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A year ago was just a few weeks until I flew out to Paris to celebrate my birthday week with my dad. It’s one of my most cherished memories in my early adult years and the highlight of 2016 for sure.

I stumbled across the journal I wrote in during my first visit to Paris five years to this day.  Most of it is just me journaling for the sake of the assignment that went along with learning about Classical Myths in Paris, but at the end is a little what to do when you’re abroad and how to handle being in Paris for the first time. Figured I’d share my freshman words of wisdom—it’s pretty sound advice:

Fundamental Facts of Life to Take With You To Paris

  1. Perfect your deer-in-headlights stare for when you’re not sure what’s going on. The Parisians will most likely catch on that you don’t know what they’re saying and try to help you to some degree.  
  2. Dinner service improves significantly when you at least try to use the language. If you assume everyone speaks English, you’re ethnocentric, and most likely propagating the American stereotype that causes a lot of French people to hate us in the first place.  Unlike you, a server can’t give you a deer-in-headlights stare, so try to help them out, or they’ll make you suffer through customer service.
  3. Everyone smokes. End of story.  Don’t complain about secondhand smoke, they don’t care.  If you don’t like it, go back to America.
  4. Do NOT go behind the counter in the patisserie down the street from the Luxembourg Garden. The lady cashier doesn’t like that and will become rather angry. She does not care if you are American and do not know what she is saying.  She will yell at you in French.
  5. Some musicians will get n the metro with you and  and play “I Will Survive” on their saxophones.  They want money.  It’s a starving artist tactic.
  6. Like in America, there are crazy old men who yell at everyone in French on the street.  Do as you would at home: avoid eye contact and keep walking.
  7. Sometimes said crazy men will follow you shouting more emphatically.  Walk faster.
  8. The Shakespeare & Company Bookstore is a place of comfort. Come here when you need to be surrounded by English, books, and the occasional cute piano player or two.
  9. Some men who own restaurants will compliment you and call you “princess” to try to get you to eat at their establishment. Treat them like the crazies: avoid eye contact and keep walking. Didn’t you see Taken?
  10. Parisian children are adorable. Period. End of story.

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