#fraaaaance

Thus far I am incredibly disappointed in my blogging efforts over the course of the expatriate year – not only have my posts been too few and far between, but I like to think I usually paint an accurate picture of my various experiences abroad and how they affect me. This time, however, it feels like eons since my last entry, and it may as well have been a different person who wrote it.

I even chopped my hair off.

I will be trying to rectify the situation as well as I can. I am anticipating a lighter workload this week (only three weeks remain of class, which is completely mind boggling), and am attempting to pull together a few, slightly shorter than normal entries on my thoughts of the school, my trips to Amsterdam and London, the process of an international coop search, and my impressions of my overall experience this far.

I hope.  

I want to take a moment to explain exactly how my program works because 1) it is more complicated than a simple study abroad and 2) sometimes I need a reminder myself how great it is… especially right now as I juggle endless group projects and six days of class every other week (That’s right, six. Wouldn’t you just love some Saturday 8 AMs?). Essentially there are schools all over the world that have an exchange partnership with my school in Reims. One of these schools is of course NU, where the International Business program I followed there put me on track for the French equivalent of the program here in Reims. Other students – some of French origin – came from Germany, Mexico, Ireland, China, the Netherlands, and Italy after following similar tracks in their respective countries of study. Now about 160 of us study thirteen business courses in French alongside each other, making for a rather fascinating cultural mélange filled with interactions that are constantly multilingual and always entertaining.

By interactions, I pretty much mean soirees. There’s literally a committee of students whose only job seems to be throwing school sponsored parties randomly midweek, which makes for some interesting attendance patterns when we’re often scheduled 8AM-5:30PM the next day.

The biggest downside to the university is definitely the lack of resources. Coming from a school in Boston with a beautiful campus, a 24 hour library, and an unbeatable gym facility to a school that has none of the aforementioned items and only one color printer, which I think might actually be located on a different campus, was not the easiest transition. They say you can get used to anything and I’ll be damned if I hadn’t adjusted quite well to the luxuries afforded to me at my ridiculously expensive, well stocked American university. Adapting to these changes is part of the experience, you may be thinking, but you better stay quiet because it’s the WORST part.

As for the biggest upside, I adore the cultural diversity surrounding me. I’m amazed by the variety of my peers’ opinions in everything from their academic attitude to their morals and by how being raised in different countries has given everyone different worldviews. What’s more, I’ve come to see for myself the patterns of behavior that each nationality seems to share (I’m avoiding the word stereotype here in the hopes of also avoiding the negative connotation associated with it). For example, the Germans are often the most dedicated students, approaching problems with an unequalled intensity. Many of them speak at least three languages with near fluency, and they are quite a social bunch. The spirit of the Spanish manifests itself in their dedication to a good time. They are consistently the last ones leaving the club, and their indifference to timeliness is nothing short of admirable; talk about living free. The Irish are rambunctious as might be expected, but more importantly their hospitability is endless; I owe about eight Irish people favors or good karma or ten centimes or something along these lines. Anyway, you get it. Among such shared habits I find students with diverse individual personalities, and hardly a day passes without me having some sort of cultural revelation about a culture other than my own.

Prepare yourself, because there’s no way for me to make this next part not sound a bit cheesy: More refreshing than how different we are is how we’re all the same. We share the stresses of finding our internships and passing exams. We relish a good laugh and the chance to go out after a long week. Maybe it’s because we are all still getting to know each other, but there is a surprising willingness to talk to people outside of our classes and our countries, to bridge gaps and exchange a few words in the search for familiarity in a place away from what many of us knew before. This is my favorite part of the program because even for someone like myself, more initially reserved and not necessarily confident in the language, it is easy to build a network of acquaintances who are gradually becoming actual friends with time. Reims often feels suffocating because it is rather small, but a part of me will miss the benefits of being part of such a social program when the class splits up to complete our respective six month internships in cities across France in 2014.

Work hard, play hard.