days in my life as a student in paris | living alone diaries

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

I can I can good morning the whole grossed out by um eggs phenomenon is real we're not going to been B happy thoughts hello good morning the sun is out and that is why my mood is more animated than usual because it has been gloomy basically 3 weeks straight here in Paris I think there's been like GL glimmer of sun maybe in the evening for like an hour or two this is January the first morning I've woken up and there's actually mostly blue skies there was like a massive storm last night like it literally blew open these windows at like 3:00 a.m.

I thought I was being haunted but alas it was the wind if you haven't seen my last video obviously and let me try to say this in French um a experience does that make sense I don't know I'm renting my friend's apartment and I'm taking French Classes specifically at Co Swiss and I'm doing it an intensive program hopefully it improve my French um I couldn't even say those lines two two and a half weeks ago so baby steps I know I'm probably saying the wrong but hey we're trying I always warn people I'm like if you want me to speak French I'm going to sound like a 5-year-old you've got to start somewhere very humbling learning a language in your like mid 20s as opposed to when you're like a teenager but we're trying nonetheless what I like about this program too is there's only about four other people in my class and it's very much like oral expression focused as well as comprehension so you really forced to talk because there's not that many people in the class so you can't hide and at the same time you also get comfortable with people quickly so you're not as you know concerned to make mistakes I feel like if it's a really big class you're like oh my God please don't call me it's been a goal of mine for years to learn French and I was like I'm not getting any younger there's always an excuse not to do it I had some flexibility in my skin schedule so I was like screw it let's do this thing okay I need to go I usually take my bikes to get to class the first one I went and unlocked someone had knocked off the metal so I had to like redock it and then I walked really far to another one and then it wasn't there we're show on and now I'm literally going to be like 5 to a minutes late class the irony is not lost on me that I was just talking about how beautiful a morning it was and then I proceeded to get absolutely on by buckets of rain and the first three bikes didn't work so now have 6 minutes lates to class um no some during our 15- minute break my brain is so tired hi hello from back in the apartment I've actually been back for a little bit just getting some work done having my like third coffee of the day but I figured I'd explain what I'm doing here as a little student again because I've been getting a lot of questions so I am in per obviously missed my last videos I'm just here for a couple months but it feels quite different this time cuz I'm doing it fully solo it's been challenging and rewarding and all the things lonely at times but I've been really wanting to learn French for years and it's so damn hard trying to learn on your own it's so hard trying to learn in your mid and late 20s so I was like you know what screw it let me go to Paris amongst a variety other reasons and so I was asking around to some friends and it was actually Jack Edwards our book King cheers to him who recommended this school EOS which is where I'm studying right now it's a little bit on this school obviously this is not sponsored by them would love that language schools are not cheap but I do think it's quite worth it so it's kind of a intensive program it's Monday through Friday every morning from 9:00 a.m.

