"There is never any end to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease it could be reached. Paris was worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it."

I once heard a saying that life is like a toilet paper roll – the closer you get to the end of something, the faster it goes. That sure has been the case with my study abroad experience. I can’t begin to express how mind-blowing it is that I am leaving here tomorrow. I really feel like I just got here.

This semester has been the most challenging, most frustrating, most fun, and most rewarding experience of my life. I feel like I have learned so much about myself, the French, and human beings in general and yet I feel like I know nothing at all. If you’ll indulge me, I want to share some things I learned while I was here:

• Any dish whose main ingredient is the blood of an animal is just a bad idea. Period.
• Men are eternally confusing, regardless of the continent they hail from.
• Consistently looking like a slob not only shows that you do not have respect for yourself, it shows that you do not respect the people around you. My French civilization professor explained it to me this way – when the French see an American walking into Notre Dame dressed in a 49ers football jersey with the sleeves cut off, a backward baseball cap, and sweatpants, they take it personally. When you don’t make the effort to at least look somewhat put together, it tells the people around you that they are not worth the time it takes to put on a clean shirt. Some people may see this as snobbishness on French people’s part, but I for one respect that theory very much. (That’s not to say we’re not entitled to a grubby sweatpants-wearing day every now and again. Just don’t go to any cathedrals.)
• Nothing is quite like the high you get when you are able to communicate clearly and effectively with someone in a foreign tongue.
• But muffins, with the right ingredients, can get you pretty high, too.
• Our way is not always the best way. Different does not mean dumb.
• If you pretend to like something that you secretly loathe, chances are you’ll get served it again. (And I’m not just talking about food.)
• Sometimes knowing where you come from is just as important as knowing where you’re going. The lady I live with can trace her roots back hundreds and hundreds of years. It seems like everyone here has this really rich knowledge of their ancestry, and I really feel like that is something we’re missing in the United States. I never realized what a big part of whom a person is can be related to where they come from, and I’d very much like to discover more about my ancestry when I get back.
• There isn’t going to be a point where everything becomes clear. I have to admit, I came to Paris thinking I was going to be Sabrina. I was going to come back from France a new person – knowing exactly who I was, what I wanted to do with my life, what my next steps would be. But, I think I realized that no one (except maybe the very lucky or the mildly insane) has a moment where the right path becomes evident and they figure everything in their life out. I’m pretty sure being an adult is just taking things as they come at you and accepting the consequences (good or bad) of your decisions, taking solace in the fact that, like you, everyone else is flying by the seat of their pants.
• There is no better way to test how competent you are than public transportation in a foreign country.
• Sometimes the things you don’t look forward to are the ones you enjoy the most.
• The internet should NEVER be taken for granted. (If you have difficulty wrapping your head around this, think about having to make a 30 minute commute or pay $6 every time you want to check your e-mail.) Also, the same goes for Heinz ketchup, free bathrooms, ice, peanut butter, country music, and Mexican food.
• I’ve learned that a group of people who have very little in common can be thrown together for a semester and come out of it having made genuine friendships and truly having had a blast.
• You only live once, so shut up, buy an overpriced drink, and miss the last Metro home.
• Traveling is one of the best things you can do during your lifetime, but you can only go so long before you just want to curl up on your couch and watch TV with the people you love.

I guess what I should conclude with is something my good friend Susanna (who studied in Beijing last year and who I tend to get very philosophical with when we drink red wine together) told me and which has always stuck with me. She said that no matter where we (human beings) are from in the world, at our core we’re exactly the same. I think we have a tendency to think of the rest of the world as fundamentally different from us, and they are in some ways, but at the end of the day, we all go home and worry about the same things – our work, our family, our friends, and just being happy and coexisting with everyone else on this absurd spinning ball. That’s certainly something I’ve seen while I’ve been here and maybe the world would be a little bit better if we could all remember that.

I hope you have had as much fun reading this as I have had writing it. I’m sorry for the cheese, but I wish I could have taken each and every one of you in my pocket so that you could have been there for every moment of what has truly been the best experience of my life. (Except for maybe the boudin – I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.)

I love y’all and I’ll see you Stateside!

Kate

I am in such a Christmas-y mood! Saturday night my friends and I took a train to Strasbourg, a city in Alsace-Lorraine on the border of France and Germany. At Christmastime, Strasbourg is known for its huge Christmas market that lasts all through December. It was absolutely adorable! In different parts of the city they have rows and rows of wooden huts selling everything Christmas-related you could imagine – thousands upon thousands of Christmas ornaments, every color and style of Christmas light, jewelry, toys, Christmas trees, hundreds of different figurines for the all-important crèche – nativity scene. And the food, oh my Lord, the food! Hot spiced wine (delish), sugary and salty pretzels, roasted chestnuts, chocolate-covered marshmallows, beignets, hot chocolate, fudge, gingerbread everything, waffles drizzled in Nutella, tarte flambée (a kind of flat, thin crust pizza with bacon, cheese, and onions), choucroute (sauerkraut and sausage), the list goes on. It was absolutely incredible. The city was adorable, too – it’s truly a combination of French and German everything. It had these adorable half-timbered buildings and lovely canals. We walked around all day and took everything in, and it was such a blast.

Monday night I was invited by Madame de Billy to attend a wine-tasting at her and Jean Claude’s country club. (It was really cute how they explained country clubs to me – I had to tell them we have exactly the same thing in the States!) So, Madame told me to be home around 6:30 so we could leave, and I rushed in at about 6:25. I had been browsing at Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, the two major department stores in Paris that are absolutely gorgeous (not to mention packed) at Christmastime. So I get home, and she immediately asks me if I’m going to change. (I was in a grey jumper, black turtleneck, and tights and heels, which, although not super-fancy I deemed acceptable for a wine tasting.) So, of course, I changed into something un peu plus élégant. It made me laugh! Oh, the French.

So then, along with Florian, her nephew that she has shamelessly tried to set me up with, we hop in the old Renault and drive to the club which is by the Bois de Boulogne in a very swanky area of Paris. When we get there, it turns out we weren’t invited to actually taste wine, we were supposed to help Jean Claude by bringing in wine from out back for his customers! So we go out back and we’re crawling in this old truck looking for bottles of Beaujolais blanc with Antoine, Jean Claude’s assistant who always looks like he’s on the verge of tears and who didn’t say a word to me all night. I think I freaked him and Florian out a bit when I hiked up my dress and crawled in the back of the truck – I bet Parisian girls wouldn’t dream of it. It was also kind of a weird situation, because were it me and two American guys, I’m sure we would have just said “screw it” and opened a bottle of the good stuff, or at least joked about it, but these were French boys, and they were very serious and completely dedicated to the task at hand.

After about an hour of this, we were finally relieved of our duties and given permission to walk around. We walked around to all these little stands and tasted wine from all over France. I was so proud of myself! I met lots of people and carried out small talk in French, aucun problème! This cute old Frenchman was telling me about how his brother was a cowboy in Austin for six months twenty years ago and we talked about Stetson hats and cowboy boots. Love it!

One thing I did learn, though, is how seriously wine is taken here! I mean, I suppose people take it seriously in the States as well, but as I tasted more and more of it last night, it became harder and harder to keep a straight face as Florian and the vendors discussed bouquets and aftertastes and all that business. It was fun to compare the different regions, though, and I learned that you really can taste the difference in cheaper from more expensive wines. I also learned that France actually has laws against putting pieces of wood in their barrels of wine as they age, which some other countries do to infuse their wines with a more “woody” taste – something that the French consider cheating. All in all, an interesting and quite sophisticated night!

I have only a couple days left here and I am freaking out.