Final Reflections on France

 Finn (age 10):

    My Favorite parts of France were just hanging out in Toulouse and walking around Toulouse with my family. Paris was really fun, it just felt a little crowded and crazy, bot otherwise it was very fun. The food was AMAZING in France. The pastries were soooooo good. My favorite was the pan au raisin. I thought the canal was really beautiful and River Gironna was also very cool. Nice was nice because I just flit like it was kind of like a subtle city and we got to go swimming in the Mediterranean and we had a view of the sea from our Airbnb, so that was really fun. Our Airbnb in Toulouse was really nice, and I felt like by the end that it was my house. 

     Something(s) that surprised me about France were that the streets were very narrow and there was dog poop on the sidewalk a lot. We'd always be like, "Watch out for the dog poop!" Speaking French and trying to speak French was very hard because I can't speak it really, so it was hard to get around, but again by the end I got used to it and I could get around. It turns out, in France they use commas instead of decimals for money, so when my sister and my mom would drag me shopping, the prices would say like 40 euros maybe, but it would look like it was 40,000 euros; it was really fun and surprising. 

-Finn

Maggie (age 13): 

I absolutely loved France! It was such a fun experience, our daily life was so much fun. For about the first month I babysat our friend's daughter every day. She is so cute and I already miss her so much! When I think of France, I thing of our house we lived in and Place Wilson, which had a carousel, and we should through any time we needed to get anywhere. 

Shopping n France was so much fun, and I loved it so much! All of the shops were so cute and they all had a great selection of clothing there. One of my favorite stores to walk around was Galleries Lafayette. It had 5 floors and they were all different and so fun to walk around. France was so much fun; I would 100% go back there.

I think that Toulouse was my favorite city in France, but I also loved Nice and Lyon. Paris was one of the best things I have ever experienced. I got to meet my best friend Avery after not seeing her for around 3 months! It was like a dream come true to be in Paris with her. Overall, I loved France and I had so much fun, go to see so many things, and I would love to get the opportunity to go back. (Especially with Avery). 

-Maggie

Jay (age 42)

What to say about this who experience? Seriously! What to say? Sarah has been asking me to write my contribution for a few weeks now and I keep claiming to forget,  but really I just don't know how to possibly sum this all up...I told Sarah the other day that it's really hard to wrap your mind around the fact that you likely just lived through arguably the best year of your life!

Overall, I'm not sure I could've really asked for more from this Sabbatical. As Sarah has documented so well on this blog, we visited many, many beautiful and interesting places around the world. We had great times with friends and family who came to visit some of these places with us. On my side of things, I got to meet and spend a good amount of time working with a bunch of great people at the University of Canterbury, ISAE-Supaero and Politecnico di Milano. It was great to chat with faculty and students alike and to observe the similarities and differences at different places. I learned a lot, and I certainly hope to bring some of these lessons back to CU with me. I wish I could bring the French food with me to...of course getting to reconnect with my former Students: Ben, Spencer, Davide, and Paolo, was so fun; especially since they all seem to be doing so well! Maybe most unexpectedly, we ended up making some really good friends who we toured the world with too! I'm looking at you Mara (and Sofie and Wylie)! 

Probably the biggest gift of all, however, was being able to spend so much time as a family unit. We definitely missed our friends and family back home (Kona...), but even with that getting to spend so much time with Sarah, Maggie and Finn where we weren't all going a hundred different ways doing a thousand different things was, well, incredible. I suppose one can argue that every day, every experience, changes you into the person you are becoming the next moment. But there is no doubt that some experiences make a bitter impact than others, and we just had about 300 of those in a row. The four of us are closer now than would have been possible if we hadn't done this. I'm beyond grateful. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen!

-Jay