Tag Archives: france

04/8/14

White water rafting, and French carpe diem

This past weekend, thirty-five of us piled into a bus and drove for three hours deep into the French Alps for a weekend of white-water rafting and randonnée — hiking, the activity this part of the country is famous for.

If you go white-water rafting in this particular part of France, you will float along a river that winds its way through magnificent gorges and past the medieval ruins you can’t escape in Europe, but you won’t really be able to appreciate that because you will be getting pushed into the water every other minute by both the guides and your fellow rafters. Wearing the appropriate safety gear, you’ll live out your childhood dream of becoming a pirate. Yes, it was dangerous. But the air was warm and the waters of the Durance River were benign enough, and quite frankly the French don’t care. Continue reading →

01/16/14

Oh, take me back to the start

To all the people feeling overwhelmed by the number of options in exchanges that they have in Go Global, I’m so envious of you. (I’m supposed to be studying for my exam tomorrow but I’m not. Apparently you still have exams while on exchange??)

I’m so, so envious of you. I remember me at this time last year. I wanted more than anything in the world to go to Sciences Po Paris, and live on Boulevard St Michel, and sleep in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, and wander down the Seine every afternoon, and breathe in the same air that Hemingway and Picasso and Chanel and all the others did, once upon a sunny morning. I thought that’s what I’d wanted since I was twelve years old and I fell in the love with that city for the first time. But it’s been exactly four months, 21 days, and eight and a half hours since I arrived in Grenoble. And it’s been four months, 21 days and eight hours since I thought for a single second that going to Grenoble wasn’t absolutely the right decision. I love it here. I love it more than anything else. I never knew the meaning of the word serendipity until I got here. I don’t regret it for a moment, not for a heartbeat. I still don’t know why I chose this tiny little city as my second choice but I’m so inexpressibly glad that I did. What I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter where you go. Continue reading →

12/13/13

If only in my dreams

It’s very rare to be in a moment and be able to look at it from the outside and say, I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life. Most of the time, the things we remember aren’t really what we expect: they are the little memories, the split seconds in time, that have somehow snagged on the thorns of our minds and stayed there, encapsulated forever. In the river that courses through our heads they’ve been caught by the odd rock jutting out and they’ve floated in the eddies off to the side. You never really know what’s going to stay, and what will drift on past. But then you look back and you think, yes, I remember that. Continue reading →