Learning French in Paris!

I’m back in the classroom learning to speak French in Paris.

Not to be outdone by my children, who are in a bilingual school, and in a few months will be gabbling away in French, I have enrolled in French classes.

The last time I was in the classroom learning French was way back in the 80s (yup I am that old!) when I was grappling with verb conjugation, comprehension, essays and dictation for my French O’ level, which I hated. What was the point, I was never really going to use the language. And I didn’t, until now.

There are many options for learning French in Paris. I have chose to kick-start my study with Alliance Francaise. Part of its appeal was the flexibility and range of workshops and classes that fitted within school hours. Its rolling programme meant I could start straight away – once I had completed the placement test.

This test was part conversation, with a tutor, and part written exercise, covering who I am, where I live, why did I like where I lived, how long was I in Paris for.

During our conversation I struggled to form a coherent sentence her polite tres biens disguised the fact I spoke like demented toddler – I go park, I like Paris, I go supermarket. 😉

I was graded A1 pretty much what I expected – back at the bottom. I had retained nothing from 1985.

I’ve since moved onto classes at WICE an Anglophone organization. I’ve landed in their intermediate group, which is challenging, but great. (I’ve been listening to a lot of French radio, watching American cop shows dubbed into French and reading French Grazia and Stylist.) But the subjunctive… whoa that’s super advanced! But Audrey our tutor has been fantastic; she’s really guided me through the subtleties of this tense.

I am also checking out Meet Up conversation groups – the last one I attended we discussed politics and philosophy! Geneieve, who led the discussion,was incredibly supportive of my attempts to string a sentence together on the BREXIT debate.

Living as an expat it is easy to link into Paris’ welcoming, vibrant, multi-national, multi-ethnic, English speaking expat community, and get by knowing a minimal amount of the host language. (Believe me it’s really tempting!)

Google translate is a God send and through Facebook and MeetUp, I have found English speaking groups from mums to have coffee with, book clubs, yoga, bootcamps, running groups, gourmet cookery tours. Who needs to learn French!

But what’s the point of living here if I am not going to pick up the French language and culture? Or be able to help the children with a bit of homework. With a kid in CM1 the homework is getting tricky!

My aim is to learn French to a level I can have a conversation with a local, but I guess that’s going to take time. I am going to be here for at least two years. I’ll keep on watching French TV, read French magazines, help the kids with their homework (we’re finding fun language games to play), continue with the lessons and conversation classes. Who knows, by the time I leave, I might just be a tiny bit fluent.

Ranji recently moved to Paris, from London, with her husband and two children, aged 9 and 7. I enjoy running along the banks Seine (always pinch myself as I pass the Eiffel Tower!), learning to cook French food, drinking French wine, eating French cheese, running again, making new, fabulous friends – thanks for making me feel so welcome!

Doing What is Best for the Family: An Expat Tale

Being an expat mother means learning about strengths you didn’t know you had and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.

Before France, I had already had that sweet experience of living abroad and learning all about a new culture, the language,the people… I loved every single minute of it and to be honest, I never felt like an expat in three years. Brighton (UK) quickly became the city of my dreams and when I thought I could not possibly learn more from myself then I met the love of my life, a French man who would take me to Paris five years later. Little did I know about the personal growth I still had ahead.

After the UK my partner left for the Caribbean where he worked for Disney Cruise Line for a little bit over a year and I went back home to Andalusia (Spain) where I started teaching English. We successfully survived nearly two years of having a long-distance relationship before he joined me in Spain where we bought a property, got married and had our first son, Gabriel.

I had a lot of passion for teaching but at the end of the day I was always stressed. I worked too hard and there was always stress by the end of the month! So when Gabriel arrived I enjoyed my sixteen weeks of maternity leave and when it was almost over I remember having a long conversation with my husband, who was also tired of his job, and we asked ourselves three very important questions: What do we really,really want in life? How do we want our future to look like? And how do we want to raise our kids?

