2/8/2016

Look at this little girl:

There’s a lot of things that have changed between those photos and this one:

For one, I got taller and started wearing makeup. I also grew my hair out.

If you were to tell the ten year-old in those first two pictures that in ten years, she’d be spending her weekends wandering the streets of Paris with nothing but a basic knowledge of the metro and a gigantic amount of self-confidence, she’d probably start crying because that means she wouldn’t have gone to Hogwarts, and I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want a crying ten year-old me on my hands.

One thing has not changed in the last ten years: my absolute love of France. 

I’ve loved France since I was probably five years old, but I didn’t know much about it. I remember my sister and I playing that we were speaking French, but we really only knew how to say “yes”, so we’d make up sounds to be “speaking” French.

I’ve been attached to Madeline for at least as long as I can remember. I had my grandma make me a “Madeline Coat” and I even chopped off my hair to look like her.

Then, at ten years old, I went to France with my papa and my sister. I met my French family for the first time, and I got to spend time in one of the most beautiful places in the world with the two of the people I love the most in my life.

In France, I was so completely confident in my ability to order a baguette at the boulangerie. I was confident in my ability to navigate the Louvre. I was instantly at home in France. It spoke to me. It turned me into a confident person who did not exist in Utah.

I wanted to return to France no matter what. I would consistently ask when we would be going to Paris for Christmas. I was set on attending the Sorbonne. I wanted to really learn French. I wanted to be French.

Then, I graduated from high school and was given the best gift I have ever received. I got to go to France for the summer. I was going to stay with my French family and experience living in France like a French person would.

I learned to speak in those two months. I learned some simple recipes and just how to live my life in the way I wanted to.

As soon as I got back from France that second time, all I wanted to do was come back and live. My sister introduced me to the idea of being an au pair and the rest is history.

I’m here. I’m here and I’m already making plans to come back and live. This is home to me and that hasn’t changed at all for the last ten years.