The Experiment: France: Cultural Discovery

We spent 5 amazing days in Paris exploring the city. Then we moved on to our home stays than occurred in Nancy and got to experience normal day to day lives in France. Then moving to Colmar to experience 2 days in a border city with Germany. To end it we spent the last 3 days in Germany. In the end I would say that this experience was an amazing way to get a great cultural experience and I’m so glad that I got to do it.

I liked the experience and the opportunity to go to France and see all the famous things I've always wanted to see. Like the Mona Lisa, Eiffel Tower, arc de Triomphe, and more! I even had my sweet 16 there and had a great time. Except I feel it could have been better if I was more informed by the leaders on the downsides like all the pickpocketing going on in Paris. Because of that, I became a victim of it and I got my phone stolen by a random person during the first few days of the trip while I went out to eat for lunch and I wasn't with the leaders. After that, the leaders and some of the kids tried their best to help but all they could do was report it to the police, they didn't do anything about it and I never got my phone back. The leaders helped me buy a temporary phone but still, It was a traumatizing experience and it spoiled my trip to the point, that I just wanted to go home but I couldn't. After that, I went to my homestay family with a lady I lived with for 10 days. She was alright but the whole time I felt like she didn't like me. After the 10 days ended I went to Switzerland it was beautiful and I loved the country but during that people started being weird. I was with a group of girls and a random guy came up to us and tried to take us to go out with him. Another kid got slapped in the face by a random guy while the leaders were there and everyone witnessed it and got scared. I started to have problems with the other students and they would just either ignore me or just be straight rude to me even though I was nice to everyone. So I didn't want to be in any group and just wanted to explore on my own but I got in trouble for that because when we are out in the country we have to be in a group of at least 3 because the leaders aren't always with us. On the last day, we were back in Paris and It was time to go to the fair and go souvenir shopping but the kids and leaders didn't want me in their group and a girl even yelled at me because I tried to go with her group. so I missed out on the fair and just stayed in the hotel room and cried because my experience was so bad. But then I texted the group chat we had and one of the leaders took me from the hotel and took me to go to a restaurant everyone was in and eat dinner and go souvenir shopping so I felt better. That was the trip for me and I loved the opportunity to see those countries and have by sweet 16 in Paris. but the experience itself could have been better.

Attending The Experiment trip gave me a good sense of the reality in a different country. I got to meet my groupmates, my host family, and even random people who became friends. My group mates were really good and fun. My host family was amazing. I got to see how the typical small town in France is and I met their family members. Switzerland was very cool. Everything was expensive, but the town was very beautiful and right on the lake.