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One of my best decisions this semester was taking the Teaching Internship class. This IES Abroad Nantes class consisted of both the teaching internship seminar at IES Abroad and a teaching internship placement in a school in Nantes. This post is about my experience, but the experiences (and internships) of other students varied widely.
The Teaching Internship Seminar
Now that my semester in Nantes is over, I am back at home and renavigating life in the US (#reversecultureshock, am I right?). On the whole, I loved my semester abroad and felt that I grew a lot as a person and in my language abilities.
Cw: slavery, violence, harassment, race
Before the semester I was worried about sticking out like a sore thumb as a POC in Nantes, but I found that there are a fair amount of POC in Nantes, and I felt pretty comfortable on the whole during my semester abroad. Read on for a some of my jumbled thoughts and reflections from the semester.
On Race
The last time I set foot in Europe was spring of my senior year in 2016. I traveled to Santorini, Athens, Mykonos, and Turkey with my best friends on a two star cruise. The rooms were as large as a bathroom (and that’s a generous description), the majority of our fellow passengers were senior citizens from China who could not speak much English (if any) and we had little to no cell coverage- it was the one of the best weeks of my life. At that time I could not have imagined that any opportunity would trump that experience.
As part of my French Cooking and Gastronomy class this semester, we went on a field trip to Verrines, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and Cognac. In Verrines, we visited a chèvrerie, or a goat farm, and we got to see the goats and observe the process of making goat cheese. After visiting the chèvrerie, we made a stop in port city La Rochelle to explore and have lunch. Then, we made our way to Bordeaux and learned about (and tasted!) the specialties of Bordeaux like canelés and wine.
“So, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get ahold of a SIM card as soon as I land in Ireland, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to talk to you that first day. But the student housing has wifi, so I’ll be able to send you a Facebook message to tell you I’m okay at the very least.”
“Yeah, I know. The parent-slash-guardian email I got said to give the student a few days to settle in before bugging them about calling.”
As I’m sure is the case for many other IES Abroad students heading abroad this Spring, my mind is buzzing with nervousness, excitement, dreams, and fears. For the past few weeks, I’ve been dutifully adding to my small black suitcase, a hand-me down from my mum. I know that as a suitcase it has been through many airport terminals before me, and will only bring good luck and as I’m told reassuringly, “good angels on the journey.”
I’m a procrastinator. I leave to study abroad in Barcelona in two days, and I’ve yet to load my first suitcase up. I have a general idea of what I’m going to bring – it’s all laid out on my bedroom floor, but I have a long way to go. And this morning, instead of starting to pack, I’ve decided to write this blog post. Because I’m still being productive that way, right?
Hi! My name is Brianna Logan, and I am a junior at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. I am majoring in International Affairs and minoring in Business Management. In less than 24 hours, I will board my plane to study in Freiburg, Germany for the spring semester. Away from the comfort of Skidmore’s campus, my family, and friends. Considering I live on my home university’s campus, being away from my family and friends is not an unfamiliar experience. However, going to Freiburg has caused me to develop a mixture of emotions.
I’m home! Though I’m excited about the next semester, there was so much that I wasn’t expecting to be shocked or surprised by when I got home. I knew that reverse culture shock was a thing that I was probably going to experience, but I wasn’t really sure what aspects would bother me. Here are a few things that I noticed were major differences between my life in Siena, and my hometown of Chicago.