Just like every week of being here, this week was amazing. We are halfway done with the program and there are still so many things I want to do and see. I’m not ready to leave anytime soon. Tuesday was another chill day. I went to the mall after work and just walked around a little. I didn’t end up buying anything.
Wednesday, I ended up working half in person and half virtual. In the afternoon I met Justice at a cafe, and we worked and talked for the rest of the workday. After work we did an eat by yourself thing and then we met up after. We met up at a pub that had flags of a lot of colleges from the US. It was crazy because they had schools that are really small. I was able to find my friends and my parents’ colleges and they all went/go to smaller schools. The Pitt flag they had was from around the 70s and it was partially covered by another flag, but it was still cool. I have gotten really close with all of the other Americans and I love it. We were having deeper conversations and just enjoying each other’s company.
On Thursday EUSA threw us a little pizza party. After work I went straight to the EUSA building and we had pizza and talked. We were there for almost 2 hours. After that I went home and packed because we had a very early train the next day.
Friday, I had to wake up at 4:15 am because my train was at 7 and it was over an hour away. Justice, Elise and I took the train down to Aix en Provence. We got there around 10 and realized we had to take a 40 minute bus ride to the actual town from the train station. We walked around and ate. It was really pretty; we were just annoyed that we had to carry our bags around until 4 because that’s when our Airbnb check in time was. Ella met us down there a little later in the day and we had a girls trip. We explored the city and ate a lot of great food.
On Saturday we did about the same just in different areas. We walked around the town and tried a lot of different restaurants, gelato stores, and patisseries. Everything was amazing. We went to a Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. The waitress was really nice, and she was our age so we invited her to hang out with us after she was done with work, the food was really good. She’s from Denmark but was working at her family’s restaurant for a while. It was fun going out with her. We also met a lot of other people too. There were so many people from the US and it was so fun to talk to them.
On Sunday Ella had a really early train so the other 3 of us explored more. It was the warmest day that we were in France so far. We went to a garden and just sat there for a couple of hours. It was so calm and beautiful. We then went and got gelato and pastries. After that we had to go to our train which ended up being delayed for about 40 minutes. There was nowhere to sit or stand inside so we sat outside. Elise and I ended up getting so sunburnt from both sitting in the garden and waiting for the train which made it worse. Our train was a couple hours and when we got back to Paris it was pretty late. When we got to Paris, we saw a double rainbow which was so cool. We got McDonalds for dinner because we were exhausted and had our giant bags.
One of the things that has been harder to assimilate to is always talking in French. It’s easy at restaurants and stores but sometimes in longer conversations or on topics where I don’t know a lot of words in French it gets confusing. At my internship everyone speaks French. They can speak English and they do sometimes to me but when they are just conversing, they do it in French, which makes sense. Sometimes people just speak so fast that it gets hard to follow. Sometimes when they are having a group conversation, I can understand most of what they are saying but I can’t think of a reply and say it fast enough. I end up just sitting and listening because I can’t think of a reply fast enough.