Apprehension and anticipation abound, my voyage to France began two months ago when it was announced that I won the LISA. My graduate school program, International Political Economy and Development at Fordham University in the Bronx, awards four students every year the incredible opportunity to go anywhere in the world to learn a language. In this ever globalizing world, being at least bilingual is incredibly important, especially for someone who wants to work in economic development. This award is, ultimately, the reason why I chose Fordham as my school of choice instead of Vanderbilt or BU. And after laboring over my essay for months, I finally applied for the scholarship on December 1st, 2010. And after many (perhaps too many) months of anticipation, on February 26, I was given the final word that I was one of four students being granted the Language Immersion Scholarship Award (LISA).
I chose France as my country of choice for a number of reasons. Fordham has close relations with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an international relief organization that works in many French speaking countries, who I sometimes envision as my future employer. Additionally, I had taken four years of French language instruction throughout high school, which I thought would give me a leg up in understanding the language. And finally, I wanted to visit Europe!!
So, my journey to France really started many months ago, when I first heard of the LISA. But here I am, sitting on a plane over the Atlantic, finally on my way to Paris. I said goodbye to my parents and my wonderful boyfriend of four years this morning and hopped on a plane in Boston. My boyfriend has been incredible in helping me to prepare for this journey, especially when it came to buying the plane tickets and navigating the various French language instruction schools around the world. Alliance Francaise came highly recommended by a previous LISA awardee who went to France, however it was difficult to find the locations of the schools. I ended up choosing my destination cities on, basically, my limited tourism-hype-based knowledge of French cities. Only three weeks ago, I purchased my airfare and enrolled in the Alliance Francaise school in Bordeaux for three weeks of June (6/5/2011-6/24/2011), and the Actilangue school in Nice for four weeks of July (6/27/2011-7/22/2011). I then plan to travel around France for two weeks, perhaps alone or with new friends, and then meet my parents in Rome around August 7, then back to Paris to meet my boyfriend from the 10-16th of August. I could not have done this without Andrew, since I apparently have a commitment problem when it comes to solo international travel.
So it's finally getting dark on the plane, at 8:22pm ET (2:22am France time), and so I will try to get some sleep. I meet my host family, Monsieur et Mademoiselle Martinot and their son Francois Xavier, at the Bordeaux train station. Wish me luck in getting from the airport to the train station with my overstuffed luggage!
A bientot!
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