Tag: study abroad
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Leaving Home for Home
The word “home” for me evokes the aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, the soft patter of thick snowflakes on my windowsill, and the golden rays of evening sunlight as it filters through the trees in the backyard. Nothing quite compares to the tranquility of being home. And in a few short days, I…
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Profite Bien: 102 Days in France
What do I love about France? After living here for exactly 3.5 months, I find myself defaulting to see the negative aspects about this temporary home. For that I’ve made a list of things I do love about this country (there are many more, but these stand out). Sunny blue-sky days: Though rare during these…
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Learning French
Learning a language is difficult. The one-in-the-morning commercials for Rosetta Stone could tell you that. In my twenty years of life I have tried my hand at Spanish, Latin, and, most recently, French. Considering my memories from Spanish class are only of the songs about the colors and alphabet and considering also that Latin is…
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Syria via Normandy
In mid-October the Davidson program traveled to northern France to see Mont Saint Michel and the beaches of Normandy. The region’s beauty contrasted starkly with the horrific violence that took place there seventy years ago. Bayeaux, France, a tiny town in Normandy, is home to a nearly 1,000 year old tapestry telling the story of…
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Touring around Tours
When compared to Paris, Tours smells like a bouquet of fresh flowers on a warm spring afternoon. That’s because it actually does. The Loire and Cher Rivers sparkle. The Seine in Paris sparkles if you catch it on a good day and if the wind is blowing in the right direction, but every time I…
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Slowing down life
La vie se passe plus lentement ici. Life passes much slower here. Yes, I know Paris is a sprawling city which houses more than 2,000,000 people in twenty arrondissements (quarters) and an additional 8+ million people in the outlying banlieues (suburbs). For all the city’s hustle and bustle, however, les Parisiens find and revel in…
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From South India to Paris, France
While clearing out my bookshelves as I packed for a semester abroad in France I realized something about myself. I am a young woman in transition. As I sorted through the books, out went the Pendragon and Princess Diaries series, in came my favorite books from my last two years of college. Books like In…
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The Remnants of War
This country was broken, but with the hard work of its people, it is on the mend. In our ten days in the country, we spent only four days in the northern province of Sri Lanka where the government and the Tamil Tigers fought hardest during their thirty years of civil war. Driving in…
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Reflections upon Leaving Chennai
The gap between the upper and lower classes in India grows by the minute. India’s burgeoning “middle class” accounts for the top earners in the country as half of its population still lives on less than two dollars per day. The increasing economic disparity between the top and the bottom classes means an increasing disparity…
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Bindis and Skin Cream
I recognize that there are many paths to truth, every religion is valid in its attempts to explain the world. I do not hold the monopoly on truth, nor should I pretend to. My way of life, my opinions, my interpretation of the world are only one person’s opinions out of 7+ billion. Religion is…
