Hello Readers!
Tomorrow I will be leaving Boston to fly across the Atlantic to the city of Paris. For the month of January I'll be living in a hostel and taking classes at Sorbonne IV, a French University. After completing the J-Term in Paris, I'll head to the southern coast of France to start my spring semester in Cannes. This blog will be one outlet for me to document my thoughts, feelings, and experiences throughout this adventure.

First off, I should warn you that I am not a writer nor a diary keeper so this online journal is a bit of an experiment and all new to me, but that seems to fall in line with the theme to the whole trip. The travel blogs that I've read (which is admittedly not many), range from being a cut and dry description of the places the author visited and things they ate, to others that detail great epiphanies about the world and people. While I will probably tell you about the latest funky cheese or fancy pastry I've tried, I also hope to have several revelations to describe to you, I think I want the focus of this blog to be leadership.

In France I have the opportunity to witness and have first-hand experience with a different style of leadership. My plan is to use the Lewis model of culture clusters to identify real-world examples of Lewis' theories of the French leadership style. With most of you being fellow leadership students, I hope that you will find this blog helpful as well as interesting.

But before all that, let me first tell you about what I'm doing in France and why. The J-Term is a month long stay in Paris where I'll take a single course on the "History of Architecture in Paris."At the end on January, I'll travel to Cannes for a full semester in which three of my five classes will be language courses. The main objective for studying abroad, besides exposure to a new leadership style, is to become proficient in the French language. One of the reasons I chose this program in Cannes was because it offers a language concentration so that I could work towards my goal. In mid-May there is the world famous, international Cannes Film Festival. The college that I'll be attending provides students with passes to viewings as well as volunteer opportunities at the festival. While this was not a deciding factor in choosing the program, it is a huge, glamorous bonus.

Overall, I am very excited for this opportunity to apply my leadership studies, travel Europe, drink fine wine, and possibly watch a film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

À bientôt,
Kara