French Dreams

Calanque Sugiton in Marseille, FR. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been

I recently went to France, and was filled with a renewed desire to live abroad, particularly in France. When I was there, I tentatively set myself a goal to live abroad before I’m 30. I’m not being very prescriptive about this – it could be for 2 months, or 2 years, and could be someplace as close as Toronto or as far as Taiwan. But since coming back, I alternate between feeling very confident about that goal, and feeling uncertain about it.

Hesitations about this

I have a lot of worries about moving to France, or just living abroad. Some of this is because I’m a generally anxious person who worries a lot. Some of these might be legitimate concerns. It’s hard to tell.

First, I have some worries about even writing about this publicly. I’m scared that a current or prospective employer might find this, and presume that I’m not sufficiently dedicated to my current role. Or that I’ll commit myself to a course of action without an ability to change it by hitting “Post” on a blog post. Or, I fear that committing to a goal raises the stakes of failure. If I tell my friends I want to move to France, and don’t follow through, it will tarnish my reputation.

Second, I’m scared that this might be a misguided desire or might end up being a mistake, for several reasons. 

Thinking through trip planning, part 3

This is the third part in a series of posts about my month of solo traveling in the fall of 2022. The prior two posts were about my planning process for creating an itinerary. In future posts, I hope to cover my trip, what went well and what didn’t, and what I would change. I also plan on discussing my West Coast trip.

So between publishing that blog post and leaving on the trip, I made some changes. I cut out the Basque Country entirely, and reallocated that time to Andalusía. My reasoning for this decision was as follows:

  • The weather in Andalusía was better than the weather in the Basque country around the time I was traveling
  • I wasn’t particularly inspired by the travel videos that I saw for the Basque Country
  • By cutting it out, I simplified the logistics (less planes, more trains)
  • I was more interested in Moorish / Islamic architecture than I was in modern Spanish culture, and by cutting out the Basque Country, I could spend more time in Andalusía
  • Several Redditors reassured me that there was plenty to do for the amount of time I was planning to be there
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Thinking through trip planning, part 2

In my previous post, I narrowed down my trip options to two itineraries: one was 10 days to London, and 5 days in Spain. Another one would be 10 day sin London, and 11 days in Spain.

The decision between both itineraries rests on whether I want to visit two Spanish regions (the Basque Country and Andalusia) or stick to one region. Another consideration is if I want to spend a full 10 days in London, or if I can shorten that time and travel elsewhere.

To figure this out, I started binge watching some travel videos. Here are some of them:

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Thinking through trip planning, part 1

I’m planning a trip to Europe for late September / early October. When I plan trips, I usually just try to book flights and lodging ahead of time, and plan daily activities much closer to the actual trip. Most of the time, I have a loose idea of what I want to do (and that usually takes up less than a day), and then just walk around and let serendipity take care of the rest.

However, earlier trips I’ve planned have been easier than planning this Europe trip. With other trips, I usually only have 7 – 10 days to travel because of how much PTO I can take. In that amount of time, I usually stick to 1 city, with some day or overnight trips, or 2 locations that are close by. Anything more feels more rushed.

I don’t have that same constraint with this trip, since I’m not working and thus don’t need to be back on a particular day. It’s also easier to do multiple cities on trips to Europe. You can generally hit a new city every 3 – 5 days since they’re so close together.

Besides London, there’s no other place that’s “on my bucket list” so to speak, so I can’t use that to narrow down my options. With the relative lack of constraints, there are hundreds of different itineraries that I could build.

I’ve researched travel destinations and recommendations for where to go, but I haven’t seen many people sit down and write out their thought process for how they arrived at a particular travel arrangement. I thought it would be fun to do so, and I’m hoping that other people can benefit from seeing my decision process explicitly laid out.

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5am in Paris

On Sunday was the Superbowl, the culmination of the NFL Playoffs. The Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New England Patriots to be crowned the 52nd Superbowl champions (and Philly nearly burned down after). I watched more out of a duty to American culture rather than a desire to see either team play. I ended up rooting for the Eagles, but that was more because I was cheering against the Patriots (Go Bills!).

Paris is 7 hours ahead of Minneapolis, so when the Superbowl began at a reasonable 5:30pm local time, it was already 12:30 AM in Paris. Since I don’t have a TV in my apartment, my roommate and I trekked to Galway Irish Pub near the Notre Dame cathedral. It’s one of the many Irish, British, or Canadian sports bars in Paris that stayed open for the duration of the Superbowl.

We arrived on the second to last metro of the night, and made our way upstairs to a table overlooking the River Seine. The bar was pretty narrow, maybe 30 to 40 feet in length. The first floor had the bar, with a glass paned room flanking the door. Several TVs lined the walls, all turned to the SkySports stream of the game, complete with British announcers and (sadly) no American TV Advertisements. My friend from Michigan had saved us two seats, and there were already 7 other American students there with us. Behind my seat in the other corner of the mahogany lined pub were a group of French diners, and behind my friend was a group of British patrons. Kiddy corner to us were a particularly obnoxious group of French people, 2 guys, and 2 girls.

At first, I thought they were American because one of the guys was wearing a shirt that said “Rush ’17”, and on the back the greek letters for some fraternity. It turns out they were French based on their accents. What was really weird for me was that they would be speaking in French, but then would throw in English phrases or pop culture references. They began singing Hotline Bling by Drake (“I know when that hotline bling…do do do do do), but the “do do do” part was not the correct melody. They would also use what I think were American mannerisms, like taking shots (I later noticed they were taking shots of water), and chanting at things that happen. When they showed Tom Brady’s baby, the French group started chanting “La Bébé,La Bébé, La Bébé” over and over again. They would also talk in somewhat broken English for stretches at a time.

At first, I thought they were actually mocking us. But the more and more I listened in, I realized that they might actually be genuinely trying to act American. For their part, they were the only French group on the second floor that actually stayed for the duration of the Superbowl (everyone else left around 2am). When I brought this up to our Intercultural Communications and Leadership teacher, he reinforced this point. It seemed like what I mistook for obnoxious behavior was actually an attempt at acting culturally U.S. American.

I think my discomfort was that the way they were acting was unnatural. It’s as if somewhat had told them how Americans acted (or they learned it from pop culture) but they had never actually talked to a U.S. American in the process. The converse for French people would be if an American walked out of the metro wearing stripes, a beret, and carrying an entire baguette in hand. When people adopt only some, but not all aspects of your culture, it starts to produce an uncanny valley effect.

If we attempt to learn anything about a culture (mannerisms, beliefs, language) divorced from people of that culture, we are probably destined to act the way those French people acted. Lesson of the day is to always try to interact with natives and constantly evaluate the validity of the stereotypes you hold. Maybe the French do enjoy wine and cheese, but before assuming so, we should try to talk to some actual French people to see 1) if it’s true, and 2) how they actually express that fact.

Episode III

Hello,

Tuesday marked the first day of classes at my university. With it, comes a new year of hopes, dreams, disappointments, and achievements. I am more than halfway done with college (this is my third year) and closer to ending college than starting it. In math terms, I am over 88% done with my educational career.

That sentence is scary, as I can no longer hide from the realities of the adult world in the ignorance of childhood. As much as I hope to leave the land of all nighters and stressful exams for the promised land of a fixed schedule and my own income, I know I will miss college tremendously not long after walking across that stage.

Given I still have two long years ahead of me, I am not yet out of the woods. But my fears of life after college are slightly dampened by my summer in Israel, which gave me a glimpse of the adult world, and how to survive it.