One identity that has impacted my time abroad was the fact that I am biracial, so half black and half white. I don’t think that my experience was the same as others just because of the program that I was a part of. I was studying abroad in Paris, France in a program called Black Paris. So the majority of the students were also black and we were studying Black culture in France. I feel like studying this topic with others who identify this way just enhanced the experience and we got to talk about it more freely. Since we all had things in common we could discuss what we were going through and compare situations.
While abroad my group talked a lot about being Americans in another country. This paired with being black gave us different thoughts about how we would be viewed. In the regular grocery stores there weren't many hair products for us, but in Paris there was a section called Chateau Rogue which has heavy African influences. There we got to see more black people and there were a lot more hair product options and familiar foods. So just to see and then actually discuss those things in class was a cool experience to have.
