Spring break forever, oh how I wish. It may have killed my blog game, and it didn’t do much for my french, but I just enjoyed a lovely two-and-a-half week long spring break.
My family came to visit me in Paris, then we we went to the Côte d’Azur in the south of France and the Cinque Terre in Italy. I was almost sad to leave Paris, but all it took was two minutes in the sun, one glance at the ocean, and that feeling faded.
It was truly wonderful. I got to show them Paris through my eyes, they were able to meet my (amazing) host family, and we got to explore some new places together too.
After Italy, I came back to Paris for a quick break before departing on the ultimate bucket list trip, Greece.
We had been planning this voyage for months.
We being my friend Jessica and I. If you’ve read my other posts you probably realize, I’m sort of obsessed with the word serendipitous. But this is yet another instance where life feels accidentally and happily aligned.
Maybe I’ve been trying too hard to reflect on this entire trip, but I can’t help but smile or laugh at how life works out sometimes.
Back in August, Jess and I decided to get coffee and catch up together after saying we’d do so forever. Just two days before I went back to school, we both had a free afternoon and decided to go to Coffee Buddha.
We discussed returning to school for the fall and how our past semesters had gone, all the usual stuff, when we discovered that we would both be studying abroad in France this spring! What are the odds? We had settled on different cities me, Paris and Angers, but with France’s TGV (high-speed train) they are only an hour and a half apart.
It was a relief to know there would be a friend in the same country as me, and I was also excited to have someone to discuss all my excitement and fears with.
Even better, I now had a travel companion.
Where this all starts to feel a bit serendipitous and not just coincidental is when we meet people here and they ask how we know each other.
Where to start?
There’s the fact that we were in the same first grade class. I swear we never had a class together after that. In addition to being friends since elementary school, our neighborhoods practically touch. Then we worked at the same garden center for three years after Jess got me a job there. There’s also all the years we spent in the same French classes and in French club. And then there was that one time we decided to both do the fall play senior year.
We always give the simplest answer, that we’ve been friends since we were little. Which is absolutely true, but when you break up all the little instances it seems like one thing after another has stuck us together by chance. It has made for some pretty great memories.
During winter break we met up at Starbucks (sorry Coffee Buddha) to talk about our upcoming trip and to plan some weekend trips together.
Jess had told me she really wanted to go to Greece in early May for her 21st birthday. I said that would be awesome and I was in, but truthfully I put it in the pile with all of our other trips and plans. Hopefully it would happen, but we would have to work around our schedules and budgets.
Then one day at another coffee shop she brought it up yet again, “I’m definitely going to Greece for my 21st birthday. I’ll go alone. I don’t care. I’m going. I will be in Santorini May 1st.”
And that is how we ended up going to Greece. It doesn’t seem at all remarkable. I hadn’t thought much about it until someone we met there asked why we came to Santorini.
And here we were, two girls from Pittsburgh, Ross Township, both recently turned 21, enjoying four days on a Greek island. We couldn’t help, but laugh at how matter of fact our decision seemed. Like it was always in the plan since we were both put in Mrs. Rava’s first grade class.
Or maybe it’s not all as serendipitous as it seems. Maybe sometimes you just need someone to make a damn decision. Either way, I’m sure glad we went.
** For more of the story, check out Jess’s blog Clair de Lune here. Her frankness will make you laugh, and I’m so happy to have shared this whole study abroad experience with her. **
Syd au Chocolat 