My Perfect Study Abroad Match: Paris

With Valentine’s Day approaching it’s time to talk about love and finding your match. And I’m here to talk about finding my perfect study abroad match, Paris, a.k.a ‘The City of Love.’

Even before I got to college I knew I wanted to study abroad. I have always had a feeling of wanderlust and just want to explore the world. Knowing, I wanted to study abroad was easy. The hard part was knowing where. Choosing a place to make your home for the next four months is a big deal and probably one of the toughest decisions I had to make.

My biggest problem about choosing a place to study abroad was that every place sounded so cool. Swimming in the great barrier reef in Australia, eating gelato for breakfast lunch and dinner in Italy, or enjoying tapas and art in Spain, I wanted to do it all. Every day I would wake up and think to myself “hmmm how about (insert any country you can think of).” I would then spend all day googling that new country and thinking about how fun it would be to live there for four months. I have never been more indecisive in my entire life.

While googling all of the places I wanted to go to and looking into some of the programs, I started to create a list of my top choices (Australia, Spain, Paris, Ireland, and Italy). For the longest time Australia was at the top of my list, I have always been fascinated with this country, however location was important to me and I wanted to be in a place where I could travel on the weekends and discover new countries. So I had to crossed Australia off the list (I will go one day). After that I was stuck between Spain, Paris, Ireland, and Italy. I kept doing my research on these four places and trying to picture myself in each place for a long period of time. However, every time I thought about studying abroad, Paris was the one city that would always pop up into my head. The city always stuck in the back of my mind no matter how many other countries I would think of, Paris was always an option.

Why was Paris always stuck in my head? Well, “Paris is always a good idea,” or as Audrey Hepburn believed. I also think Paris kept coming up because it felt right to me and I smiled every time I would about studying there. I could just picture myself in Paris sitting in a cafe while drinking a cafe (coffee in french). I also thought the language was beautiful and always wanted to learn it. And the IES Abroad program here requires that you take a french language class. Another awesome thing about the program I found were the other classes offered, I love fashion and art and I’m taking classes that speak a little on both fashion and art. Paris is also surrounded with fashion and art. There a so many well dressed people in Paris, as the fashion capital of world, I would be exposed to many chic and sophisticated looking people. And as for the art, Paris is home to some of the most famous art museums, the Louvre and the Musse D’Orsay. And I would be able to spend my days here and admire great works of art.

It also helped to know that Paris was right for me when I asked my friends and family, “this country or Paris?” They all said Paris and they know me the best, right? After that it was time to listen to them, Audrey Hepburn, and most importantly myself and study abroad in Paris. I could not be happier I chose Paris. It has felt like home since I’ve been here, I spend a lot of my time drinking coffee in a cafe and I have already gone to a few of the art museums here. Paris is my perfect study abroad match and I wouldn’t want it any other way.