I visited the painter Claude Monet’s home in Giverny where I also saw a lot of beautiful impressionist art (which is associated with much of the French 20th-century impressionist music); I visited the home of Maurice Ravel (a very famous 20th-century French composer) in Montfort-l’Amaury (about 45 minutes outside of Paris by car); I spent an afternoon at the Château de Versailles which was a veritable center of art and culture in the days of the French monarchs (one of my favorite baroque composers, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, lived there with King Louis XIV) and in a few weeks, I will visit Bonn, Germany where Beethoven grew up.
I must admit that when my advisor at Lawrence initially floated the idea of me studying abroad, I was incredulous. Having spent literally all my life in the Midwest and most of that on one small island, the idea of living for months on end in an enormous city on the other side of the world seemed fairly terrifying to me. At times, I certainly still feel slightly overwhelmed being so far away from home. It has been challenging to adapt to a new culture with its own set of unwritten rules (for instance, you must say “bonjour” (hello) to the shopkeeper any time you enter a store, otherwise they’ll assume you’re an ignorant tourist and will probably treat you as such). Something that should perhaps be obvious, but to me is striking nonetheless, is that the people I’m surrounded by here are just that – people – with hopes, frustrations, ideas, ambitions, homework, favorite books and tv shows and mundane things that they need to do, just like everyone I grew up with. No matter how far away from home I find myself, there is always a fundamental humanness in the people I interact with.
