The community is my spot in very diverse ecologically and culturally. Aix is a vibrant city with a lot of college students, because there are two major universities: Science Po Aix, a Grande école, and Aix-Marseille Université. Aix is also a town renowned for doctors and lawyers living in the city. Up in the north where I live, there are more seniors (there is a senior residence complex near my house!) because its not far from the city yet quite. The most commonly seen animal in Aix is pigeon. They can be very annoying at times, especially when they come for your food, but they are also a result of human’s abandonment of domesticating pigeons after the advent of new communication technologies in the last century.

Upon calculation, my flight from Boston, the United States, to Paris, France for this studying abroad program costs 1.49 metric tons of CO2e. I’d like to offset this carbon print that I made by doing something ecologically good to the local community. I know that such opportunities in Aix aren’t necessarily easy to find, so I talked to my host parents to ask them if they know of any local volunteering opportunity (I especially want to ask my host dad because he works as a mountain guide part time). They proposed a local environmental initiative called Clean My Calanques, which is a waste-picking initiative in Marseille. I will look more into their website later. I don’t think volunteering in the waste-picking once would offset my carbon footprint, and I’m happy to do it continuously if I had the chance