Ah, Paris...

Picture a black-and-white Second World War-era film backdrop; a glamourous dark-haired beauty in a trench coat and wide-brimmed tiptoes gingerly down an airplane staircase onto the wet tarmac below. Violin music, barely audible, swells as she puts both feet on solid ground and looks around. The camera follows her line of vision, panning over a glittery night-time metropolis. Just before pulling back in to the heroine, the camera catches one distinguishing feature on the horizon- the Eiffel Tower.

This is how I feel when I'm in Paris.

Noam Chomsky has a theory about how the language that a person speaks can have a profound effect on their thought processes. Nowhere has this theory manifested itself more profoundly than in me. Studying with French teachers from the age of five, despite the fact that I came from an anglophone home, I never felt as though I fit-in with the English-speaking world. I expected my feeling of 'otherness' would pass once I had left high school behind, certain that once I arrived in the so-called real world, my distaste for top 40 hits and penchant for dark coloured clothing wouldn't set me so utterly apart from all of my peers.

I first visited France when I was fifteen, on a school trip. One of my most distinct memories of those ten days is the moment when one of the teacher-supervisors pointed out that my friend Marta and I, dressed in platforms shoes, skinny black pants and fitted sweaters, resembled the natives more than we did our classmates. I scanned the line of bedraggled, denim-clad, backpack toting teens plodding ahead of me; the teacher was right.

I was right about certain things. As an adult, my taste in music, sense of style, inability to speak without the aid of my hands and tendency to substitute French words for English ones that I have momentarily forgotten, are regarded with less skepticism than they were when I was a teenager. But no one in North America could ever be accused of considering me normal.

Imagine my bliss, then, when I arrived in Paris as a 23-year-old tourist and was never once recognised as one. In France, I make sense. I blend in. I ask the right questions, sing along with the right songs, laugh at the right jokes... Although across the ocean from where I was born, I am at home

I love Paris. The city of light is my passion. I am deeply, painfully jealous of its permanent residents. And yet can't help feeling a strong connection to them, knowing how many interests and mannerisms we share. I think of it with equal measures of joy and nostalgia. I want to talk about it constantly, as if the place were a boy I had a crush on. Paris is one of the great loves of my life. And I can't wait to share all of the things I adore with you.

Note: Thanks to Bryony-Becca xo for the artwork.