Paris

Spending the better part of my winter break in Paris was a very interesting experience. Not only was it my first time in Europe, it was my first time traveling alone (our winter breaks only overlapped for Christmas eve and Christmas, so David and I had 1.5 days in Paris together), as well as the first time I had left Asia for the past 7ish months. My introduction to the 'city of light' was stepping out of the Metro station in Montmartre at 11 pm Christmas eve night to be faced with an overwhelming amount of diversity, grit and no idea where I was. After walking around for awhile, David thankfully found me and led us towards our cute Parisian apartment that I had rented off of craigslist. From there the trip was only to get better.
Christmas day was spent exploring the quintessential Parisian sights, accompanied by a lot of "wows", "are we really here?", giggling, eating and of course "kiss me under the eiffel tower"s. I'm not going to lie that when David left the next day I felt apprehensive about my ability to explore this new and seemingly overwhelming city on my own. But to my surprise I spent the next three days walking for hours, taking a million pictures and thoroughly enjoying the sights and sounds of this famous city. I even went down into the catacombs alone which was creepy but very very cool. I really had a wonderful time and am so thankful that working in Korea has allowed me not only to pay off debt and save money, but has also given me the freedom, and confidence, to step out into other places in the world. I learned that yes I can be a confident, independent traveller, but enjoy having a buddy there to share the experience with much more. Once I landed in an icy cold Korea, I was quite happy to hop on the familiar airport bus in Incheon and have it drop me off in front of the grocery store where I have bought food for the last 7 months and walk down the friendly (and clean!) street to my semi-warm apartment. It oddly felt like coming home.