FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE A BITCH

Tuesday, March 24 2009

Today I said "Cheers" to London and "Bonjour" to Paris. During the flight, I started to get that language barrier tingling sensation that starts in the stomach and somehow makes its way all the way up to the back of the brain, fogging any knowledge of foreign tongues. I never made an ass out of myself in London but I knew it would happen often in Paris. I think this is the body’s way of preparing you for your inevitable doom, worst-case scenario wise.

Anyways, by the time we got to our hotel and did the check-in thing, which had an excessively brutal tone set forth by the sight of twenty unruly students, it was already pretty late and the editors decided the day would best be used to rest and gather our thoughts. My body was thankful but my mind was full of ideas. After all, I did just arrive in Paris.

A group of us went to the Eiffel Tower to take photos for the Web site and I was surprised I liked it so much. It wasn’t even on my list of things to do. We got there as the sun was dropping so the light was fantastic for photos, although my incompetence of SLR cameras made that a moot point. We checked out some other spots around the Tower area that seemed really awesome in my haze of tiredness and I told myself I would come back to really see them after I got some sleep.

I also made a plan to work with Kim Nguyen, another broadcast student, because I knew I would run into the same problems as I did in London and be forced to do a similar story. She had a pretty solid lead so we’ll check that out tomorrow. After working with Diana Nguyen, I realized that videographer experience is just another good line for my resume.

I’m not sure how I’m feeling at this point. I definitely should have worked harder at setting up interviews before we arrived in Europe. Or maybe I should have bought a suit so people would take me more seriously. Either way, I came into this trip a tad overconfident. I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience and leave it at that. No use sweating the petty.

John Ellis
Print Journalism