If you've ever wanted to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, minus all the little screaming kids and rollercoasters, Mont Saint-Michel is a close alternative. The castle-looking church sits on the island, that's surrounded by water. We had to take a shuttle after our bus dropped us off, in order to get to the island.
The Well'Come Association of our school arranged a tour for us, and we thought it would be of the church, but instead, the first thing our tour guide said to us, in the 60 degree weather, was "alright guys, now take off your shoes and socks, as we'll be exploring the bay." The tour ended up taking us around the island, where the black sand stuck to your feet like clay, the water made it a dangerous slip n' slide, and the quicksand tried to grab any unknowing prey it could get. It was an experience to say the least, but it's one I hope I will never have to go through again. After our dreadful surprise, we had five hours to look around the island. This was all fine and dandy, until you realize that there's literally nothing to do on this island. It takes roughly about 30 minutes to walk around the entire inside of the island, everything is super expensive compared to Rennes, all the stores are gift shops, selling the same tacky things at ridiculous prices, and the only things to see are the museum ($$$) and the church ($$ + hella long lines). Furthermore, the workers here, as all places that experience mass amounts of tourism, were not the friendliest to non-native's.
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If there's anything I learned during my very short time throughout this study abroad process (both pre- and post) it's to never be naive, and to always prepare for the worst. Here's a little story:
The Well'Come Association, which is in charge of making us Exchange Students feel welcome at the school, arranged a few optional field trips for us to attend, and one of them was to a city near the coast call Saint Malo. The first two days I was in France, I prepared for super cold weather - two long sleeves and a huge jacket - only to take off each layer every hour and sweat the rest of the day. I figured, since it's been like this for the time I was here, today wouldn't be any different. I thought I'd be smart and dress for the hot weather so I wouldn't have to suffer later on. LITTLE DID I KNOW that it would be HELLA CLOUDY and WINDY AS HELL where we were going. No sun, no warmth. Just clouds, gloom, and what seemed to be 920mph winds on top the fortress that is Saint Malo. To make matters worse, I ran out of the house without breakfast because I thought I was gonna be late (... we ended up leaving 30 minutes after the meet time) and I experienced car sickness for the first time in a while - I wanted to leave. I was prepared to catch a 2 hour bus back to school and waive my €22 participation fee goodbye. I grit my teeth, tried to enjoy the beautiful city through my holey sweater and shorts, and made friends who warmed me up along the way. After the hellish part (aka the tour in the -18° weather) was over, we went to a creperie and got lunch. €10,40 for the savory Galette of the day, a sweet crepe, and a drink - count me in. It was amazing. The weather cleared up, and it was sunny and bright, warm and cozy (with a little bit of chill) the rest of the day in Saint Malo, where my new friends and I enjoyed lots of pastries (the BEST kouign amann I've had in my life, a ker-y-poire-chocolat, and a pasteis de nata) and the even more beautiful view of the ocean, castle, and fort, after the gloom had disappeared. I finally made it to France, after hours of crying, stressing, and crying more.
16hr layover in SF = sleeping in the airport and exploring Millbrae (Art & Wine Festival!! Street food! Crafts! Dogs!) 9hr layover in Paris = very short stop to the outskirts of Paris, to see Rue Sainte Anne, a Japanese neighborhood that I researched as part of my AFS project. I went to see a particular bakery butttt not surprisingly with my recent luck, they were closed HAHA But I did find another place that I had read about, called Maison Plisson, which was a combination of a bakery, patisserie, cheese shop, grocery store, and restaurant all in one. The 90 minutes I had wasn't enough to explore everything, but it helped me keep my mind off everything that was going on. Moana helped me find a hotel to stay at for the night in Rennes, after the Well'Come team from my school came to pick me up from the airport. It felt so nice to FINALLY take a shower (.. I've been wearing the same clothes for two days) and sleep in an actual bed, at a 180 degree angle again. The past two weeks have been an emotional and mental rollercoaster for me.
This all began my senior year of high school, when I was determined to go to UH, with the purpose of studying abroad. I’ve changed my route many times (first Italy, then Spain and Japan, but ultimately settling on Korea for my first summer study abroad and Copenhagen for my second study abroad). The process for this study abroad has been rough – so many applications to fill out, so many people to contact, so many appointments to make. It seems nothing came easy during this process, and everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. While I was doing AFS this past summer, I was still looking for housing, which Moana, who did the same program last semester, said was super easy to find. Well, it wasn’t for me. It took me a whole two months to finally secure a housing, and from there, I was finally able to book a Visa appointment in SF. The process is difficult because there’s so many steps you need to complete before moving on to the next, so if you get stuck at one step, good luck getting the rest done. I was naïve to think that the visa would take a short while to process. I booked my flight to SF for a weekend to get this done, and couldn’t breathe when the worker told me it would take four weeks to process the visa that I would need in three. The whole visa process was a nightmare, and I had thought that was the worst of it – turns out I was wrong. With two days left before my flight and my passport still in Washington DC, I had to get a new passport expedited, in which I paid $205 and picked up the morning of my flight. I was shocked to see that my passport number was different (I mean, duh, but I hadn’t even though about that), meaning the passport that I booked my flight with was different from my new passport. I scrambled to get in contact with all the airlines that I would be flying with, and somehow managed to get things fixed. The worst of it came two days before I left, when I contacted my supposed host to ask him how I would get into the house, in which he responded that I wasn’t his tenant. My body went cold. I had paid for the room and got my certificate, and yet here he was saying he doesn’t have a room for me. The time difference, which is 12 hours, really