A Little Clarification...

I am well aware that I have had more luck than I had expected or asked for in my life in Paris, and although I still consider myself one of the lucky ones, I need to make the point that I have been working since January of my senior year to get here. Luck played a part, but hard work and determination have had and continue to have much larger roles in the creation and maintenance of my new lifestyle.
The initial work consisted of online research, long talks with various persons who had spent time abroad through different studies and/or jobs, a gap-year/city-year programs fair, and working my small-town job as a hostess in a restaurant while working towards my high school graduation. After choosing the program I would follow, the au pair program, I then looked into various organizations as well as private sites and independent profiles before ultimately selecting an organization, which I applied for. The paperwork was entirely in French, and involved several weeks of acquiring recommendations, certificates, legal documents, and a personal profiling and work preference file. After all of the papers were received and the contract with Fee Revee was signed, the woman who was going to set me up with a host family and get me into a language school gave me a phone interview before sending out my profile. After that, I still had to go to my doctor for her to run some tests and fill out my medical forms and vaccine history, as well as hire an under-oath professional translation service for my diploma, have my school re-create an official certificate of my French language level in French, and revise and translate my resume to be submitted.
For a few weeks, I read the profiles of families that were interested in me based on my file, and when I found one that stuck out as potentially too good to be true, I replied with great interest and started exchanging emails with the woman who's now taken on the role of my second mother. She and her family had actually been living in New York City for the past two years and were looking for a nanny who could maintain their toddler's English abilities. Before they left NYC, she wanted to meet me and be certain that it felt like a good match, so I drove out there with my mom to meet them and we signed our official work contract before the afternoon was over. It was then sent to Fee Revee's office outside of Paris and I was left to wait for it to be approved by the French labor department, and also to get my official pre-inscription certificate from France Langue, my school.
There were problems with the post system and, during an extended period of waiting impatiently, my documents never left France. I had planned to visit Germany for two weeks before the commencement of my new life and job in the city of lights, and then take a train from Bremen to Paris once I got there. Unfortunately, work requires a visa, and my visa was dependent on the contents of that envelope. And so, I took my vacation with Nina's family while waiting to find out when my future landed in New Hampshire, and had my flight's return date changed to the end of August and went to the consulate in Boston after I came back. A week later, when I got my passport back in the mail, I was able to book my new flight to Paris, and my mom graciously put it on her credit card.
My visa was not the long-term eleven-month visa which I had applied for, but instead expired in December, with a note to get a residency permit upon arrival at the prefecture, which is essentially a complicated police department that also performs a lot of the functions which a town hall performs in America. I have been there a total of five times, with my constantly growing file of paperwork, and have$ been sent to the wrong office and told that I was in need of more documents on multiple occasions. In November, they made me an appointment with a doctor's office in Paris to check me over and put me into their medical system before they finally gave me my permit. Which, again, expired within three months. They never told me I needed to have finished payments for all three trimesters of school in order for them to approve my student status needed to remain in the country.
Since, I have been back to the prefecture and attempted to renew my student status, and am currently set up with an appointment to do just that.
All of this is only the official/professional piece of the equation. Factor in travel planning, moving adjustments, culture shock, homesickness, school, the job itself, setting up phone and bank accounts, etc. and it becomes exceptionally clear that being here and being happy here is not and never was a simple gift or an act of magic.
That said, and hopefully understood, my experience in Paris has been and continues to be absolutely fabulous. I just hope I've made it clear that there has been an abundance of direct effort, hard work, and determination that has gotten me to this point. Our lives are what we make of them, and we are responsible for creating our own experiences -- this is no exception.