That’s when my husband decided he wanted to get a ‘formation Boulangerie-pâtisserie’ back home in Paris with the idea of opening a French Café in the USA. Now, I won’t lie to you. I can’t say I was excited to move to France and I definitely wasn’t ready as I had just become a new mum and had such a young baby.Fear was all over my mind but opportunity took over. Moving to France would enable me to be a stay at home and raise my son which is what I wanted to do and working on my own terms was also on the list. As the end of the school year arrived I announced to my boss that I was leaving and a few months later we arrived in Paris.

Gabriel was nine months when we arrived and I got pregnant right away again so, soon I found myself with a big bump and a baby, far from my family and friends and in a country I didn’t quite fit in at first. It was a very hard pregnancy – I had to deal with the French system (social security, doctor appointments, paperwork etc) I was physically and mentally exhausted and I felt very lonely. Then one day I met a lovely French girl who opened new doors to me and introduced me to a fantastic community on Facebook for English speaking mums. This definitely changed my life in Paris and has allowed me make lots of wonderful friends, go out to places and have a social life again.

I was nearly on my sixth month of my second pregnancy when I started my own business in the health and well-being sector. Being a mum was  great so far but I needed to do something else. Something that would excite me and that would bring a second income to our family. My second boy was born here in Paris; Lorenzo took motherhood to a whole new level. Two boys at home, eighteen months apart and a business to run while daddy was all day away at work.This is when I discovered the true meaning of multitasking!

I love the flexibility of my business though. I can go back home and visit my family whenever I want to without having to ask anyone for a week of holiday. I can cuddle my boys all day long if they are poorly because I can take any day off when my family needs me. I have found the perfect way to juggle work and parenting and unlike in my previous job working for myself means high return, high earning potential. I am very happy to be in a position now where my business will enable me take some pressure off my husband a little bit and start creating the life we truly deserve, in Texas, where we plan on sending our kids to a private bilingual school.

This past year and a half has been tough, full of up and downs, but when I look at all the great things we have achieved here I must confess that stepping out of our comfort zone to go for our dreams was a great decision to make. France is where my second son was born, where my husband will soon start to design his dream and the place where I found my new passion: helping others develop a business from home, just like me.

I will always be grateful for all this and when we leave in 2018 I will most definitely remind myself that staying here when I wanted to escape was a choice that I made, to do the right thing even when I wasn’t sure what the right thing was… to keep my family together and build a better future for us.

It does get better. Go out, make friends, step out of your comfort zone and find something you enjoy doing. Sometimes we need to take a leap of faith. Life is too short to be stuck. The best gift in life is the memories we make with the people we love and I feel so happy to be making lots of memories for my children. Holding them and my husband at the end of day knowing that we are doing the right thing for our family is the best feeling in the whole world.

My name is Rocio, I’m a work from home mother of two boys , Gabriel who has just turned 2 and Lorenzo who is 8 months old. I’m Spanish and married to a French man with Vietnamese and Polish origins called Antoine. I have been living in Paris for the past 18 months.

6 Years Living in France: A Timeline

2009: I arrive in the midst of a beautiful summer and spend lots of time walking along the Seine…However once the seasons change, I become lost, bewildered, homesick, angry at times and trying to find my way. Busy with administrative procedures: visas, CAF, Social Security, finding a job, employing a babysitter. Disappointed when I realized that Paris is not NYC no matter how much I want it to be. Also disappointed that the Paris of my study abroad days is not the same as what actually living in Paris is.I spend my time looking at blogs of the expats in France who seem to have it together and actually enjoy being here. At times it feels like I’m spying 😉 I always seem to be one moment away from going back “home”

2009: My first summer living in Paris

2010: I feel slightly more at home, besides work I spend my time discovering more of Paris, going to the vintage stores in Le Marais and buying used English books at St. Michel are my favorite past times. I slowly start to make new friends, especially after registering myself for a dance class at the Dance School of Le Marais. We also take a belated honeymoon in Fuertaventura. However my job just isn’t cutting it, so I decided to look ailleurs this won’t be the only change this year, our rental lease is set to expire so we go on the wild goose chase that is also known as searching for an apartment in Paris. In the end we give up and we buy an apartment in the suburbs, as yes indeed it is easier to buy than to rent in our situation. I can no longer walk to Bastille by foot, however I am now a homeowner 🙂

