Howdy,
My name is Andrew Stover so far I have spent two weeks on our France Business study abroad and they have been some of the most special weeks of my life. I am thankful for this chance to experience other countries and their respective cultures with my fellow Aggies. We are staying in Strasbourg, France and it is great, but some of my favorite experiences have come from when a group of friends and I traveled to other cities on the weekends. For the first weekend, we had planned to visit some other cities in France but it didn’t exactly go as planned. The first day went great in Paris as we saw the Eiffel Tower and explored the city but we had expected to go to Orleans the next day to see some castles, but it turned out the place we were supposed to stay was too far from both the train station and the castle we wanted to see. We had to make a last-minute decision to get on a train to a small city called Blois so we could go see Château de Chambord the next day and we booked a hostel on a whim. We were all worn out and nervous but we went in with open minds and this ended up being my favorite part of our trip so far. Blois was a quite small town with few tourists and the owners of our hostel were lovely we met a group of people from the U.K. and we spent what seemed like the whole night about the differences between America and England. To top it off Château de Chambord was spectacular and is a place that pictures can’t do justice. This Renaissance masterpiece built in the 1500s was surreal to see in person and was even used during WWII to protect valuable artwork such as the Mona Lisa from being stolen or damaged. I’m so thankful that Blois turned out to be such a fun experience and it also taught me that even if things don’t always go as planned there is a way forward and something to be learned from.
