Update: May ... and the Rest of Spring Semester!

Thursday, May 15.

Remember when I used to update this blog every few days? Well, it turns out that life back in the States just isn't as conducive to frequent blog-writing!

Part of me still misses the lax schedule of Paul-Valéry, where classes met once or twice a week (if there were no student grèves) and where 'homework' could be completed in a couple minutes while sitting on my bed. The retour to the academic rigor of William & Mary was, unsurprisingly, tough. Although my 15-credit load wasn't necessarily any more difficult than it has been in the past, I found myself working harder than I ever have before. A full week after finishing my last final exam, I can tell you that it was worth it. (Although I can't promise that I would have said the same thing a few weeks ago.) I was really passionate about everything that I was doing, from my classes to my internship to my new extracurricular activities, and although I thought I'd be ready to see the end of what has definitely been my busiest and most challenging semester at W&M, I was sad to see it go.

I've done a lot this semester. Some of it, I was expecting -- I signed up for (most of) my classes and applied for my Admissions Office internship before I even left France. But most of it was unexpected, even accidental -- I had no plans to run for Honor Council, no idea that I would wind up taking a 400-level English class about Shakespeare, and certainly no intention to spend the majority of my evenings in Swem Library! I'm proud of what I have accomplished and while I know that next semester will be an even bigger adventure, I'm excited.

Looking back on the past four months (four months?!), I can't believe that they went as quickly as they did. It feels like yesterday that I was boarding the plane to come home for Christmas! Because there's simply no way to explain everything that happened this semester in the detail I would like, I'll give you the second half of Spring 2014 in photos. If it all seems a little jumbled and confusing, that's because it was!

Elizabeth Suzanne meets Willa Francis for the first time.

Volunteering with some furry friends at W&M Greek Life's philanthropy event, the ARC Carnival.

Update: February

Sunday, February 23.

Hello again! February isn't quite over yet, but it's definitely coming to a close. And wow, this month certainly has sped by! It literally feels like yesterday that I was writing my January update post ... and now I'm getting ready for my spring break. But that's probably just because I've been keeping busy!

Let me rephrase. I've been keeping very busy. Like busier than I've ever been before in college busy. (So if I haven't been responding to emails/posting on Facebook, you'll see why.)

Things are starting to pick up with my extra-curriculars and suddenly, the reality of beginning so many new activities has set in! Honor Council is a big time commitment: even without cases, there are still weekly business meetings and office hours. And now that I'm co-chairing the Council's Faculty Liaison Committee, I have a few more responsibilities to take care of in the meantime. My internship at the Undergraduate Admissions Office is starting to pick up pace as well: in addition to getting ready for Day for Admitted Students in April, we interns have been helping around the office in preparation for committee, when the official admissions employees will select W&M's Class of 2018, and I've never spent so much time color-coding and alphabetizing! On the slightly cooler side, you can now see my official Admission Ambassador profile on the William & Mary website! Check out the ambassador biographies here and my first blog post ("Why W&M?") here.

There I am with the other Spring Programming interns! Fun fun fun.

As busy as things are outside of the classroom, there's even more today within my classes. Although I have hardly any tests this semester, all of my courses are really paper-heavy and require a lot of time spent on class readings and papers. I've already turned in two papers and have three more to submit within the next week! I'm not going to lie, it's been pretty overwhelming. The papers that I'm writing feel more advanced than the things I've done in the past and although everything I've submitted has turned out pretty well so far, they've been a struggle. However, I'm trying really hard this semester to work ahead and ask for help in advance with my assignments -- no more last-minute paper-writing for me! (Sigh...)

And as if I weren't busy enough, yesterday was Campus Golf! As I had to explain to more than one confused tourist, Campus Golf is Kappa Delta's annual philanthropy event -- a huge day-long extravaganza that raises thousands of dollars for charities like Prevent Child Abuse American and Avalon, a local women's shelter. It's also one of THE biggest events on campus and attracts hundreds of teams every year. (Don't remember how it works? You can read more about last year's event on my old blog here.)

