<p>Hi there - My daughter is starting to talk about a 5-week summer program at American University of Paris. She’s 19, inexperienced regarding independent travel, and has never been abroad. I know NOTHING about AUP, and I’m leary about sending her abroad alone. Opinions?</p>
<p>Paris would be a great place for her to start experiencing travel abroad. Good public transportation system so easy to get around. Lots to see and do. Good location if she wants to see a couple of other places (Chunnel to London is 2 1/2 hours). Does she speak any French? If not tell her to learn a little. Even just the courtesies - greetings etc - can make a vast difference in peoples response to you. Don’t know anything about AUP so can’t help you there.</p>
<p>I guess I’d feel better if I knew she’d be with a group, but this would be traveling totally alone. How is overseas travel now-a-days for greenhorn young folk?</p>
<p>She won’t be alone! She’ll be with a whole bunch of American kids in the summer program! She will be fine.</p>
<p>Yeah, she will be fine - and she will have a blast. The only tiny concern would be if the riots fire up in Paris again this year (which is likely) but even then it is obvious that people need to avoid a demonstration, and/or the neighborhoods in question.</p>
<p>The neighborhoods in question are unlikely to be places where visitors would venture. That’s why they’ve been neglected for so very long. They are actually in the suburbs rather than in central Paris. </p>
<p>Traveling to Paris is quite easy. There is a direct train (RER) from Charles de Gaulle to central Paris (it takes about an hour and is configured to accommodate luggage) From there she can take the métro to wherever she will be staying. I don’t know where the AUP is located, but presumably somewhere central. I don’t recommend taking a taxi as fares are outrageous (same thing in London). The métro stations are situated very close to one another so they are quite convenient.</p>
<p>You know your daughter best, but most 19-year olds should be able ot handle a summer program like this with no trouble, esp. since there will be support in place once she’s on the ground. (By “traveling totally alone” I assume that you’re talking about just the flights.)</p>
<p>We thought DD was ready to do a volunteer-abroad program to Ghana at 17, with less oversight than most university programs provide. She had a really wonderful experience, and I suspect that Ghana may have been tougher to negotiate than Paris.</p>
<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I just wanted to say that I was in a somewhat similar position as your d this summer. I had never been out of the country (barely been out of my state!) and I ended up going to Rome, and I don’t speak any Italian, still don’t even after the trip (I almost did an Oxford program)! I did go with a program through my college, so everyone else was from my school- but no one knew each other so it was like we were going alone. If there is anything I could help you with I would be glad to help you!</p>
<p>I will say I was a bit overwhelmed during the trip- the work load had a lot to do with that, but I am very happy that I did it.</p>
<p>I understand your anxiety as this is something new. But at some point, these kids do grow up and so their boundaries open up and they expand and do things they have not done before. It is time. They are ready. As parents, we may not be ready but it is time for us to really let go. </p>
<p>My older D went to France last summer and was 19 1/2, after her soph year in college. She had been abroad twice but that was pretty irrelevant as those were supervised trips, one through HS, and one in a summer travel program. I’ll back track one year, in that the summer after freshman year in college, when she was 18 1/2, I let her drive with two friends, 6000 miles to Alaska. That was the first huge independent trip. Anyway, even all the supervised trips she went on (one six week cross country one and one five week European one in HS) she went not knowing anyone first. That was not an issue. </p>
<p>Anyway, last summer she went totally on her own to France. She wanted to spend an extended time there and to do so, lined up a job ahead of time. She flew to France by herself, stayed in Paris two days (in fact, ten days ago, I stayed in Paris at the same exact place she stayed at in the Latin Quarter so relived imagining what it was like for her for two days), and then traveled to the program where she worked with people from France. On her days off she traveled and when the job ended, she traveled alone for 8 days to two destinations in the Alps and to Nice. She lined up all her trains and planes and hotels in advance. She had a cell phone and contacted us as she reached each destination. I feel that after her trip to Alaska and then traveling on her own in France, that she really must know she can do anything. Now, my