Blog #3: Staying in Paris for the Long Haul

What do you do when a quick, planned trip to France while taking a short summer abroad class suddenly becomes the fight of your life to return to your home and family? Here’s my story on how I survived when I was trapped in Paris. For the longest time, it has always been my dream to explore the streets that my family was originally from, a world that has become so distant in my life in Hawaii. I was very excited when I finally had the opportunity to go to France to take a French language and culture class for 3 weeks during the summer. I have lived most of my life in Hawaii as a French immigrant, but had never been to France since I was born in Brazil. I would learn that traveling from Hawaii to France and from France back to Hawaii was complicated. My parents were concerned about the immigration aspect of my trip and I did my research and got my documents. On the fateful day of my trip, I learned that the immigration office at HPU notified me that I might have missed something and wouldn’t be able to return to the US. I quickly rushed home and completed the last document that I needed. I had my boarding pass in hand, which showed that my plane was to take off in under 2 hours when I learned that I needed to pass an exit interview to obtain my entry visa into the US. Only later on did I find out how difficult this would be.

There are certain things one usually does when preparing for one’s first solo trip, such as budgeting, managing housing, and so on. Things one doesn’t plan to do is stay twice as long as they budgeted for and completely rework their plan for the trip...like I did. Luckily, I brought extra cash to survive, but I had to economize BIG TIME. 

Here is my how-to guide on how to survive a low budget lifestyle in Paris. The first thing I learned was that living in the city is expensive, like hundreds of euros you will never see again after only a few weeks kind of expensive. Therefore, I moved from the city and learned to love the countryside just outside of Paris. From this move, I also grew to love the long commute between my new home to the city and grew to love me saving money. Also, as amazing as the food was in Paris, it was really expensive too! The first thing that most would be tempted to do is buy ready-to-eat frozen foods since it saves time, but even those meals can be expensive over time. That’s when I learned the magic of grocery shopping. This was the first time in my life where I went shopping for different things that I could cook with. I bought lots of pasta, meats, and vegetables and cooked them myself. I found interesting recipes online to cook with and I tried different combinations of the ingredients I bought to make my dishes interesting to eat each day. From these experiences, I learned how to make it on my own.

By the end of the trip, I barely had 100 euros and if I had one more setback, I wouldn’t have known what to do. Luckily, I was able to reschedule my flight (over several hours over the phone) and I made it safely back to my family and friends.