Update: January

January 31, 2014.

Hey folks! Have you missed me? I hope you're in for a long post, because I've got quite a bit to tell you about the last month of my life. ("But Elisabeth, this is a study abroad blog ... and you're not abroad anymore!" I know. I know. Just keep reading.) They say that time flies ... and it's true. I cannot believe that just over a month ago, I was walking through the streets of Montpellier on my last day in France, carrying cheese and pastries in the pockets of my raincoat (everything becomes a shopping bag if you're desperate enough). Although my last days and weeks in Montpellier feel as vivid as ever, Winter Break is nothing a happy blur spent catching up with family, friends, and fast food. I talked about France and even began my study abroad scrapbook, but it hasn't been until coming back to college that the change has felt permanent.

Now that I'm back at school, it sort of feels like my semester abroad never even happened -- as if it were all some particularly long and complicated dream. (Imagine, a dream that requires a visa! Only in France...)

Lest you get the wrong idea, I'm very happily settling back into life at the College. The first two weeks were tough: moving back into a dorm room, figuring out my final class schedule, and -- like any student freshly-returned from time abroad -- finding a quick response to "HEY! HOW WAS FRANCE?" ("Great" feels like such a cop-out and anything more enthusiastic -- "it was life-changing" -- is too obnoxious.) But the "newness" of my return is starting to wear off. Now, most people ask me about my classes or my weekend, not my four months abroad. Stories of my experiences -- about the friends I met, the places I visited, the hilarious cultural differences I noticed -- slip into conversation, but they're not the main focus of discussion. That's okay, of course, but it only underlines the feeling that my semester abroad never even happened. I've found that I'm most comfortable talking to others who've been through the same thing, who have undergone the same "reverse culture shock" that inevitably sets in upon return to Williamsburg. But don't get me wrong; I'm glad to be back. I'm actually very excited for this semester! It's going to be busy, but that's okay. "Busy" is usually where I am the happiest.

Two Down, Two to Go

Mercredi, 23 octobre.

I don't know about you, but to me it feels like, recently, this blog has turned primarily into a way for me to unload all the information I've been accumulating from museum brochures and to post all the travel photos I don't want to upload to Facebook. And although I've had a lot of fun sharing my adventures, I think it's about time that I waxed a little more philosophical.

I realized today that my two-month anniversary of arriving in France (and the halfway point of my semester) had come and gone without me even noticing.

I arrived on 17 August, just over two months ago. I remember anxiously peering out the windows of the airplane, hoping to catch a glimpse of my future home. I remember standing in baggage claim with Molly and the other W&M students and exchanging curious glances with the other American students on our flight. I remember sitting on a hot bus by the train station, staring out at the graffiti and city streets and wondering if someone had made a mistake and sent us to Detroit on accident. We spent our first afternoon wandering around the neighborhood around our dorms, loudly exclaiming how excited we were to be in France ... and secretly wondering if we all hadn't made the wrong decision.

 

First day of exploring = many discoveries and many selfies!

Slowly but surely, we discovered Montpellier. We visited centre-ville for the first time and were relieved beyond words to realize that there was, in fact, a world beyond Triolet! We discovered shortcuts and bakeries and picnic destinations, eventually leaving our maps at home as the street names became more and more familiar. It's kind of funny to look back at how differently I viewed the city ... and at how wrong I was about so many things! The train station, whose surroundings seemed so dingy when we arrived, is actually a stone's throw from the beautiful historic center of Montpellier. The other Americans that we were nervously sizing up at baggage claim are now the people we hang out with all the time. Oh, and I totally couldn't see Montpellier from the plane while landing. (Rookie mistake.)

