Sara Maria Dal-Santo: C’est quoi ca!? (What’s that!?)

After wandering the globe and living out of her suitcase for two months, the wild Sara finally settled down in Bordeaux, France, the land of baguettes, cheap wine, and croissants. A month in of living off her favorite food of muesli and yogurt, she finally sits down to write an exciting blog post. She stares at her blank computer screen pondering what to write as thoughts of delicious shared meals at friends’ houses, late night classes, and hazy wine infused nights fill her head. She should be on her way to the local gym hasn’t quite woken up on this slow, sunless Sunday. She decides to make lists instead of writing out millions of characters for this blog post.

Groceries I need to buy:

- Bananas

- Muesli

- Yogurt

- Wait no, this is not what I’m meant to be writing…

Here we go…

Things I love about Bordeaux:

- Fresh “pain au chocolate” from the bakery

- The chance to improve my French (and other random languages)

- Cobblestone roads
- The extremely diverse mix of cultures from around the world in our Erasmus class

- The homeless man busking downtown by humming with a stick trying to convince passerby’s that it’s a flute

- The fun of trying to fit two people on a bicycle built for one at 2 in the morning

- School organized “water”-pong in the court yard on St. Patty’s day

- How close and accessible everywhere in Europe is (say hello to many weekend trips!)

- Flat roads

Things I miss about Vancouver:

- The taste of the tap water

- Grocery stores that are open on Sundays

- The mountains and the trees

- Banks that don’t cancel your appointments for a month straight

- Cheap sushi (there’s no way I’m paying 10 euros for one salmon/avocado roll)

Questions that I’m meant to answer:

What have you learned about your host country so far?

That you can get a delicious bottle of wine for two euros at the grocery store.

Sum up your feelings so far about your semester abroad. France is far away from home but they have better chocolate and pastries. My mom is better than your mom because she mailed me cookies.

Talk about what you are excited to experience in the months to come. I’m excited about my Easter break trip (because we get the week off and not just a long weekend). Last weekend a group of us went to Toulouse and next week we’re off to Nice and the Barcelona!

Are you nervous about anything? Nope, being nervous is a waste of time. It’s hard to believe that I’m already 1/3^rd of the way through my semester already! I don’t really want to go home (hence why I’ve been procrastinating buying a return ticket).

But what I’m really trying to say in this badly written blog post is: If you have any opportunity to travel anywhere, take it. Get up and go explore.

*Pictures used for distraction purposes*

Sara Maria is a Bachelor of Business Administration student studying abroad at the INSEEC Business School in Bordeaux, France.