This week, we presented and celebrated our completed projects, and spent our remaining hours reminiscing over our time in Marseille.

These past six weeks have been a profoundly formative experience. I was thrust into an entirely new world with new people in a new language and told simply to navigate it. And I survived. That alone is an incredible accomplishment. Along the way, I learned more about myself too: how I work within a team, how I navigate the unfamiliar, how I practice leadership in action.

Six weeks ago, during my first encounter with the residents at Les Jardins d'Haïti, I was hesitant about my French and unsure they would understand me at all. So, to make it easier on them, I introduced myself as Claude (the name assigned to me back in my sixth-grade French class). I assumed the residents lacked the patience, or perhaps the capacity, to receive the veracity of my real name. And so I first arrived in Marseille as Claude: a hollow shell of the person I actually was.

Over time, that facade wore thinner, and thinner still, until at last I leave Marseille proud to be Krithik. Krithik, shaped by all the experiences that came before, and shaped anew by the past six weeks. I am not the same person I was when I arrived. I have learned and grown because of Marseille, just as I hope Marseille has, in turn, benefited from me through my project.

Thank you, Marseille, for embracing me so utterly, and for the glint and grain that I will carry long after I have left your shores.

Till next time,

Krithik