France has definitely been full of surprises: some more pleasant than others. It's been hard to adjust to the prices here; everything -- from food to clothes to shampoo -- seems more expensive, even before converting from Euros to dollars. People don't smile or say hello in the street (although guys have no problem cat-calling at any girl who walks by). There's a frustrating amount of dog poop on the sidewalk. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the city itself is not as picture-perfect as the postcards -- or, in my case, the Google Image results -- make it seem. The ornate buildings in Place de la Comédie and the quirky slanting streets of the Écusson do not extend outside the historic center. And even those postcard-worthy sites aren't quite what the photos suggest. It's a city, after all: there are homeless people and cigarette butts and you cannot walk a block without seeing a wall covered in graffiti. And yet, it's somehow better than I could have EVER imagined.

Before coming here, I had some ideas in my head of what life in France would be like. But I could never have imagined picnicking at the Place du Péyrou at sunset. Or walking along a narrow street and suddenly catching a glimpse of a cathedral. Or getting a bird's eye view of the city during les Journées du Patrimoine. Or feeling so comforted by the sight of the tram after a long weekend in Paris.

 

Sometimes this place is even better than the postcards make it look. 

It's these little, simple things that I do without thinking that really make me love it here. They make me realize that over the past two months, Montpellier has become my home away from home.

Speaking of home, I'm surprisingly not homesick. Maybe I'm one of those people who adapt quickly? Or maybe France is simply that great? Or maybe I just don't understand the definition of homesick? But I really think I haven't felt it yet. Granted, there have been some less-than-fabulous days -- like when I spent 12 hours searching for my house key, or when the toilet paper dispenser at school fell on my head each time I went to the bathroom! And of course, it's been a little difficult to look at all the photos of all my friends and sorority sisters having fun without me. But despite the occasional twinge of regret that I'm missing out on prime CW cider run weather, I never find myself wishing that I were back in the States. (Exception: my phonetics class, during which I would usually prefer to be almost anywhere else.)

I know that when the time comes, I will be happy to return to Northern Virginia and be reunited with all my favorite things (in particular, blueberry cake donuts and Taco Bell). In fact, you'll probably find me at the airport waving an American flag and shouting the national anthem. I'll be overjoyed to see my family and friends and will, hopefully, be able to look back on my semester in the knowledge that I'll be coming back to this beautiful country sometime soon.

But at the moment, I can't picture myself ever wanting to ever leave France. So I'm sure you can only imagine how terrifying it was to realize yesterday that the long séjour stamp on my Visa is halfway to its expiration date!

Okay, so there are still over eight weeks left. Eight weeks that will be absolutely filled with classes and papers and exams and jampacked with day trips and adventures. Eight weeks during which I will finally travel out of the country (Luxembourg and Belgium, here we come!) and will get to take my mom on a whirlwind tour of France. Eight weeks that will be spent visiting as many beautiful towns, exciting cities, and -- when the time comes -- CHRISTMAS MARKETS as humanly possible.

Eight weeks in which I will continue to eat my weight in baguettes and to fill up my phone's memory with photos of picturesque alleys ... and, of course, more selfies.

Hooray for awkward selfies in Montpellier, Marseille, AND Paris!

First Week of School? Check!

Vendredi, 13 septembre.

FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL AT A FRENCH UNIVERSITY? DONE. And I didn't get lost once! (Well, okay, maybe once.) But seriously, I'm actually really excited to have survived the week and am feeling really good about the upcoming semester.

I know you probably have a million and one questions that I couldn't begin to answer here, so feel free to ask anything in the comments and I'll try to respond as best I can! In the meantime, I guess I'll just describe my classes (well, the classes I attended this week) and try to give you a little bit of insight into the French university nightmare system!

First things first -- first day of school picture! Here I am standing in front of the IEFE building. It's where we took our pre-session classes and even though I don't have classes there during the semester, there's a little room just for exchange students where we all feel very much at home!

Like William & Mary, UPV has an add/drop period. It lasts three weeks and during those three weeks, anything goes. Attendance isn't really required and students dart in and out of classes, spending thirty minutes in one before running to check out another. It's a little bit of a stressful time, but it also gives us foreign exchange students a wonderful opportunity to "try out" our classes before committing to them for the whole year. This week, I went to a total of eight classes and although I won't be keeping them all, I had a good time running around and testing them all out!