Ever wonder what it would be like to move to Paris and study fashion design? (Let’s be honest, that was my day dream throughout most of high school and college!) Well, for Arizona fashion designer, Laurel Symone, that dream has become a reality.

Laurel is opening her diary to Couture in the Suburbs to show you Paris through the eyes of an Arizonan, making the wonders, and hardships, of living in a new country come to life.

I moved to Paris a little over a week ago, and my mother left 5 days ago. Leading up to my move I never really got emotional, and upon arriving still no over flow of emotions. At some point I was expecting to get really sad and home sick since, not only did I move to a new country, but I have also never lived on my own in my whole 23 years of living. I assume that I will get more homesick closer to the holidays since it’s my favorite time of the year, and I love to be with my family then.

But when arriving to Paris, everything felt right, even though not everything has gone smoothly. We arrived a few days early to settle in my new flat (which, by the way, is amazing and very Parisian!) set up a bank account, phone and internet, you know all today’s necessities. Unfortunately, the French system with opening these accounts is quite difficult for a foreigner.

Still to this day, I have none of those accounts so until then my only connection to the rest of the world is at the local Starbucks with free wireless internet. Praise the Lord, because life without phone and internet is a bit hard to get around in a foreign country. On the bright side, it makes you appreciate your surroundings a bit more (at least that’s what I decided to tell myself) and I have gotten to know the subway system and my neighborhood pretty well!

Last Monday, I started orientation week which was pretty awesome. My school has a total of 47 nationalities, and American students only makeup 20% which is also the highest group. So you can just imagine just one big melting pot of artistic students, which is really cool because you get to learn about different backgrounds. A lot of us are experiencing a bit of culture shock since most of us have never lived outside our countries. In a way, we have a kinship since we are going through similar emotions….

But, back to orientation week. So far its been meetings on how to settle into Paris, setting up classes and, in the evenings, doing museum trips. It’s been pretty easy and a very fun orientation week. I went into the school thinking I would be a sophomore, but to my surprise, I’m actually considered a Junior on design level but a semester behind. This freaked me out a bit because I am worried my skill set won’t be up to par with the rest of the class. I am ready to work my butt off to be at the same level as my my new class. With my schedule this semester, I will be quite busy with 19 credit hours on top of working at my school at least 12 hours a week. Classes start Monday and I am so ready for them!

Because today marks my last day before my schedule gets hectic, I planned to do some shopping. Unfortunately, I found out I cannot do this because Paris is basically closed on Sundays, and you cannot do much except really just enjoy it. I guess I will do that by staying at my Starbucks as long as possible, hopefully catching up with family (but, at the moment, it is in the middle of the night back home). In the mean time, I’ll aimlessly be on social media accounts and watch The Big Bang Theory on Netflix! (which I’m so excited its now on Netflix) I also hope you enjoy my pictures of sites I’ve seen so far!