It’s certainly been an eventful week in Paris, both for me and the city as a whole. I started my internship last week, and it’s definitely been challenging so far. Despite how huge my office building is, I only work with 4 other people. Our supervisor is based in Zurich, so we met him on the first day but he will rarely be there from now on.
Thursday was a French holiday, so our work week only lasted 3 days. On Thursday and Friday, I spent most of the day in the Luxembourg gardens – which are not actually in Luxembourg, as I had to explain to some of my family members. They are a wonderful place to sit and read, or just enjoy the scenery (even if it’s very hard to find a chair on the weekends because everyone has the same idea as me).
On Saturday, there was a much anticipated soccer game – or match de foot – between Paris’ team, Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan, an italian team. I didn’t watch because I know nothing about sports, but it was impossible not to notice it. You could tell what the score was even if you didn’t check it all night, based on the noise outside. While I was enjoying a ballet documentary with my host mom, we could hear periodic shouts of joy coupled with fireworks, as well as see the Eiffel Tower light up every time Paris scored. Thankfully I am a heavy sleeper, because the barrage of noise continued well into the night.
On Sunday morning, I went to the Louvre with some other girls in the program. If you look at any Paris tourism website, you will see that admission to the Louvre is free on the first Sunday of each month. I absolutely love museums, and it’s been a dream to go to the Louvre for years, so I was ecstatic. I woke up bright and early on Sunday morning and headed to the metro station. My arrondissement was a mess; there was trash absolutely everywhere from the crowds the night before, and almost every metro stop was closed. Fortunately, the trash was cleaned up within a matter of hours, and miraculously the metro stop at the Louvre was still open.
Unfortunately for me and my friends, the claim on tourism websites that the Louvre is free the first Sunday? That deal ended ten years ago. But, the good news is that there’s a plan for people under 26 that for just 15 euros, you can visit the Louvre as many times as you want for a year. It’s a deal so good I kind of can’t believe it’s real. So if you ever go to Paris, check out Les amis du Louvre. The Louvre was amazing, and even though I spent 4 hours there, I only saw a small portion of it. I hope to be able to come back every week so I can get the full use of my card. I loved being able to talk about the stories behind certain paintings and the changing art styles (shoutout to my art history teachers over the years).
Sunday night was chaotic. I was heading to dinner in the 16th arrondissement, walking because basically all public transport was shut down due to a parade of the soccer players through the city. I have never heard so many car horns in my life. To make matters worse, as soon as I got to the restaurant, they closed early; I assume they were just too busy or didn’t feel like staying open during the chaos. Can’t say I blame them, but it was disappointing. I ended up getting an Uber to the 11th arrondissement, and it took way longer than it would have if not for the huge crowds of fans and police in the streets. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it. It was nice to be able to take a car ride and see the city, despite the stressful atmosphere – I almost always take the metro, which is faster, but with a much worse view.
Today, I went back to work. At my internship, it can sometimes be hard to stay focused because there is often not a lot of interaction. When we’re just sitting at our computers for hours at a time, I sometimes get distracted. I definitely prefer the days where we work together, because talking to my coworkers (especially in French) forces me to focus. Another challenge is that, as I mentioned, my supervisor will almost never be in the office. This means we have to be very autonomous. Because this is my first internship and especially my first week, I struggle sometimes with knowing what to do. We all decide our own tasks; we aren’t delegated them like I might have expected. It’s hard to compare it to any other job I’ve had because they’ve all been in food service where the tasks at hand were very clear. Here, I have to use my own judgement deciding what needs done and in what order. It’s nice to have independence, but more independence means there are less people to keep me on track. Something that helps me a lot is that we need to send reports at the start and end of each day showing our supervisor what our goals are. The fact that I have a responsibility to record what I’ve gotten done motivates me to be productive so I can show actual results.
That’s about everything for this week. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! À la semaine prochaine!