Avant

I officially leave for Paris in less than one month! As many before me and many after me, I'm hoping to keep a blog while abroad. It will be a place where I can keep people updated on my life without having to send personalized emails, Facebook messages, Google+ posts, etc. to everyone I care about. Obviously, I will still try and do that once in a while (here's looking at you, Grandparents!) but for the most part, hopefully you all will be able to stay updated with what I post on here.

Now, I've been soliciting a lot of advice on Study-Abroad blogs (everyone does one nowadays), and one thing I've heard over and over is that it's important to have a theme -- something to keep you focused and coming back to the blog, something to keep posts from getting ramble-y and discombobulated, and overall something to keep your audience interested. So, the theme for this blog (if you haven't already figured it out grâce à the French title) is "Word of the Day." Now, as I'm sure most of you know (or could guess) I'm one of those people who get word of the day emails from Dictionary.com. They're pretty much the only mass-sent emails I never delete. Haven't been on my computer in a couple days? Out go the iTunes store updates and the Urban Outfitters offer of free shipping, out go the Groupon deals and the Free People emails (sorry, mom), but always the Word of the Days remain.

Now, this is not to say that I plan on updating this blog every day. Hopefully, I'll be actually doing things instead of just writing about doing things, but when I do update, these posts will center around a specific word. Since I am going to be in France, these words of the day will be French. Ideally, they'll be new words I've learned or slang I've picked up, or perhaps they'll just be cool-sounding French words that are fun to say and get caught in the back of your throat (the best kind!). Either way, the goal is that they somehow explain/summarize an experience or day I've had, and help keep me focused when talking about it. This post, for example, is titled "avant" -- the french word for "before," as in, before a journey. (Don't worry, I'll include a translation for all you non-French-speaking folks out there!) The hope is that these words will help describe my experience to you while also describing my experience to myself -- one of the largest obstacles I will face during this semester is the language barrier, and what better way to start than one word a day?

Another personal goal I have while abroad (besides this blog, of course) is personally documenting Eiffel Tower shots and keeping a running tally. They say it's the most photographed object in the world...