Meet this month's blogger, Anja, and indulge into expat life in France through her stylish lifestyle and travel blog Tales From The Right Brain. After meeting her love in Paris, Anja decided to leave her successful career as an auditor and moved to Paris where she is now restarting her professional life with new influences and ideas in mind. If you are looking for some inspiration and tips on how to live life to the fullest, follow Anja's weekly blog posts.
Tell us briefly about your expat life and where you're originally from.
I'm a Filipino qualified accountant who worked as an auditor for seven years in the Philippines and Gibraltar. Currently, I'm a part-time French language student in Paris and part-time just being anything I set my mind to be!
What brought you to where you are now?
Love brought me to Paris! But let's backtrack a bit. When I left my audit job in the Philippines, I wasn't really looking to work abroad. In fact, I was actively looking for companies in the Philippines, when a good friend of mine referred me for an audit job in Gibraltar. I took that, worked a lot (as most auditors do) yet travelled a lot in Europe too. You're bound to wind up travelling in Paris when you're in Europe, and that was when I met my lovely boyfriend. It was a long distance relationship for a while, but eventually, I left Gibraltar to be with him and integrate into French life.
What made you want to start a blog?
Tales From The Right Brain was born out of my passion for writing. Even if the earliest article in my current blog was dated 2012, I've started with Tumblr years before that and I've been part of school journals since elementary school.
I don't express myself in person as much as I can in writing, so the blog was initially just a venue to put it out there, tell people what I'm really thinking about. Though ever since I moved abroad, I started travelling, learning different cultures, seeing places, experiencing things I would never have had I chosen to stay comfortable where I was. I wanted to share that. I've always wanted to create something that can help people.
I might not be Elon Musk, taking people to Mars, nor Mark Zuckerberg, connecting people on a global scale. But writing is also creating, and if one of my articles can help someone out there, it's a start. Though I'm not discounting the possibility of building a start-up or a spaceship.
Tell us what your blog is about and how our readers can make the most of it.
Tales From The Right Brains is about life, travel, and anything Paris. That's the tagline of the blog, so it's going to be mostly about my expat life in Paris: how I got here, how it is living here, what are the free things you can do and the places to visit, my journey in learning French and how you can too.
You can benefit from it if you're just starting in Paris, like me, or simply a Francophile who wants to live the Parisian life vicariously through my articles and photos. It also has loads of travel photos (mostly from Europe) and some videos. If you're a fellow traveller and want to reminisce the city, my photos can help you with that, or if you're planning your trip and need some inspiration. And since it's also about life and that was the initial reason I created the blog, you will read my life musings, which range from everyday happiness to starting an eco-conscious lifestyle.
I post weekly but you can follow my Instagram account @parasianne and get an update whenever I post a new story.
What are your next projects in terms of your expat life?
I see my future in France, so I'm planning to attain French fluency, explore the country, raise a family and build my career here.
