Bonjour (hello), and welcome to France! My name is Mattias (pronounced “mah-TEE-us”) and I am a Fulbright Scholar. That means I have received a scholarship to study for a year in another country! I have chosen to travel to Paris to research botanical, or plant, illustration at the world-famous Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History). I am an artist and science illustrator who studied Earth sciences in college, and I love anything to do with plants and art.
I chose to study in France, besides for the museum, because I am very interested in languages. I loved taking French classes every year in high school. Now I am immersed in the French language, and I am hoping it will all come back to me. Do any of you speak a second or third language? Are you interested in learning a new language in school?
Now for a little bit more about myself. For starters, my mother is from the USA, but my father is from the country of Chile in South America. I was lucky because I got to learn both English and Spanish from an early age. I grew up and lived in Santiago, Chile, until I was 13 years old, just a few years older than most of you, and then my family moved to New Jersey.
