Paris is a great city and definitely one on everyone’s bucket list of places they want to visit. It’s historic, young, quiet, and fun all at the same time. It has everything to offer for anyone, including me. My first week in this city was perfect. On top of visiting touristy places like the Eiffel Tower, I did something for myself only. The Eiffel Tower is truly magical, and for some, it might be just a tower with no purpose, but it is still amazing and worth visiting. Coming into Paris, I really wanted to visit the Arc de Triomphe, and I did so. This arc is in every Paris movie, and as a film enjoyer, I was surprised by how much bigger it is than portrayed. Many chases took place here, from Mission Impossible to Marvel. My expectations were met, and on top of that, I got to witness the music festival, which was a one-of-a-kind experience.
The Music Festival, the Arc de Triomphe, and a castle an hour away from Paris were my top three visits. One for being a historic monument, showing how royals lived and why Paris and France used to be one of the biggest and strongest empires in the world. You see the history unfold in front of you.
While visiting and walking around Paris is one part of the experience, we also get to learn and achieve significant milestones inside the classroom. Our partner helped us decide and finalize the project lists we are building now, and after the first week, we began prototyping and finishing it. Before coming here, I would never have imagined I would be designing smart pluggers for disabled people, but it’s a mindset and a different way of looking into surroundings now. One of my goals was to finish a project to a presentable extent and apply to be in the SDG UN project Olympiad. In addition to this, the main objective is to have a project our partner can actually use. This will ease her life in one way.
Our project is still in the making, and each member of our team contributes significantly to the project. In my opinion, I contributed the most in terms of finalizing the ideas. After brainstorming, we had around 40 ideas, and in the sorting process, I made my impact, and we stopped at 10, then 5, and now 2 main ideas. I enjoyed the first day the most, where we discussed the problem and did our research. Our problem was unique, and I did not even know it was a big problem with many solutions already existing and many ideas being planned to be released. I enjoyed this research phase since I love delving into the idea and solutions right away and getting the idea of the market.
I struggled to come up with viable ideas; my ideas were either too simple or too unrealistic given our time constraint. It was hard since I always strive for the perfect solution, and in my mind, it’s a longer project.
The highlight of the week is my project-making and the Arc de Triomphe.