Hi there, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and in this episode of women who travel, I'm talking to a guest who left Chicago to work in Paris as a banker, and then ended up establishing a cooking school back in 2009.

She's Jane Birch, and she's just written a memoir.

It's the French ingredient, making a life in Paris one lesson at a time.

I was in Paris like six weeks ago. I hadn't been in 10 years. It was so wonderful to be back in that city.

And I feel like every time I'm there, it's this like wonderful combination of familiarity because some of it just never changes.

But also like a lot was new. I would love to know what it was like for you when you moved there. Was there a culture shock? So it was the end of 2005,

beginning of 2006, and there absolutely was a culture shock. I think when you arrive in a city to live

and to try to function and to set up a life versus organizing cultural events and going to restaurants, it's a very, very different story.

Why did you move there? What were those early months like? I moved here because I was working for a bank and an opportunity came up to move to Paris, which I'd kind of swore I would not ever

come back to Paris because my first visit was a little unsatisfactory. I felt like I stuck out like

a sore thumb. I couldn't understand the fascination with this city. Wait, elaborate a little bit more,

because I've heard that before. Paris is a hard city to crack. Yes, yes. There's a very difficult language barrier.

People speak a lot of English now. When I was here, I feel like that's a big change. When I first

moved here, finding people to speak English was challenging. And trying to speak French with my

very, very poor pigeon French did not always go down well.

Where were you living? When I first arrived, I was living in the 16th Aeron Dicement.

And that was kind of the place that anyone working in banking, you know, there's a lot of

cultural undertones in this city about where you live or where you went to school, and anybody

working in banking would

likely have lived in the 16th, or on D.C. Ma. Which was either filled with bankers or older women

and their dogs. It's actually funny because I was staying in the 17th when I was there a couple of

months ago and walked through the 16th a lot and that's definitely the vibe. It's not too far from

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