that would probably be different if I was going to school in Paris, however). They like to close everything on Sundays, which is a pretty terrible inconvenience, but it’s not so bad to be forced to plan my baguette purchases a little farther in advance.

Thomas got me a baguette for my bday and it rocked.

What’s been hard is letting go of the lifestyle I had before. I feel like I’m getting used to the European way of life, but there’s a part of me that’s still in the Columbia mindset, sending emails to remind people in various organizations of what they need to do. Now, part of this is beyond my control. When you leave to study abroad the semester after taking on four leadership positions in three different clubs, you’re bound to have commitments to tend to. However, I’m too emotionally invested. I need to realize that the people who have taken over my positions know what they’re doing. I trust them all, but I still find myself wondering if there’s something more I could have done to help them before I left, and I keep metaphorically banging my head against the wall to remind myself to let go.

Another bump in the road was our orientation week class, which was basically a seminar on French learning techniques that turned into a How-To-Do-Oral-Presentations-The-SP-Way Boot Camp.

I don’t enjoy public speaking, but I wouldn’t say it’s my biggest source of stress in life. However, I wasn’t the biggest fan of my seminar professor, and that was a huge source of stress that was incredibly unnecessary during a week of a class that I don’t even get credit for. While I really disliked my actual class, I’m happy that I took it because I got to know a bunch of the other exchange students through our mutual dislike for our extremely respectable-I’ve never met anyone else with more masters degrees-yet borderline insensitive/rude professor.

The best parts of orientation week were spent at night. I went out three nights in a row, which is extremely unlike me, but I don’t regret it for a second. My school is just around 400 students, and I feel like I already know a quarter of them just because of all the people I met those three nights. I practiced some French, learned how to properly greet French people (a kiss on the side of each cheek, which is more like a brushing of the sides of your cheeks while making a kissing sound-NOTE: most start on the left side), sang along to multiple Beyoncé songs and met people who speak more languages than I could ever imagine and have seen more places than I could ever dream of experiencing.

So thankful for new friends and free drinks.

I turned 21 on Thursday, and that was quite the experience. Although I could legally drink in France from the second I stepped off the plane, my wonderful new friends were kind enough to make my 21st as big of a deal as it would have been if I were in the states. We went back to our now favorite bar, Sherlock’s, but started the night with pizza and wine in a friend’s room before heading to Hemingway’s, one of the most popular bars in Reims (also on the Place d’Erlon). While some of the night may be a little fuzzy, I know it was a lot of fun and I can’t begin to thank everyone that made it such a great celebration:)

Again, I’ve managed to write way too much, so I’ll end with this: Reims rocks. Seriously, I couldn’t be happier with the way all of this has worked out. Sure, my room is only 9 square meters, I have class for six straight hours every Friday and have French class at 8:30 am twice a week, but I’ve met enough wonderful people and have eaten enough delightful brie, pastries and other bakery items to cancel all of that out.