GREATER THAN EXPECTATIONS

Wednesday, 25 2009

There is an odd confidence that comes when you are thrust into a foreign environment and successfully navigate around without too much trouble. On the one hand you’re expecting to get lost a few times. On the other hand, these transport systems are pretty self-explanatory so you feel kind of dumb if you do get lost. In London, the Tube made things easy. In Paris, the Metro gets you where you want to go.

I was reluctant to go with the rest of the students to Radio France because I thought it would be more touristy than real experience. I am so glad it was mandatory because, so far, it was the highlight of my trip. To see newsrooms in action working with media from all over the world was very inspirational for me. I would love to work somewhere like that in the future. Definitely a dream job!

Kim Nguyen and I covered a lot of territory today. We didn’t see too many monuments on the way but we did experience some authentically Parisian locations. We checked out Asian communities in a few different spots and saw some strong working-class neighborhoods, which I think is just as important to experience as anything else, if not more so. We ended up in the Latin Quarter where Kim’s original source was. The area has two universities and it’s bustling with students. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it was interesting to see how similar students are in different countries.

All in all, it was a long day that yielded more conformations for tomorrow that any actual story content, which feels a little wasteful, and the focus for the story is going to be one restaurant rather than comparing nightmares to success stories, which I wanted. If everything pans out like expected, though, it should be a good story.

John Ellis
Print Journalism