Bonjour for the final time!
I’ve been home now from France for about a week and wanted to share my experience at the end and kind of share how this trip has impacted me!
So as we all know, the end of any regular semester is always hectic with final exams, moving out, and saying goodbye for the summer… now multiply this by 100 and that’s what it felt like during my final week in France. I had 5 finals during the week and I was starting to realize that my time in France was really coming to an end.
On Thursday, Alex and I took our host mom Josette out to dinner as a final thank you for all she’s done for us this semester. We had amazing Italian pizza at a corner restaurant, it felt really nice to give back to her after she took care of us for a semester.
The following day was “graduation” for all of us IAU students. We were each given a gold stole with IAU written on the bottom. We paraded down through the center of Aix to the town hall to celebrate each other and our accomplishments. Lots of tears and hugs occurred as many of us were saying goodbye to the faculty and each other for the final time. We celebrated that night by going to our favorite bar and saying goodbye to the bar owners and servers who we had become friends with along the way. The hardest goodbye was to my host mom. She was so sweet and made sure our entire abroad experience went smoothly. It was so sad saying goodbye but now I have a reason to go and visit France again.
My flights home went smoothly (unlike my adventure there), and I was welcomed back with both my parents and my dog. My transition back to the American lifestyle has been pretty difficult and I believe I’m struggling with some re-entry culture shock. I have lots of emotions going through my brain and my body seems a bit disoriented. Despite these negative after effects of study abroad, I wouldn’t change a single second of it all. I had such an amazing semester surrounded by smiles, laughter, and love.
Go abroad, take the jump. You won’t regret it.
Emma Libby