Overseas Briefing - 04/15/10

PARIS — Being abroad is many things. I can’t explain it because it’s such a fluid concept that changes daily and with every angle of perception. It’s normal. I live in an apartment, go to school, keep in touch with old friends, do homework and basically have my life here in Paris. I feel at home, yet I miss my home.

I’ve lived in three different countries this year — China, the United States and France, functioned in three different time zones and tried to blend into three different cultures. Including traveling, I would have to include several more.

When I think about it, it’s exhausting. Yet I haven’t experienced the “culture shock” that so many people warned me about.

There are ups and downs as there would be in any situation. Middlebury is breathtaking when the mountains are freckled with gold and orange and the breeze makes it just the right weather to cozy up in an oversized sweatshirt without being cold.

It’s a place of pure beauty when powdered with its first snow. But your sighs of wonder at the place in which you live turn to eye-drooping, depressed, defeated sighs when you’re stuck inside working on a 10-page paper and studying for a big test, both for the next day, don’t they?

It feels that way here, too. Seeing the leaves turn on campus is like passing a boulangerie on the street. Even though I pass them every day in Paris, never once have I failed to pause and marvel at their sheer beauty.

Sometimes, I don’t feel quite as integrated into the community here, mainly because I feel that Paris lacks one as cohesive and rounded as the ones I’m a part of back home. The system of schooling and the code of day-to-day living are restricted here in comparison to in the U.S., which makes me frustrated, but more importantly, makes me take a good look at what my life back home has to offer.

Discussions often arise here, as they did in China, and as I’m sure they do on every study abroad program, about the differences between where we live and where we are now, and while there are never any definitive conclusions or consensuses, there’s always a balance of emotions and logic that allow us to see more clearly the differences of two or more societies, even if we can’t do anything at the moment to change either one.

While thinking about what to write I couldn’t come up with just one thing. There are too many high points of study abroad, the adventure in the rugged west of China, the relaxed cafés of Paris, the monuments and parks and historical landmarks that I’ve visited in China and Europe, each varies a great deal in tone and sentiment.

Like I said, being abroad is many things. I think it’s the collection of all of these that form our education over here, even more so than sitting in a classroom and listening to a teacher, which is probably why, even with the ups and downs, I love it so much.