This is my last blog about my time in Paris! This time it’s a video blog, recapping the whole experience in videos and pictures.
Due to my phone deleting almost all my videos and pictures, I’ve had to scrape together what I can, which nevertheless reflects what an incredible 9 months I spent there.
Enjoy!
Okay, so I’m two and a half weeks in now and I don’t even really know where to start! I felt relatively well prepared for french bureacracy before I arrived, but it’s so slap-dash that you never actually know what’s around the corner. I’d put money on it that the saying ‘expect the unexpected’ came from someone who was dealing with the French. If I start at the beginning, I basically lucked out on my first day here. That morning leaving Paris, I got an email saying that there was an email with my file and so I had to provide more documentation. Problem…? Yep. I had my details filed away, but my mum and dad’s stuff was all back at home and CROUS claimed that I wouldn’t have anywhere to live until they got them. This all led to a stressed out train journey sans Wifi and trawling the university campus until I found the administration building. To top it all off, there wasn’t actually a problem just the first of many miscommunications and so the director whisked me the the front of the queue without an appointment and handed me my room keys there and then. Nailed it.
I wanted to post this video to demonstrate the wide variety of opportunities available to students who choose to study abroad. From my experience, this year I have been part of the Gospel Choir Voices of Imani and the A Capella group B.E.A.T.S. here at Boston College. I have also somehow managed to become the bass player of the band Juice here on campus, who just last week won the Battle of the Bands competition at BC, and are opening for the rapper Hoodie Allen at the Campus music festival Modstock.
This year has been absolutely incredible, and so many of my greatest experiences have been through the music I have shared with the people here at BC. It is through music that I have been able to overcome cultural differences and find my place here in America, and it really has been the greatest year of my life.
I feel like this video really demonstrates that there is a massive range of opportunities available for any student who chooses to study abroad, wherever you end up going. If you embrace the experience to its fullest you will find yourself doing things you would have never dreamed about a year ago.
So yeah, I’m going to be playing on a stage in front of hundreds of people tomorrow afternoon, and if someone had told me that would happen this time last year, I would never have believed them…
Durham Students Abroad 