D has been in Italy all semester in a study abroad program, in which she knew nobody ahead of time. That is more akin to what you are talking about. You are not talking about your D just traveling around Europe but she is going to be IN a program, much like college, but just in France. Thousands upon thousands of college aged kids do this. My D is doing it now and was put up in an apartment that the program arranged. She has been on trips every weekend through her program (is in Rome today). However, she has traveled a lot on her own as she had nine days off and then a couple unscheduled weekends and she has been to many places, all independently. We know her plans ahead of time and she contacts us when she arrives (if she is traveling independently and not through the program). I’ve had to adjust. You will too. They do grow up :D. </p>
<p>My D has had NO qualms about a thing and in fact, was very very eager to do all this. She doesn’t feel she has to know kids ahead of time when she does a program. She went to various summer programs over the years without knowning anyone and they meet people, same with when she went to college. In fact, some of the travel my D has done while in Italy this semester has been visiting various French friends in France and Switzerland whom she worked with this past summer. She now has friends all over the place! She now has traveled all over by herself, not even affiliated with the program.</p>
<p>Your D is old enough to do an abroad program. You are not talking of her just going to a country on her own really but in joining up with a program. She is in college. It’s time. I know it is hard for us moms to get used to the idea, but trust me, you’ll adjust. Make sure she gets a cell phone over there and she’ll be fine. I was just in Paris (after visiting our D in Florence) and my D created our itinerary for us as she knows so much of where to go and how to get there. She instructed us on the subways there and really, it wasn’t hard at all. My kids grew up in a rural area on a dirt road in a town of 1700 without even a traffic light. My 18 year old goes to college in Manhattan and my other one is living in Italy. They do adjust quickly. My kids begged to do these things and it has gone well. It was ME who had to get used to it all, LOL. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>Check onto shuttles from the airport - less expensive than taxis. Metro with luggage = not fun. My D is keen to do some study abroad - needs to get into college first though. I’m getting itchy feet and am just a little jealous of the great travel/study opportunities open to kids these days.</p>
<p>Actually there was limited rioting in central Paris in late 2005, with perhaps as many as 16 cars torched. While the vast majority of rioting occurred in the poor suburbs of Paris and in other cities in France, many of the precise locations were “blacked out” in the French news media, so it’s not that easy to know exactly where it all occurred. </p>
<p>Unrest could boil up again at any moment in Paris though, because the government is largely seen as having reneged on the promises for improved conditions that they made to the immigrant communities.</p>
<p>However, I wouldn’t see it as a big concern - people need to know that wherever they are it is wise to avoid a mob if you’re not sure what’s going on! (Heaven knows it certainly wouldn’t stop me from going to Paris! 
) 19 is plenty old enough to travel just about anyplace. They figure things out even quicker than us, and they don’t worry nearly as much about details.</p>
<p>Maybe I shouldn’t weigh in on this as everyone else is so positive. My bad experience also was not involving France. But S1 was in Italy for 4 weeks, with a college group–mugged in Milan and kidnapped overnight in Florence. All turned out okay, money lost, not seriously injured and he says he would go back–but very much a worry at the time for us. </p>
<p>D. traveled in Germany last summer, but was with a friend fluent in German and were staying with relatives of friend. D. said she didn’t thing she could have done it on her own as far as the travel in the country. However, she did fly over and back on her own and that part was no problem.</p>
<p>mkm56 - I am sorry to hear about your son’s awful experience. What exactly do you mean by “kidnapped overnight”? Who kidnapped him, was it just him or a group, and how did he get released from the kidnappers?</p>
<p>FWIW, my daughter travelled alone to Sevilla, Spain for month-long immersion program after her junior year of high school. She did a homestay and was in class or on trips with other teens, but was basically unsupervised and had free time in the city to do what she wished to do. My son did the same thing after his freshman year of college, spending 3 weeks in Valencia and one week in Sevilla. He was with the “adult” program for college age and up, rather than the teen program. They both were fine with the traveling to Spain, and my son travelled within Spain. It was a great experience for both of them, as far as improving their Spanish, learning about the culture and life in Spain, and meeting a lot of young people from other European countries who were also students in the immersion program.</p>
