Tomorrow

I can't believe that the wait is almost over! I'm currently in my bedroom sitting next to a pile of clothes, but tomorrow I'll be on a flight to London! It still feels a bit surreal that in the matter of 24 hours, I'll be on the other side of the Atlantic taking on this amazing journey. My study abroad program is called "The Microbiology and Culture of Cheese and Wine". It takes place in Cluny, France. A bit about Cluny: it's a small provincial town of about four thousand people located in southern Burgundy. However this was not always the case. About a thousand years ago, Cluny was one of the mightiest empires of the Middle Ages as well as the spiritual center of Europe. Its church was the largest ever built and its wealth and fame were overreaching. As a victim of the French religious wars of the seventeenth century, the Revolutionary mobs of the late eighteenth century, and the French anticlerical authorities in the wake of the Revolution, Cluny lost all of its power and wealth. The Abbey and its Church became auctioned off. Today, the streets and churches of Cluny are described to be fragmented pieces of what it once was. As Edwin Mullin describes in his book, Cluny, In Search of God's Lost Empire (great book, I highly recommend it), "It can fairly be described as a vast puzzle most of whose clues are missing". I love this quote because it encompasses what is so endearing and intriguing about Cluny, which is that despite its mutilation from attacks, this forgotten empire still manages to give us a glimpse into its past. I picked up these two books because they will be very handy for my study abroad trip. I also learned that buying form Amazon is the cheapest way to get these books. I got the first book for $4.75 and the other one for 15 cents! A couple of traveling tips that I've picked up: From my experience, it's much better to exchange currency before going abroad because banks usually offer a much fairer exchange rate than a lot of the "tourist traps" abroad. Also, if you are staying at a hostel, REMEMBER TO BRING A TOWEL AND SOAP! Many of them offer you the opportunity to buy a towel from them, but it is often overpriced. This will be my first time staying at a hostel so I'll keep you guys updated on what it is like. So today, my goal is to jam in as much French as possible. To be honest, I don't know the language at all. Yesterday I called the receptionist at the Hostel I'll be staying at in Paris and pretty much said all of the French I knew and butchered it. I said, "Bonjour, PAR-LE-VU ENGLES?" When it was supposed to be Parlez-vous anglais. To my good fortune, the man understood me and responded incredibly politely. However, I highly don't recommend cramming as much French in as possible last minute, it would have been a lot better if I had given myself at least two weeks. On a last note, after recommendation from multiple friends, I decided to watch the movie Taken last night. It talks about two girls going abroad to Paris for the summer and getting kidnapped and sold into sex-trafficing. Very nerve-wracking for me to watch this right before I head to Paris, but I guess it doesn't hurt to be alert. If you are planning on going abroad, I would recommend watching this movie just to open your eyes and realize that there are a lot of things you should be cautioned about while abroad. However, I'm sure that everything should be fine as long as you're alert and don't share taxi cabs with strangers (as the girls did in the movie). Well, that is all I've got to say for now. I'm gonna go back to packing my bags and cramming more French. I'll talk to you in a bit!

- Victoria Lee