Tag Archives: france

college, Cultural Exchange, culture, Language, New Experience, Outlook, Travel

Studying Abroad in Paris

By Autumn Palen

Edited by Natalie Grace Sipula

[3 minute read]

Prior to 2020, during one of my spring semesters at USC as an undergraduate student, I studied abroad in Paris and it was a fully immersive experience. All of my classes were in French, the family I lived with was French, and wouldn’t you know it, quite a lot of people I passed on the streets were keen on speaking French. Those handful of months were wonderful. My teachers were all angels, the city was gorgeous, and although I had a relationship dynamic with my host family akin to Harry Potter’s relationship with the Dursleys, I’d say that overall I enjoyed my experience.

First of all, the city is gorgeous. Ridiculously so. I remember my first night there—awake since 5 am, taking a post-dinner trip to the Louvre, walking from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, and stopping mid-journey for wine and cheese. The mix of sleep deprivation, jet-lag, numbness from the cold, and walking nearly all day culminated into the sensation that I was drifting through a dream. I couldn’t have actually been there; it was all too much. I thought there was no way this tiny, ovular, romantic city was going to be my home for the next fifteen weeks.

Wine and cheese from a local cafe in Paris, taken from @autumn.palen on Instagram

But it was my home. Every weekday, I took the metro to class. Although admitting my adoration for the Paris Metro garnered weird looks from actual Parisians (mainly because of the general odor permeating the trains/platforms, as well as the occasional muzak cover of Ne Me Quitte Pas), I held strong that I loved the public transportation system. It was so efficient, arriving every 3 minutes, maybe 6 in the worst-case scenario (I understand that Los Angeles is a much larger, more car-based city, but I couldn’t help but notice how much more efficient the Paris Metro was than the LA one).

Photo of the Paris Metro taken by @autumn.palen on Instagram
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Advice, Cultural Exchange, culture, Language, Outlook

Taking English for Granted

By David Schroeder

[4 minute read]

Language is not something I really think about on a day-to-day basis. Most of the time, I just go through my day freely communicating with ease and not running into any language-related problems. I feel like this is the way a lot of native English speakers living in America feel, and I’ve found that it is a very ignorant way of thinking. Everyone should acknowledge that being fluent in English is a major privilege that is often overlooked or taken for granted by native speakers.

During my first conversation session at ALI, I was talking with an international student specifically about what our high schools were like. He said that he had a few required classes that he had to take during high school, and that one of them was four years of English. I mentioned that I was also required to take a foreign language and my conversation partner was puzzled by this, and he questioned me on why I would be required to learn any other language besides English. This forced me to step back and think more deeply about English.

spark

My conversation partner’s statement is sad but true, because in a practical sense, if you know English, there is not a need to know any other language because of English’s dominance in the world. This is unfortunate, because it is not fair to rate languages above each other because it creates a big disadvantage to those who are not native English speakers, and thus they are given the burden of learning another language (usually English) out of necessity.

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Outlook

Exploring Migration in the EU   

By Arianna Babraj

Photo by Ministerio de Defensa on Flickr

This summer, I am spending six weeks in Paris, France, where I am taking a Public Policy in the European Union course through the American University of Paris. I have been in Paris for 3 weeks now and I am so grateful for all of my experiences and for all of the amazing people that I have met here thus far. I selected this course because I saw that it would cover migration in the EU, a concept which interests me given recent events. Since being here, we have talked about models of integration and governance, citizenship, and the concept of belonging for specific groups within Europe, like Roma and refugee populations.

After I finish this course, I will be traveling throughout Italy to conduct independent research on people’s opinions of immigrants in light of the recent elections. While I have been here in Paris, I have kept up with the current situation in Italy. The most alarming event thus far has been the newly elected government’s choice to begin turning NGO boats carrying immigrants in life threatening situations away from Italian ports. During the same period, we have seen the US immigration policy take a dark turn with the President’s decision to separate families at the border.

Unfortunately, more and more countries, particularly within the EU, are choosing to close doors instead of open them. Politicians with anti-immigration stances often ignore the positive impacts that immigrants have had on their countries, economically and otherwise, and, instead, push rhetoric fueled by emotional reactions related to isolated cases that show immigrants in a negative light, resolutely bypassing statistics that display the positive impacts because these facts negate their wayward position.

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