This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at ASU chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.
The last week of my month-long adventure arrived, although I thought it never would, and I actually had a hard time dealing with it. I’ll put it this way: I am not the person that gets emotional. I handle emotional situations with sarcasm and awkward jokes. However, those don’t translate well into different languages. In the CIEF program at the university of Lyon where I studied over the past month, I met students from places all over the world. At first, I sometimes made small talk with other students in the program from Vietnam, Qatar, Korea, Japan, Hungary, Iran and Australia (just to name a few) to make the day more interesting. Then I began looking forward to talking to them each day. Even my professors, native Lyonnais people, were the complete opposite of everything people stereotype the French to be. Each of them was kind and patient, forgiving if I slipped English into conversation and were respectful when they did correct me. I felt ridiculous for panicking the night before classes. The fear I had came from rejection; thinking that I would forget all of my French vocabulary the second one of these professors tried to have a conversation with me OR that my American accent would disgust them and they would stick their noses up at me. Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to have the most amazing educational experience with the best teachers I could have asked for.
On the last day of classes, each student presented their project that they have been working on for the last month. These projects were displayed in different rooms on campus, so that the staff and our program directors could come and look at what we have all been working on. I even had to perform a skit in front of everyone in the program, which is totally out of my comfort zone. I am not comfortable with performing, but here I was performing a skit that I memorized in FRENCH in front of 150 people. I never felt so happy with myself. I feel like all of these projects I initially deemed a “waste of time” forced me to push myself beyond what I thought I was capable of.
On the last Thursday of my month study abroad, I ate ratatouille in the park with wine, two baguettes and my newfound friends. I started this adventure thinking I knew what I wanted out of it. I wanted to go to Europe for a month (I mean, obviously), study a little and avoid living with my parents (or working) for the summer. I went into it thinking that I would never build a friendship with people I spent thirty days with one summer. At the end, it came to a point where I cared about them so much I was almost overbearing. I was one of the last people to fly back home, so as people left before me I made them promise to keep in contact and to let me know when they landed at home. It was hard to tell the stories I thought were so funny to my boyfriend or my parents after I got back to America, because it was the people that made those stories great. I guess it’s better to keep those memories my own, as it gives me a reason to push forward in life and stop avoiding the future. When I become successful, I can go visit my friends in Barcelona or Hungary.
These friendships gave me motivation to embrace life and (here comes the cliché) to never judge books by their covers…or language barriers.