"When I stepped out of the airport in Lyon, I noticed the smell of cigarettes. It was July 2017, and the air was dry – so different from where I took off, where it was tropical and hot. In France, there wasn't that humidity. I quickly noticed that the skin on my hands became like crocodile skin if I didn't use lotion.

The previous summer, I spent two months in Paris. The museums, the beauty of the city, the people... I loved it. I met a French guy. We really connected, and even though we come from different cultures, there was an obvious complementarity between us. My move was a chance for us to see if we could build something together, but it wasn't really for him that I made this decision. I had a dream: To become a chef, like my mother. I wanted to do it in France. I picked Lyon because it was less expensive than Paris. When I arrived, I started by enrolling in a language program to learn French – I didn't speak a word.

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