One year ago, I took a trip to Paris by myself. I was changing jobs after working full-time for almost a year and needed an adventure. It was my first time traveling alone. I spoke no French. And it was miserable.

I present some snapshots of my time there.

My suitcase is heavy and obvious. It has no wheels; I lug it off the train and walk up the steps to face Montmartre. I am already sweaty and I have no idea which way to walk, but I walk with purpose away from the Metro, deathly afraid of looking like a tourist or -- even worse -- looking like what I am: an American girl who speaks no French, alone for a week on her first trip to Paris.

I think I am walking the wrong way. Some of the streets seem to have names, others do not -- none appear on the undetailed map in the back of my travel guide, which I am afraid to pull out and look at anyway. Every half block or so, I have to stop and rest, open and close my reddened palms. I zigzag across the tree-lined median, trying to find a street sign, willing myself to have some sort of innate sense of direction, but nothing appears. I think I am going the wrong way. I turn around and walk the other way. With purpose.

A few rest stops later, sitting in a park near the Metro station I just emerged from, I eat some dried apricots and watch two old men who are watching me. I know I look like a tourist, ridiculously obvious. I don't care. My hands are on fire. I haven't slept in almost twenty hours.

There is a child in a puffy red down jacket, jumping from the jungle gym. I look at her mother, and the old old buildings behind them, and wish I lived here.