The cafe culture is very strong in Aix-en-Provence, meaning that it is perfectly normal to spend hours in one cafe and eat lots of sweets while reading, chatting with friends or doing work on a laptop. I hope to try to bring some of this attitude towards cafes home with me, as I find that spending time in them is a nice way to be social, enjoy the city or town you live in and support a small business. For about half of the weekends this semester, I travelled to other parts of Europe.
To recap, I spent weekends in:
I think my favorite weekend trip was in Ireland because it was the first time I had travelled to a new country on a weekend alone. I was nervous about getting to the airport, staying in a hostel, finding fun things to do and generally figuring out how everything works in a different country by myself, but it ended up being a very rewarding experience and made me feel confident and independent. Now, I feel that I can travel many places by myself and learn how to master public transportation, find places to eat, decide on activities to do and all of the other parts of planning a trip, without help.
To conclude, I want to thank you for following along with my journey and being interested in how my semester in France is going. I hope that you all feel empowered to look into study abroad options, yourselves, and you should know that there are many resources to help with the process and financial aspect of your application.
