Boarding the flight that changed my life.

Hi, everyone. To introduce myself, I'm Alexandra, a US citizen, and what you might consider an expat. Except that I didn't move to Paris for work.

To give some background: I had already been to Paris when I was 13 years old with my mom, and that definitely gave me a desire to go back. I learned French in middle school, bombed it, took latin, then decided to NEVER take that again and circled back to French. By senior year, I was taking the highest level of French classes my school offered and President of French club. When I got to university, I did a small summer exchange program in Paris. When I finished my Bachelor's, I worked for a year in a big private company, and decided to apply to the Queen Mary, University of London program in Paris for a Master's degree. Paris offered different master's degrees but they all required 2 years of commitment and I wasn't too sure about going to Paris for two years.

So I asked my French professor for a recommendation, applied, and got my acceptance letter in May...thus began the visa process. I applied through the embassy and got my student visa by August 2019, then left for Paris on September 13.

It's now been more than four years.