I left you in Aix with a week left to go in Europe. That Friday was the APA group fin de l’année dinner where we all got dressed up and got together for one last meal à la français while watching the slideshow our advisers put together. It was great to see everyone all together, since so many of us had divided into smaller groups based on our traveling schedules or classes. It was even more bizarre to realize I hadn’t even met everyone in the group! Part of me is worried that I missed out on opportunities to meet people, but I can’t imagine spending my time with anyone other than the girls with whom I became such good friends.
At the end of the night, Emily, Roz, and Caitlin came back with Carly and I to hang out as a group one last time. Unfortunately, I had to pack for my trip to Paris the following morning to meet my extended family, so I didn’t hang out so much as run around frantically marking things off my list.
The following morning, I caught the train up to Paris and met my family just outside of Paris in what I guess you would call the suburbs of the city. Quick family note: my grandfather was French and migrated to the US after World War II, but his sister stayed in France where she started her family just as my grandpa did stateside. Having this personal connection is a large part of what motivated my French studies and made me want to go to France. The relatives I stayed with are technically my second- and third-cousins. I’d been to their home once before when I was fourteen and spent three weeks of the summer with them. The family sends and receives each other’s kids for a bit of time over the summer to help expose the other half to a new culture and practice their language skills. But I digress.
It had been years since I’d seen my French family, they were so welcoming to me, and it was so great to see them. Especially in France while speaking French! And understanding it! I went into the city to do some shopping with two of my cousins, Anne-Zoé and Alix, and eventually Alix and I split off to meet up with her friends. We picked up a few bottles of rosé and headed to the Seine where she and her friends talked and bickered over incredibly similar things as my American friends and I do: what other friends are up to, movies and television, politics (this was just before Hollande was elected!), etc. I didn’t catch entire conversations, but I was glad to generally keep up! After drinks, Alix and I went to her boyfriend’s house where he and another couple of friends were making dinner. We spent the night talking, drinking, and listening to music, and I was again comforted by the familiarity of simply spending a night having dinner with friends.
Alix and I woke up the next morning and went back to her parents’ house where the rest of the family was gathering for a big brunch. Some of the second-cousins (who are really more like aunts and uncles, since they’re my grandpa’s sister’s kids and the same ages as my aunts and uncles here) I had met on my previous trip, and it was entertaining to meet them again seven years later, more grown up and with a much better grasp on their language! I had a similar reaction to meeting my then-four-now-eleven and then-seven-now-fourteen year old third-cousins, but I was able to communicate and take part in the conversation.
It also made me miss home so incredibly much, not only because they were asking and were interested in how this side of the family is doing, but they also assured me of how proud my grandpa would be of me. He passed away over three years ago now, but I haven’t felt so close to him as I did then, hearing my French family talk about him and share stories of when he visited them. The family dynamic was also so similar to my own at home that it made me that much more homesick too.
Later in the afternoon, the family started to disperse and I took off as well to find Jackie and her good friend, Abby, who were on their six-week post-graduation trip of Europe. I found them at the hostel and we spent the next few days gallivanting around Paris hitting a number of the national monuments that I’d seen but not really experienced. We went inside Notre Dame and the Louvre on our first afternoon together, then headed to the Champs de mars for a picnic on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower.
The next day was spent just outside the city at Versailles and traipsing around the city again, as well as taking some much needed recovery and relaxation time in the hostel.
Once recovered, Jackie and I opted to trek up the street and huge hill to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur where we saw the lights of the city come on, sitting on the steps at the highest point in Paris. We sat talking for a long time about life and where it’s taking us over the Heinekens a man was walking around and selling out of the box. Jackie was about to depart for Barcelona, Italy, and a handful of other places having just started her travels in London and Paris, and I was preparing to go home to the states for an indefinite period of time after ten months abroad, and we were both nervously excited of what would come of our post graduate lives. Still, sitting and discussing it over a drink in one of the most glamorous cities in the world, having traveled around the world together, we decided that things are going to be okay. And that we would keep traveling, no matter what.
It was a sad goodbye the following morning, but I had to catch my train back to Aix for … GRADUATION! Since a few of us were finishing our undergraduate careers in France and missed our ceremony at our respective home campuses, some of the girls decided to send us off in the finest French style. Tessa delivered the most brilliant commencement address I’ve ever had the pleasure to hear, and then we were presented with diplomas (mine is a major in English and French, with a minor in “International Gnome Relations”) and a sunflower. We finished with another picnic in the park, everyone enjoying each other’s company and another sunny day in Aix.
I had planned to only write one post, but this seems like a good stopping point for now, and there’s a lot to tell about our trip to Amsterdam and Brussels, as well as my last week in Aix and some more goodbyes.
On another side note, to all of you who I met in Australia exactly one year ago, my thoughts are forever with you: in the form of daydreams, actual dreams, my obsessive search for plane tickets back to Sydney, and in every last techno-pop-y kind of song that I hear, as well as every other photo I see or outfit I wear, including the I-House soccer t-shirt I’m currently wearing. I can’t begin to tell you all how much I miss you and wish that our session had never ended.
To my family who has made coming home more than worth it and the idea of leaving again violently turn my stomach - no matter how badly I think I want to take off again - I love you and am so, so glad to be home.
Here and there,
Kiley
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