Hello blog!! My first week in Paris is officially over!! I have had so much fun this week exploring the city, and I’m very excited for what the next few days will bring.
The real Paris matched my vision of Paris maybe like 60%? To be honest, the Eiffel Tower was shorter than I expected but still so so sooooo pretty lit up at night. I’ve been to many tourist attractions minus the Louvre(for now!) and everything is super pretty even if it is pretty crowded. I think the food definitely also matches 60% of what I expected. I’ve been eating GOOD here. The boulangeries are delicious but there is a lot more asian food than I expected. I actually expected none but have eaten so much and it’s all SO good! My favorite Boulangerie is Kayanes. It’s close to the Lucas location and the man there may be my favorite person I’ve met here. He is so welcoming and funny and the Poulet sandwiches and galette farcies are so good!
Anyways moving on… three key things I remember from my experience in Paris are:
- Seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkle for the first time
- Looking at the city with a more empathetic lens and seeing just how inaccessible the city is
- And eating the most delicious cheesecake ever @Maison Gabeston
The team scavenger hunt will definitely be something that has and will shape my memories from this experience. It was a fun way to go all through Paris, while learning to pay attention to other details you may have missed and being more aware of the ways the city lacks support for those with physical disabilities.
I think my prototype team still needs to answer how we can make our device as light as possible while remaining stable and durable.
If this project were to go forward, I believe that we could impact a greater audience and expand our project to be inclusive of rainy and snowy weather as well! (We are designing a sunshade for Yousra!)
I think I contributed the most in drawing out designs or building prototypes to visualize our ideas. I had the most fun when I would think of an idea and get excited to share with everyone. I think idea generation is just an exciting process, though very difficult sometimes.
The area I struggled most with is probably just learning more technical things with engineering design because I am not an engineer major or person. It has been so much fun to learn the steps with my team though! #goteamslimshady
The highlight of my week has to be just going everywhere over the weekend throughout Paris with my super slay friend, Taofeekat! We got to see so much and really experienced what a lot of the city has to offer.
Advice I would give to incoming students for the iSeed program would be to be flexible and open to new experiences. I plan on going to The Cave of Huchette (recommended by someone I met at the Amsterdam hostel) and apparently it’s really fun, so I’ll just go off on a limb and advise you to try it out LOL.
Until the next post…