<p>The only untoward thing that happened was that an obviously disturbed man came up to my daugher when she was walking on the street in broad daylight and hit her in the head. I don’t think it had anything to do with her being American, and all of the other passersbys stopped to make sure she was ok.</p>
<p>I would not worry about a 19 year old student travelling to a program in France by herself.</p>
<p>Kidnapped!! Jeez. That’s a story to tell back at the dorm. :eek:</p>
<p>D will be going (if approved by the college) to Spain on a total immersion program. Although there will be Rhodes prof’s once she arrives, the students will be from all over. She’s really pumped. I hope she gets to go (freshman need special dispensation and more competency in Spanish than she presently has). Lots of organized and un-organized travel.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I’d be quite as sure of just a free-wheeling trip totally alone, but I bet she could convince me with proper planning. ;)</p>
<p>Thanks, all ~ I’m sure you’re quite correct that she’d probaby be absolutely fine. I’ve just got a bad case of the Nervous Nellies, reading too many newspaper bad-news stories! Now that my basic mom-fears are somewhat abated, does anyone know much about AUP in particular, if it has a halfway decent rep for providing a good experience?</p>
<p>Son was out at night with a large group from his school. As they were entering taxis, he was in the back of the group and two men put knives against him and told him that if he made a sound they would stab him. They said “We are your new friends”. Somehow everyone got in cabs and didn’t realize he was left–each person figuring he was in a different cab. To make matters worse, his roommate had gone on a side trip so that no one was back in the room to know that he didn’t return. The men took him to a back room in a bar and held him there until early morning, then took him to an ATM and had him withdraw as much money as you could get in one withdrawal. The whole time in the bar, son said they were talking in Italian, which he couldn’t understand. Said it was terribly frightening, not knowing if they were discussing your death or the weather! They released him in a sketchy part of town and he found a cafe that agreed to get him a cab. The cabbie took him to his hotel and waited until he could get money from someone.</p>
<p>The only injuries he sustained were cuts and scrapes from trying to escape and the men tackled him on the road and held knife to his throat. He spent the next day looking at mug shots at police station but didn’t find their pictures. This crime is evidently not too unusual in the larger cities, the difference was according to police that most often the people just threaten that they have a weapon and not actually show one. Son is a big guy–6’3" about 220lbs–so maybe they thought the knives were necessary.</p>
<p>Luckily, we were unaware all this was happening until he called us and it was over. However, it was hard to leave him there for the next 2.5 weeks.</p>
<p>Okay… Nervous Nellies returning, after reading the last post! My d is about 5’2" and 100 pounds…</p>
<p>Just tell her to have a buddy system when she is out–particularly at night. She would do the same thing here. I think girls are more likely to stay aware of their surroundings, feeling more vulnerable. I honestly don’t think son ever considered anything happening to him–he’s big, he’s male.</p>
<p>I have to say the experience did not stop him from traveling (as it probably would have done for me). He even says he would go back to Italy–but probably not Florence.</p>
<p>But you know that can happen in New York or anywhere, USA. We travelled with a group of 4 teen Girl Scouts through Europe for 4 weeks this summer and had no problems at all. All female group. A lot is being sensible about where you go and aware of your surroundings. For instance in Venice we went on an organised walking tour at night that took us into some areas we would never have ventured on our own - and it was a little scary - I was glad we were in a very large group. We have some friends who went on a trip to Paris and their hotel was in a not very nice area so it was not a fun experience. So she needs to lots research for the trip (half of the fun of the trip is in the planning in my opinion). The forums on tripadvisor.com is a really good website for checking out places, hotels, tours etc.</p>
<p>She has also poked around the web for summer programs in the UK - I would imagine the experience would be quite different in London.</p>