till 12:30 with the option of adding on even more hours in the evening but I still need to like work and edit and I have a lot of other like moving parts and projects at the moment so I don't have time to do the afternoon classes but I'm been doing the morning classes you take a little test and they place you and what's nice is the classes range from four to eight students and it's never larger than eight which I think is really helpful and honestly when the classes sometimes been seven or eight people it almost feels too big which is very helpful insight cuz I think in the past language classes where there's like 25 people or even 15 like it's impossible to really learn and get the practice that you really need I'm just doing like four or five weeks to start and I might add on more and so some of these students have been here for weeks and it's really cool cuz it's people from like every Walk of Life hey we got to start somewhere I've always considered myself somebody who just sucks at languages like it does not come naturally to me whatsoever I do not have that Gene or like skill set and so it's been really inspiring as somebody who sucks a language learning to be making progress I'm like what a concept wow you really put in work and you see an outcome look at that wild right as everyone always says like immersion is obviously the top thing you can do for yourself for language learning but I do think it's selling when people are like oh just move to that country and you'll just like soak it in I'm like I'm not going to photosynthesize French just by like walking on the streets hey y'all trying to get some work done here and surprise surprise my um computer's completely out of space I paid more to have a computer with more space so has 1 Tab and there are 7 gabes left like this is not good this needs to be cleaned up it's time to use my favorite clean my Mac it's literally a lifesaver my life is on this computer and it gets so chaotic in here and it's so helpful to have a software that helps clean it up and kind of just streamline the process so here's what it looks like so cute for holidays and my computer can use some love and basically clean my Mac takes out all the hassle For You especially with the holiday season around the corner clean my backc has you covered you can spend more time with your family and let clean my Mac be your basically tech support bestie and take care of the Mac all you need is to basically press one button and their smart scan helps clean it up remove malware and speed up your computer all in one go which is amazing like it really only takes like a couple minutes to polish up your computer again so I also want to show you the menu app which has so many helpful features like checking your you know your Wi-Fi your battery performance how much space you have left and it's great because for the winter holidays clean my Mac is giving 30% off on all clean my Mac plans including the one for five Mac so you can have your whole family covered you get 30% off with their code Elena so of course everything will be linked down below check out clean your Mac and save yourself some chaos I'm about to literally do the clean up right now and then get some work done because I can barely use this thing with the speed it's going at where are we I don't know how to say it which is famous for um liquid chocolate literally yeah it's basically what it is so good morning it's time to head to class but as usual I'm running late cuzz I have horrible time management I'm hoping after class today to maybe do a little bit of exploring or work room up somewhere a little bit more fun I pretty much was just going from school back home to work and maybe doing like a workout class and you know what I'm getting little St crazy so we got to mix up the routine to keep things interesting and also enjoy being in a new city so maybe we'll do some exploring after but it is raining and cold here's the look of the day I lost uh my umbrella so I just been going with a hat whenever it's rain yeah the hello having a little Park set so two of the students from Swiss invited me out to lunch which was cute we had lunch at a place called bonam which was so good and well priced too and then decided to work a little bit at a cafe and I'm taking the scenic walk home in the cold kitchen light we both look far aside and you say these are Troubles of mine we thought are breaking getting some of my work done and started pondering thinking and reflecting about my little class and some of my learnings outside of actually learning French so I just turned 27 a cute age but also an age that gives me a little bit of anxiety which I don't like that that's where my brain goes because there's such agism and pressure put around women and certain societal expectations that are so unfair and outdated and yet they've been ingrained in us and I know in a very similar societal vein it does not affect men the same way women are expected to have lived an entire life by the time of 30 and have biological clock and are treated very differently upon turning certain ages whereas most my male straight friends in your York are freaking children at 35 love y'all but like you are whereas for women as you enter your late 20s and 30s you're expected to have so much figured out and to fit into certain Norms I have been thinking about this a ton if you want to read a little bit on this um one of the books that really got my brain churning a couple years ago surrounding these kinds of conversations was the beauty myth okay anyways I'm rambling now one thing that I'm really loving about my little school program it brings together so many different people from literally every Walk of Life and I love it it is such a beautiful thing that I didn't even think of and I had no expectations for I kind of went into it being like I don't know if I'll really make any friends but now it's like I have a friend who's like 60 years old from like New Zealand and there's this girl who's 18 from New York who's super cool people I'm talking with are from Switzerland and Seattle and India from all the corners of the world so easy get stuck in your little bubble of your friends and your work whatever your different little social systems are you know that becomes your Norm like that's how social structures usually work but there's something so beautiful about having that being popped and you're exposed to so many different perspectives and ways of living life that really like shakes you out of these structures and I feel like I've been so inspired by being surrounded by such different people from who I'm usually around now I me these people with very different types of stories and paths a lot of people do have just carved out this chapter of life for themselves to just you know learn French Joy the city no matter the station of Life they're at I feel like the way my brain works which I don't love is I have like insane anticipatory anxiety about like the future and it can be so overwhelming at times think meeting people who are in really different stages of life and yet they're still doing these cool things is super inspiring you know seeing these older women who are taking time out of their normal life and just wanted to come to Paris and learn French a lot of people here too are helping kind of reconfigure my ideas on work and life balance and what success means I mean like hello good old capitalism versus socialism I grew up in capitalist USA red wine blue baby and this somewhat different perspective of the French as well as a lot of the Europeans I'm hanging out with I was really helping me reframe for one kind of that anxiety of like oh gosh I need to have certain things figured out and and I don't know what's next I don't know what to do with myself just being like okay enjoy the journey and so I didn't really expect that to come I'm taking some French glasses so I guess what I maybe am trying to say go hang out with some different people pop your social bubble and hang out with people who are very different from the people you normally be around feel like I haven't been able to do as much exploring as I would like because I've been kind of going straight from class to doing like half days of work and so on that note I'm really excited cuz I was messaging Nathaniel J I was like hey let's hang out SP a second and he's is like I actually have an extra ticket to dander vanhart tonight so I'm going to get ready and see dander vanhart and he just put out amazing new album and I'm so excited to have a little evening out in Paris let's go listen to some music like that is my favorite kind of evening I'm so excited cheers look at her y wait that's so cute