Week 1 Recap | Bonjour Paris!
24 June 2019, Monday | 11:38 PMHello,
so I am already getting behind on all of this, but I think I’m going to establish a workflow on how I might want to consider sharing all of my experiences of being in Paris!
Week 1 is over, and all I can say is that I’m still in disbelief that I’m here, for one month, living abroad. The last time I did this was nearly two years ago. Now that I’m in post-grad, I'm ever-so-slightly finding it hard to get back into the work hard (play hard) haha jk mindset that I was so used to throughout college. I’ve met some wonderful people, with some amazing teaching staff (shoutout to Ryan and Teo)! Also, I found out my professor won the National Humanities Medal award from President Obama … I never knew any of this until I came to the program.
Some of the very cool things I had the chance to do during week 1 were:
picnic on the Champs de Mars
go on a run by the Seine
learn how to order a coffee & chocolate croissant -ahem, pain au chocolat - in French, and EAT it
drink wine & cheese by the banks of the Seine with friends
visit Notre Dame Cathedral (the damage was quite bad…)
got TWO scoops of gelato: fig and pink grapefruit (this flavor was my FAVORITE) at Berthillon
had the most amazing Braised Beef Cheek at Le Procope, the restaurant that Benjamin Franklin & Thomas Jefferson frequented
climbed all 284 stairs of the Arc de Triomphe with new friends, noticed that Champs-Élysées has geometrically groomed trees, whereas the other streets do not
accidentally stumbled upon a free public showcase of the Paris 2024 Olympics in Place de la Concorde
Of course, these are surely just some highlights from week 1, but there is surely more to come! I’ve been trying hard to think about what I’ll be doing for my creative project, but I haven’t decided yet what I’ll be doing. Hopefully, I’ll know by this time next week. In the meantime, I’m hoping to scout some delicious Vietnamese food and eventually go to a Korean restaurant (ya girl needs more SPICE). French food is so delightful, but I’m really missing my 김치 and 간장 flavors….
Week 2 has started already, and I’ll share what I did for it later on; but today (Monday), I had a formal lunch with some classmates and our professor/TA (I ordered food and it was so intimidating HAHA yikes); but later on, the class went to visit the Luxembourg Gardens, then Church of Saint-Sulpice and St. Germains, then Shakespeare & Company (think of Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce). I had the chance to sit in the bookstore and read up on fashion! I’m so happy that books on fashion are so easily accessible… I mean, we are in the fashion capital in the world…
Anyway, let’s see what else this next week has in store :) Until then, bon voyage!
