Aero: Arvilla Mast – France 2018 – History and Culture

Posted by LEAF Architect on Friday, September 14, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Aero: Arvilla Mast – France 2018 – History and Culture

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Arvilla Mast

It never really sunk in before traveling abroad just how young America is. I mean for comparison Paris is more than 2,000 years old, and our country is only almost 242 years old. I know the numbers but it’s still hard to fathom. The very feeling I get over there is that of something ancient, beautiful, and maybe sober. I’m not sure what the right words are to describe it.

Many students in France asked me how Paris compared to New York City and which I liked better. Personally, I don’t feel they are comparable at all. The words that come to mind when I think of NYC are enormous, towering, bright, overwhelming, and overstimulating with the building size billboards. It’s beautiful, but in a very different way. The feeling in Paris is much more ancient, classy, and peaceful. I loved walking on the cobblestone streets, although my poor feet were suffering dreadfully. There is legislation to keep the height of the buildings low so as not to overwhelm the historical city. The tallest building is called Tour Montparnasse which has an overlook on top where we had a wonderful view of the Eiffel tower and the rest of the city.

You can’t help but feel small and insignificant when an eight hundred or thousand-year-old castle or cathedral is towering over you. There are stunning cathedrals seemingly on every corner, I don’t even know how many we saw. We saw Notre Dame straight off the plane first thing when we arrived. I can’t say I fully appreciated it at the time as I felt grubby and had only snoozed a few minutes on the plane and was on the verge of meltdown. But it was truly wonderful and now I can’t wait to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame as I was really there.

Also, I got to explore two medieval castles while I was there. My host family took me to Château de Fougères my first day with them. It’s a beautiful castle built in the eleventh century. We also got to see Château de Vitré, which my host student and I drove by every day on our way to school. They didn’t even seem to notice it. It’s such a different world driving on cobblestone and passing medieval castles all the time.

The beaches of Normandy were the highlight of the trip. Standing looking across the English Channel on such a bright beautiful day makes it hard to imagine the carnage that ensued in that place. Seeing the bunkers, bomb craters makes it very real though. The Normandy American Cemetery is indescribable, row after row of uniform white crosses with the Stars of David marking each fallen soldier. Sometimes, when learning about history I just hear the numbers and forget that each one of those numbers is a real person with a family that loved them. All those white crosses as far as the I can see is just a little more than nine thousand. It made me wonder, if ever innocent person who died because of that war had a white cross, how many miles of crosses would that be?

We only had a small taste of all the history and culture France has to offer, but having experienced some of it makes reading and learning so much more real and I can’t wait to travel more in the future.

Arvilla Mast
Study Abroad – France 2018 @ FLCC

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