I grew up in a small village near Paris and studied English and Russian at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, then completed a Master’s in Slavic studies and anthropology at Sorbonne University.

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Until I turned 18, I could barely speak English, and my Spanish was even worse.

Today, I speak six languages: French, English, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Mandarin Chinese.

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Not thanks to talent or a perfect memory, but through immersion.

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When I was 18, I went on a language stay in Los Angeles, where I studied English at a school with other international students and lived with a host family. When I arrived in L.A., I remember that I couldn't even tell my host family what time my classes were the next day. But at the end of those three weeks, my English had really improved thanks to the full immersion.

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When I was 20, I spent a summer working in Barcelona in Spain. I arrived barely able to form a sentence, and three months later, I was chatting fluently with locals over tapas.

In Russia, I studied at the Baikal State University in Irkutsk, deep in Siberia. The first months were tough; I barely understood anything. However, a solo-trip from Kazan (a city near Moscow) to Vladivostok (a city in the Far East, near North Korea) on the Trans-Siberian train helped me really learn the language.

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Later, in Türkiye, daily life helped me absorb Turkish naturally, simply by interacting with people.

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Finally, in 2024-2025, I embarked on a lifelong dream: studying Mandarin Chinese at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing. The program was intensive, allowing me to learn a lot of grammar in a short period of time. But what really helped me improve my Chinese was a one-month solo trip I took from Beijing to Shangri-La (Yunnan/Tibet) by train.

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Each of these experiences taught me something essential: the best way to learn a language is to live it.

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