I’m home from France now, and back to work at my summer job. Everyday, I come across something new that I miss about living in France that I hadn’t thought of before. Of course I miss the people I met and the amazing food, but there are a couple aspects of French life that I miss even more, and that I wish were possible to experience back home!
First, I miss walking everywhere! Studying abroad has made me realize just how impossible it is to travel by foot in my Texas suburb. I’m looking forward to being back in Tuscaloosa, where I can walk to classes, the grocery store, my friends’ apartments and of course many more places. I don’t think I’ll ever choose to live in a city without public transportation and pedestrian sidewalks after experiencing life in France.
I also miss speaking French. It is strange to me that I miss the thing that made me the most nervous before I left, but French is such a beautiful language and I miss learning through speaking much more than I thought I would. It is nice to be able to express myself more clearly through English again, but immersing myself in the language is something I will always look forward to as a part of traveling abroad.
Finally, I really miss the street markets. Tours, the town I studied and lived in, had weekly street markets with food, artisan goods, and clothing that made the streets so lively and exciting to walk through!
I am so grateful for every experience I got to take part in while in France, and I cannot wait to potentially have the opportunity to travel abroad again. As Winnie the Pooh once said, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”