Today Was a Fairytale

Oh man. We have only been in Paris for three days, and it feels like it has been much longer, for we have already seen and experienced so much! By calling this post “today was a fairytale,” I am not only quoting a Taylor Swift song but also trying to encapsulate the recurring feeling I have been experiencing since arriving here. This is not to say everything has gone smoothly with no bumps in the road to overcome, but before I got into blogging about all I am learning and seeing, I want to do just an initial oh my god I’m in Paris France how am I feeling?

The first piece of magic I experienced was the effective transit system. It is not always a fun journey per se, but it truly works at getting people places in a safe and efficient manner. It makes me sad that there is so much stigma around using public transit at home when here it is normal and widely accepted. Upon arriving at our castle of a dorm, I was automatically transported into a storybook that I do not think I have left yet. Maybe it is still just the culture shock, but it truly feels like I am a character in a book or on a movie set. From the grand entrance and staircases in the main building to the tiny four-person cage-like French elevator with only five buttons, everything on this campus is nothing as I have seen before. Except for the cafeteria that is pretty average. When we began to explore the campus (because we did not have room keys but still we got to look around), we found the oldest building at Cite Universitarie which was built between the two World Wars in an attempt to create world peace by bringing young minds together in an international education institute. Near this building, there was a wooden trellis with green leaves and vines all throughout and a stone patio courtyard. It looked like it was out of Harry Potter so now we all call it the harry potter building. Inside, there was actually a film set for a French movie that was currently in production. That was really cool to see and truly made me feel even more like this was a false reality.

When we are walking around and I look up at the sky or down at the sidewalk, it honestly feels like I am home walking around D.C. But when the cross breeze from the Seine River blows, I look to my left and see white pop-up market tents, smell amazing breakfast pastry, and turn to my right and see the Notre Dame and tall narrow limestone resident buildings with mansard roofs and casement windows all the way up, it jolts me back to the fact that I am literally walking around in France. It’s crazy! To be in a place that is so widely iconic and famous feels unreal and it is truly a magical experience to just be able to exist in this area. On the river cruise, my friend and I were talking a lot about how it all did not feel real yet because we are not the kind of people to go to France and sit on a boat starring out at the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but here we are doing it. Each shop has large windows for shopping, each cafe has tiny tables and chairs inviting you to take a rest and eat something (if the amazing smell has not already) and each building has some wild, historic design that makes you want to know everything about it.

That’s another part of why this feels so magical and insane is because of how old it is here. Kings were just chilling around the same places that I wait at to cross the street! Since America is such a young country and not strongly connected to a cohesive culture, the deep-rooted sense of history here is incredibly impactful and almost overwhelming. France is aware of its power and beauty and its pain and suffering, and it makes sure that if you are thinking about it, you will notice it everywhere. And oh my am I thinking about it. Ok, I will literally write forever about how enchanting and surreal it is to be here studying what I love with people who I love being around, so I will close it off with two other random things I’ve noticed that make me feel like I’m in a fairytale.

Sometimes I am walking down a street, and there is just a young group of boys playing soccer on the road under all of these tall buildings with florals draped from the balconies, and it is incredibly endearing. Or a girl will walk past with a single baguette in her toat bag and just move like she doesn’t even need to think about where she is going. Everything here goes fast yet is experienced slowly (especially mealtime!), and so it is all so easily romanticized, and I love it. Also french is such a beautiful language, and it is so cool to be hearing so many people speak a language I have only ever heard on TV. They talk so fast though it’s impossible to understand what they are saying, but I’m really out here trying my best.

This is only day three, and I am writing too much, but we only have to post twice a week so they are most likely going to continue to be super lengthy and mostly just follow my train of thought. Anywho, au revoir!