tested me. I couldn’t get in contact with anyone until night time, and we only ever have one conversation a day, if I can even get a response from them. The overwhelming combination of leaving my family and boyfriend for four months, all of this chaos happening all so quickly at once, and the mental exhaustion and lack of sleep didn’t help either. I arrived at SFO at 11pm, and spent the night on the chairs in the airport. The flight wasn’t too bad, because we got to move around seats freely, due to the many open seats. However, the flight I’m currently on, I wasn’t so lucky. We were supposed to depart at 3:50pm, but because of troubles on the runway, we ended up flying at 5:15pm. I’ve told myself many times already and I’m hoping that if I keep saying, things will actually turn around, but I know this is a test from the universe, to see if I’m really strong enough to make it on my own. There were so many possibilities that I thought of as to why I’ve been put through so much the past few days – maybe I was a bad person in my past life. Maybe my life so far has been too easy and I needed a challenge. Maybe it’s to boost my self-confidence. Maybe it was to prevent something terrible from happening in France. Maybe it was to prepare me for my life ahead in these situations. Whatever it is, I know that everything that happens is for a reason, but it’s hard to stay positive through it all. I think I’ve cried more this past week than I have the whole year. And as I write this, trying to stay positive, I can’t help but wonder: where am I going to sleep tomorrow, and the rest of the week, if I don’t have a house to stay in. Whew. I didn’t know preparing for a study abroad in a foreign country was going to be so much work. Here’s a list of everything I had to do before embarking on my journey:
Applications: In addition to being approved through MIX, I also had to send in my documents electronically to the school – documents such as a photocopy of my driver’s license & passport, list of classes I wanted to take, resume & cover letter, and the formal school application. Registering for classes: Once you get your approval letter from the school, you get to register for your classes. ESC has their own class platform (just like how we have STAR at UH), and they send you an email when it’s time to register. When I registered, they opened it up at 3pm France time, which means it was 3am in Hawaii. Don’t make the same mistake I did and think it’s just the classes you have the submit – there’s many more documents that they ask you for so make sure you finish EVERYTHING before submitting. Housing: ESC uses a platform called Studapart to help students find housing. My process was EXTREMELY difficult because all the landlords were looking for students staying 6 months or longer. It took me 2 months to finally find a house. * Visa: The visa process is very tedious. You have to first apply through Campus France and get approved from that site before being able to make an appointment at the French Consulate. I went to the one in San Francisco, but there’s a closer one in LA. Make sure you have all of your documents before going, and be prepared to wait a while past your appointment time, because it can get very, VERY crowded. * Flights: Book in advance – it took me a while to find a flight that worked. … Okay, the flight wasn’t actually ideal for me at all, because it involved a LONG layover in SF, so I slept at the airport until the morning. I always use Kiwi.comto find my flights, because they’re good at finding deals and connecting flights, and it’s way cheaper than Google Flights. Credit Cards: Make sure to let your credit card company know you’re traveling (this can either be online or through the phone) so that they don’t freeze your account! * Tips & Trouble: WOW. Okay, so my experience thus far was absolutely terrible, and let me explain why, and give some tips so no one ever has to go through what I went through: VISA: BOOK. YOUR. APPOINTMENT. EARLY. As in like at least 1.5 MONTHS before leaving. The earlier, the better. Now, it’s hard to book an appointment because you need all the necessary documents before you can apply. My visa appointment kept getting pushed back because 1. no one approved housing for me (and the housing certificate is one requirement) 2. I was doing a graduate program study abroad in the summer, which meant I wouldn’t be able to travel to SF until the beginning of August to get my visa Because my visa appointment was so close to my departure (3 weeks before I left), I didn’t get my visa in time. I’m currently on a plane, visa-less, while my original passport sits at Washington DC getting processed. So, what did I do if I didn’t have a passport? I had to pay $205 to get a brand new one at the Honolulu Passport Agency, expedited so I could catch my flight to France. HOUSING: So, you know how I said it took me a long time to find housing? Well, I finally booked one, paid for it, got a confirmation, only to find out THREE DAYS BEFORE I LEFT that my landlord gave my room to another tenant. I scrambled to get in touch with Studapart and my school, along with the MIX office at UH to find a solution. As I sit on the plane heading to France, I am still house-less. TIME DIFFERENCE: The time difference is what really made this process so difficult. It’s a whole 12-hour difference from Hawaii, meaning that when the French people are up and at it doing work, I’m sleeping. And when I’m anxiously awaiting their response at 1pm, they’re sleeping. It’s a back-and-forth game that really doesn’t help anyone. FINAL ADVICE: Just be diligent. Always submit everything early, and DOUBLE CHECK EVERYTHING. If I didn’t double check about my housing, I would have made my way to the apartment at 11pm in a foreign country, just to be told I didn’t have a place to stay. Let’s keep this short & sweet:
I’m studying abroad in France next semester!! Yup, Corina is traveling once again, and this time for a whole four months in the country of my two favorite things: croissants and striped shirts. Mr. William Johnson has been an amazing donor to the Shidler College of Business for such a long time, and I am absolutely honored to be receiving his scholarship to study abroad next semester. Mr. Johnson, if you’re reading this, thank you for believing in us and supporting our future with your generous donations. My name is Corina Quach, and I’m an Entrepreneurship and International Business major, who loves taking photos, writing, eating food, exercising, traveling, and exploring all the different landscapes around me. I have the honor of studying at the ESC Rennes School of Business in France next semester, and will be abroad from September to December. I will be departing for France early September, and it’s been a hectic few weeks preparing for this journey, but I can’t wait for all the experiences and knowledge I’ll be gaining over the Fall semester! |