Undergraduate Study Abroad

Studying abroad has given me new hobbies like film photography, new skills (like being able to read books in different languages), new memories like potlucks with my internship colleagues, and new friends. It’s a great way to expand your horizons, interests, try things that you never would have thought possible, and become a more adaptable, curious, and globally-engaged member of the Brown community. 

My favorite course abroad was a history course I took on Louis XIV. Working together with a classmate whom I had met in French class at Brown, we delivered a presentation to our French classmates on Louis XIV’s Passage of the Rhine. I really appreciated the course because it not only forced me to work on my French language and public speaking skills, but also helped contextualize many of the historical places I visited later in my time abroad like Versailles or the chateaus in the Loire Valley. 

A highlight from studying abroad was taking a bateau-mouche along the Seine. In the first French class I took in high school, we read a short story called Enquête sur le bateau-mouche, a murder mystery set aboard one of these boats. During one of my final days studying abroad in Paris, a friend and I spontaneously bought tickets for a tour on the bateau mouche. As we sailed along the Seine, I remembered reading that story years earlier and thought about how I never would have expected that, years later, I would be on a bateau-mouche myself.

I decided to go abroad because I wanted to move beyond what I could learn about France from a classroom. I wanted to understand Paris (a place I had learned so much about through film and literature) by actually living there and navigating it for myself. At times, I faced challenges that come alongside adjusting and adapting to a new place, but putting myself out there, learning to navigate the experience gave me a kind of independence and perspective that I could not have gained by only studying France from afar. 

One historic treasure of Paris is the Arènes de Lutèce (the Roman Arena). It was constructed during the first century and held up to 15,000 spectators for gladiator combats. Rediscovered in 1869 when Rue Monge was built, it has become one of the city’s most important Roman ruins. When I visited, I saw people sun tanning, reading, and playing bocci in the arena, transforming the ancient ruins into a lovely hangout place for Parisians.