Journey to France... Part 3 (Flashback: Why did I ended up studying Film in Australia)

I always dreamt of going to France.

The plane landed after 13 or so hours of flight. I have no idea where my biological clock is at the moment. All I know is that I am very tired. All the french I once studied went down the toilet at the airplane. I am minutes away from the inmigration gate. I can already see it, the doors opening and The Eiffel Tower on the background. White couples wearing coats and red hats having coffee and making out while some guy who has to be a film director crosses on a bycicle holding a baguette on one hand.

I have dreamt about this for a long long time.

CUT TO: FLASHBACK/MONTAGE - COLOMBIA

When I finished my highschool back in 1997 I really had no idea what I wanted to study. I was good at writing poems in spanish,but I was good at computers too. I applied to the National University of Colombia, in the capital, my first choice was literature and the second choice Computer Engineering. Fortunatelly I failed the entry exam (I was 15, nobody blamed me) So I had 1 year to prepare for the exam and pretty much doing nothing.

Sometime that year I was watching TV, when a Nobel Literature Prize "Gabriel Garcia Marquez" was on an interview about his writing and his new hobby of writing for television and film. And he said something that changed my life, This is more or less what he said.

" When I wrote '100 years of solitude' (the nobel prize book) it took something like 10 years to reach an audience of 20 million readers... But last week I wrote an episode of tv, and it took a week to reach an audience of 40 million... If you want to communicate a message to society, Film and Television is the way to go".

So I decided to study Film and Television, and I was going to do it in France. So I enrolled myself on the Alliance Francaise and started learning French. At that time it was free to study in France, You just needed to apply and be accepted.

That year both my parents got Kidnapped, my mom for 3 days, my dad for over 2 months. By the end of the year we had nothing and were in an incredible amount of debt... But that is another story.

So I had to stop my dreams of glory in France, My parents pretty much told me: 'sorry, but we have nothing, you are on your own". So I quit studying and pretty much did nothing, I did one year of photography, 1 semester of Computer Tecnology. 1 year of Electronic Engineer... Until one day my Uncle told me of Australia, and the opportunity of Study and Work at the same time.

It sounded promising, so once again I enrolled into a one year English course, and was lucky enough to end up working as a first assistant for a kids educational tv series in Colombia, and only then I realized that I really wanted to be a director.

As it turns out it is not an easy task, in fact, is hard to think of a harder job to aspire to, its like saying you want to be a prime minister, or a CEO... here I am, almost 8 years since then, and I am still trying to become a Director, or at least a sucesful one, or at the very very least one with employment !.

CUT TO: CHARLES THE GAULLES AIRPORT, FRANCE, 2011

So I finally arrived to Paris, Alive, and what is more important, my son survived the trip as well. All the Koreans that came on the plane with me are completely lost and walking down the wrong aisles. I patiently wait for my luggage to come out. I want to step outside NOW, I am already starting to feel I am more intellectual, romantic and artistic than before.

 And then it happens. I step out to the cruel reality of contemporany France... But I'll talk more about it later. Here are some photos of day 1, without spoilers :p

Point Zero, at Notre Dame

Surburban Paris

The Metro @ Paris