Have you ever dreamed of working in Paris? While it wasn’t a specific goal of mine, when the opportunity to do so presented itself last year, I certainly grabbed it with both hands!

“The world is our classroom,” says Fontys Academy for Creative Industries director Pieter Bon. In a way, it’s our unofficial motto. We try as best we can, to invite the world into our classrooms, and to get our students out there into the world. It’s a two-way street, and it doesn’t just mean: internationalisation. The world is also the area right outside the gates of our Stappegoor Campus in Tilburg, the Netherlands. But of course, it extends all the way to the other side of the globe. Thanks to the brilliant work done by ACI’s International Office, our students and we, the staff, get many chances to work on our own evolving identities as global citizens.

Exactly one year ago today, my colleague Maaike Rijnders and I left for Paris. We were invited by the prestigious Sup de Pub School of Communication to teach transmedia storytelling on two consecutive nights. Our hotel was as close to the Paris branch of Sup de Pub as it gets. They’re both located on the Quai de la Seine in the 19th arrondissement, a street right out of a Jean-Luc Godard film.

Here, Maaike and I spent two days, going from the hotel to Sup de Pub, to a typical café for lunch, back to the hotel to put the finishing touches to that evening’s lecture and back to Sup de Pub to actually deliver the lecture. Our host was Gilles Nakhlé, who welcomed us and helped us out whenever we needed help. Our students were very interested and enjoyed creating stories that unfold across different media. After the lectures, we had really-late-night dinners. On the second night, this meant: tapas, on a boat that had been converted into a hip restaurant, on the Quai de la Seine. It doesn’t get much more Parisian than that!

After this dinner, since it was our last night, Gilles took Maaike and me on a ‘tour de Paris’. He insisted in the kindest way, that we shouldn’t leave without visiting the most famous parts of the city. Indeed, our nocturnal drive-through took us along the Champs Elysées, around the Arc de Triomphe (Gilles not once having to hit the breaks), the Louvre and the Tour d’Eiffel. It was cool, but this wasn’t the most impressive part of the trip. Gilles also took us to see the Bataclan and the Petit Cambodge, where just two months prior, terrorists had gone on a revolting killing spree. One of Sup de Pub’s students had died that night. One of my cousins, there on an exchange trip, had been shot in the back – luckily, he survived. In a warped way, this is also what we must think about when we consider internationalisation, I suppose. I’m not saying we should be afraid to travel. What I mean is, that there are many wonderful people we might meet, and there are troubles that we might face or hear about, too. Our planet is not fully a whole, not at peace. It’s up to every one of us, to try and make it a better place for all of us. That is internationalisation, too. This I’ve learned, and this I will do to the best of my abilities, in my own way.

So, teaching abroad? Check. Working in Paris? Hey, it was only for about 48 hours, but I’m gonna say: check! It was equal parts cool, surreal and impressive. This is a place that has been hit so hard by terrorism, but that refuses to break under the weight of its losses. I’ve always been an avid reader of Astérix. But since those days in January 2016, the prologue that tells of the Gauls who refuse to break, has become a lot more poignant.