Between adjusting to the language barrier and all the bustle of a major European city, the first week was a lot of culture shock. I’m a small-town girl from Jamaica, Vermont (population 935), a place where there are no taxi cabs or traffic lights. For perspective, the nearest Dunkin Donuts from my home is 30 minutes away. Paris, with a population of 2,144,700, was quite the leap. I’ve settled right in though, and feel remarkably comfortable. I’m navigating the metro pas de problème (no problem) and have a pretty good sense already of how to get around the city à pied (on foot). I'm always armed with my Paris Pratique map book because I don't have a strong sense of direction and the streets criss-cross in such illogical ways. Knock on wood, but I haven’t gotten lost yet.

I've seen Parisian police officers patrolling the streets on horseback and rollerblades, putting on quite a show.

I’m staying with a Parisian mother and daughter in the 15th arrondissement on the Left Bank, near the Invalides, Montparnasse, and the Eiffel Tower landmarks. My host mother is a biology professor and 20-year-old Clara is a public relations student at a Paris university. They’ve really made me feel comfortable in their home. The first day I got here though, I arrived at my home-stay completely jet-lagged, exhausted, and overwhelmed after a very long plane ride, and was lugging my incredibly heavy suitcase up the stairs to their apartment on the sixth floor and I heard this woman shouting, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” from above. It was my host mother and she was yelling at me because I didn't know there was a “lift,” the tiniest elevator imaginable. Ahhhhh. Welcome to Paris.