2010: Walking along the beach in Fuertaventura

2011: To my dismay the pain au chocolats, wine and bread with every meal start catching up to me and I start gaining weight. I tell myself it is simply because French clothes are not made for curvy girls like me that I find myself buying bigger sizes 😉 when in reality I was simply gaining weight. I enjoy my job but am not happy with the salary. My daughter enters ecole maternelle and I offically enter the world of French parents, I am pleasantly surprised to make acquaintances with them. I don’t have that many close friends but the one that I do are friends for life, although most don’t have kids. We take annual trips to Normandy to our in laws place, at first I hate it because it is so quiet, but over time it grows on me 🙂 However this year, I gave gained so much weight I no longer  feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit at the beach, so I cover up. I also take a trip to NYC each year, this year sadly I will go twice because of the death of my Grandmother.

2011: Me at my heaviest wearing sizes 44-46 in Normandy

2012: I decide that I must take actions into my own hands and find a better paying job. We start the year off with a trip to Agadir, Morrocco. By the end of the year I will have changed jobs 3 times before finding “my calling” at least in France. But this will not be the only event to mark 2012, I end the year with a positive pink line on the home pregnancy test. I decide this time to be careful with what I eat during pregnancy since I have already gained weight from just the change in my diet which came with living in France.

2012: Riding a camel in Agadir

2013: I continue working until my maternity leave, and even though I am pregnant decide to continue with my zumba classes until the 7th month much to the bewilderment of the others taking the class 🙂 We also take a day trip to Bruxelles a month before my due date, it was the only summer vacation we had that year! During my 8th month of pregnancy after going to the Prefecture for my annual miserable visit, they take pity on me and offer me the 10 year card, no more visits until 2023! Yippee! I give birth to my second daughter in September and am happy to have had the opportunity to experience pregnancy in the US and France. I gained 8 kilos this pregnancy as opposed to the almost 18 I gained during my first. I decided to join a gym and change my eating habits for the better and manage to lose 2 sizes, just one size above what I was before my first pregnancy. After giving birth the second time, I realize that I actually need some English speaking parents in my life and join some online groups.

2013: Chloe meeting her little sister for the first time 🙂

2014:I decide to look for a new job however this time I tread carefully to find the right one for me. I participate more in the groups and am very happy and relieved to meet other parents. I take a weekend trip to Amsterdam with some girlfriends from home. We also go to Albufeira in Portugal that summer, our first vacation as a family of 4 and my favorite European destination so far! I decide to create my own groups on Facebook and meetup.

2014: Our family of 4 in Albufeira, Portugal

2015: I like my job and for the first time in forever am not on an active job hunt. I meet more and more parents through the online groups. Between family life, work, vacations and meeting new parents I am slowly beginning to create a network for myself and no longer miss “home” as I once did. I am actually feeling settled in France and am not disappointed at the prospect of staying in France. We go on vacation to Crete, Greece. In addition we explore more of France starting the year in Bordeaux & Toulouse, and visiting Aix en Provence, Marseille, Avignon, Auvergne, and Strasbourg. I find it refreshing to travel outside of Paris because it gives you more perspective on the fact that there is more to France and French people than Paris.

Summer of 2015 in Crete

2016: I officially beat my French job record and have been at the same job for over 2 years now! I find myself becoming more and more French in some ways, (at least where vacations are concerned!) we reserve our summer vacation in Spain, over 6 months in advance (I love a good deal!)  for the first time I will be taking a 4 week summer vacation. I am fluent in French although I still have an American accent and make mistakes when writing I am trying to keep my on going record of going to the U.S. at least once a year even though I realize that NYC is not necessarily “home” anymore, home is where the heart is as corny as it may sound, and for now where I am at in my life truly feels like “home”. We will see what the future holds, but it feels hopeful 🙂

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