It is hard to believe that I am getting so close to finishing my semester in Paris. It seems so much like I just live here now, but I am also hitting so many “lasts” that is hard to ignore the end of my stay here. The biggest last was probably the last travel weekend, which I passed in Scotland. To be honest, I didn’t have many expectations for Scotland, and really didn’t know anything about it except for the fact that in the United Kingdom. I was blown away by how much history and personality Scotland actually has, and how beautiful (albeit cold) it is there. I went on a bus tour of the highlands, which featured a tour of a whisky distillery, a trip to Loch Ness, and a wealth of history and culture from our driver. The most fascinating thing I learned on that trip was the fact that many of the cultural icons that we know for Scotland, including bagpipes, kilts, and speaking Gaelic, were made illegal after the Jacobite rising in 1745, and the revival of Scotland as a distinct and inde...
This week,
my friend from BYU’s study abroad London group came into Paris, which meant
that I got to serve as his tour guide while he was here. It was really exciting
getting to visit so many of the locations I hadn’t returned to in the last
little while, as many of the places had gained new meaning since the beginning
of the trip when I first saw them. For example, at Saint-Denis, I was able to
tell stories about several of the kings that were buried there, who I had not
even heard of prior to coming to France. I was actually pretty proud of how
well I knew my way around the city and its historical and cultural sites. I
even got my friend to order food in French by the time he left the city. It was
a pretty exciting mark of my progress in French that I was able to help someone
else with the language when I used to be in a pretty helpless state not too
long ago myself.
In thinking
about how I want to spend my last month in Paris, I am quickly realizing that I
have done most of the big unique things that are here. Although a little bit of
the excitement of discovering world class monuments for the first time here is
ending, I still look forward to the casual exploration around my neighborhood
that leads me to new parks, pizza restaurants, and landmarks. I think that
visiting the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and all of those other famous places
were training us how to explore less prolific areas around us as well, and to
find inspiration and grandeur in our everyday surroundings. I am really
starting to feel that a lot of the things that I was reading about the Parisian
way of life and becoming a flâneur before this trip are really
starting to come together, and while I won’t be able to take this city home
with me, I will have a new way of viewing my life around me that Paris was here
to teach me, and so in a way I won’t be losing it when I leave after all.
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