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Many years ago, I went to France for the first time. It was for a summer intensive french course in Lyon & we stayed at a house with a delightful old french couple. They had chickens, dogs, horses & even geese. We plucked cherries & tomatoes in their garden for our dinner salads.

It was wonderful & i got to know this japanese girl Mine who lived in the same house as us. She had worked for 10 years as a stewardess in a japanese airline & then decided to drop everything, go to France for 2 years & learn french! She was worldly & introduced me to Zara (still unheard of at that time in Asia) & the perils of french cuisine (made her put on 10kg). I was so impressed by her courage; she moved not because of work/marriage but because she chose to take that leap into the unknown.

Since then, I've thought about her once or twice, but little did i realise that she'd inspired me unknowingly... Fast forward 9 years, I've also seen enough of the world & will be moving to Paris for a year... To study french at the Sorbonne.. I'm even thinking of working part-time at a cafe! Not so much for the money but the fact that i've always wanted to do that... The whole working-in-a-cafe-in-a-foreign-land thing. Well, ideally in some remote Provencal village but Paris will do for the moment. Imagine, with my track record as a cabin crew, i could roll my eyes & sigh loudly at unsuspecting tourists & still be the most polite waitress around! We're in Paris after all! Just a thought heh heh.... :)

For now though, i'll concentrate on trying to fit my clothes into my luggage. More than half of them are already in Paris (little perks of my previous life) but i underestimated the size of my wardrobe... If only i could point a wand & yell *REDUCIO!!!* at all of them!