Long-Stay Visa… Check!

Last night I decided to take the train from St. Louis to Chicago rather than drive or fly.  The last time I took the train in the US was again from St. Louis to Chicago to apply for a long-stay visa at the French Consulate in Chicago, but that was 15 years ago.  Things have changed, and for the better!  The Amtrak trains still aren’t fast, but this one was clean and believe it or not the passengers were well-behaved!

I made it to Chicago at 11:00 and twelve hours later I was at the consulate turning in all of my documents to obtain a long-stay visa that will permit me to live and work legally in France for a year while taking the steps to gain French nationality.  It went very well, and I’ll have my passport back in time to travel to France on June 17.  I’m relieved to know that I can check that off of my list.

They don’t call Chicago the Windy City for nothing.  It’s pretty windy and cold out there, and I forgot to bring a jacket.  I guess I thought my thoughts were focused on the Mediterranean.

“Honey, Could You Get The Phone?” or “How to Avoid Answering the Phone in France”

The first time we moved to the South of France was about fifteen years ago.  François and I had just gotten married, and I had a BA in French and was about halfway through an MA in French, so I thought I would be fine.

And now, everyone who has lived through a similar experience takes a moment to chuckle.

How was I supposed to know everyone would speak so fast, and I sure didn’t know the people who live in the South have an accent!  This Louisiana girl was doomed.  Not quite doomed it seems, because it was that year in France that allowed me to gain the confidence to believe in myself and speak.

During the whole year that we lived there, I never got used to speaking French on the phone.  I would take off running across the apartment to lock myself in the bathroom, forcing my sweet husband (or even my seven year old son who was just learning French) to answer anytime the phone rang.

Does anyone else have a story to tell about speaking “book French” once you arrived in France for the first time?

 

 

 

“Why are you moving to France? Is it for a job? Do you have a place picked out?”

As we started to tell friends and family that we are moving to France this summer (granted, it’s been a year and a half in the making), one of the very first questions people ask is:

“Why?”

This question is asked in various tones.

“Why would you ever want to leave the US?”

“Why would you want to go so far away?”  

“Why raise your children anywhere but in America?”

But I have to say, overall, the most frequently asked questions are:

“Where are you going?  Do you already have a place picked out?”

“Why are you moving to France?  Is it for a job?”

Both of the latter questions are 100% viable (and I’ll just pretend that the top three were never asked).  I understand why people would ask them.  I probably would ask the same question if someone told me they were moving to a “foreign” country.

Gotta love the word “foreign”.  Honestly, I think in our day and time, it’s a very dated word.  What’s foreign anymore?  We don’t even call our languages department “Foreign Languages” anymore.  We are now called “World Languages“.  The only reason we can call something or someone “foreign” is because we haven’t taken the time to learn anything about them.  With the world being as small as it is these days, I think that’s a darn shame.

But to get back to the point, I think it’s high time I answered the question of whether we “have a place” already.  The answer is “no”.  We don’t have a “place”.

We sold our house here in St. Louis, we are going to move to France this summer, and when we get there we will have a “place” rented before the container with all of our household goods arrives 2-ish months later.  No stress.  We’re going to rent an apartment, and hopefully a really cute one with a guest room and an office (am I dreaming?).  We do happen to be in the fortunate situation of having family in the area, so we won’t have to worry about where we will stay in the meantime.

As for the second question:

“Why are you moving to France?  Is it for a job?”

People are always completely astonished when I answer, very simply, “No.  It’s not for a job.  It’s for a change, and one we’ve been dreaming of making for the last 14 years.”

That said, we are not independently wealthy, so we will certainly be working in France!  About a year ago I started thinking that rather than looking for a job to work for somebody else, I’d rather create something of my own.  What have I come up with?

Teaching English and French via Skype:  I got hired on by a France based company to teach English and French with them, and I already have five (sometimes six) students.  It’s so much fun!  I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it, and in the beginning I was really nervous.  As it turns out, I love it!  My husband has a business background as well as teaching in a French immersion school.  I have lots of teaching experience.  The plan is to start up our own Internet-based language school, and I am very optimistic.  I recently started a new blog to that effect:  learnfrenchwithjennifer.com   It’s only the beginning, but I know it will be something wonderful.

Oxbridge Académie de France:  A year and a half ago, this was a longshot.  I applied for the position of Dean at this French immersion school in Montpellier in February of 2012, but I was too late for the summer of 2012.  I wrote it down in my calendar to not forget about applying in 2013.  The job description seemed to fit me like a glove.  On January 4 of this year, I sent my CV and cover letter off to Oxbridge and hoped for the best.  It wasn’t until March 1 that I heard from the Executive Director of the school.  A month and a half and two Skype interviews later, I’ve just been offered the job.  I’m clearly on cloud nine!  It will be a summer of joy, I know it, because I love working with young people who have a passion for France (and French!).  It will be exhausting, but so rewarding.  My family will be just a few kilometers down the autoroute, so we will get to see each other often.  And how about that updated CV?  Sounds like a good plan to me.

What has being 40 (alright, 41) taught me about self confidence?

At this particular point in time, I honestly feel that the world is my (our) oyster, and why shouldn’t it be?  I’ll be the first to admit that I see the jar half full.  What’s the harm in that?  In the last six months I have come to believe that sometimes you just have to give yourself a chance.  Why wouldn’t something good happen for me if I’ve worked hard for the last fifteen years to try and fulfill my dreams?  (Side note:  It’s actually been 22 years, ever since I became a single mom at age 19 and decided I didn’t want to be a statistic).  I’ve often had the opinion that I’m not quite good enough at what I do for my dreams to come true.  I know, I can hear the violins.  But honestly, if we can’t believe in ourselves, who else would have a reason to?

“Whatever Will Be, Will Be”

Back in January I applied for a Program Dean position at Oxbridge Academy in Montpellier.  I wrote about it in a post:

Working @ Montpellier this Summer ?!?!?.

Then in March I got an interview, and was so nervous about it I could hardly stand it!  Since then I have been waiting, waiting, waiting.  Two days ago I was contacted for a second interview.  That will happen via Skype on Friday (in two days!).  Well I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, “Whatever will be, will be.”  I feel pretty good about the possibility of it though!  It can’t look half bad on a resumé to have worked for this organization, and I’m truly hoping to get the job to see what kind of opportunities it could offer me.  All of this change is so very exciting.  I know that there are people who don’t like change, and I understand that.  I don’t know how I turned out this way, but I thrive on this kind of challenge.  What an adventure!!

Working @ Montpellier this Summer ?!?!?

Since I am not renewing my teaching contract this year, and since we are moving to the South of France in June, I’ve been spending the last six months or so really focusing on what to do about my professional life.  I see this as a real opportunity to do something different and exciting, keeping in mind my specific talents, interests, and experience.

The online classes I’m teaching are going very well.  The company that hired me, based in Montpellier, just informed me today that I will have three new students.  Two will be learning English, and one is a beginner in French.  They’ve assured me that once we live in France I will have a full schedule if I want it.

I ran across another opportunity several months ago.  It’s a position for “Program Dean” of a pretty prestigious residential French language/cultural program in Montpellier.  It’s a month long residential program for mostly American high school students.  They’re looking for someone who is bilingual in French and English, who has lived in the region, and who has an extensive background both teaching and traveling with North American students of this age group.  I seem to fit the bill rather perfectly, so I sent in my CV and letter about three months ago.

I can hardly believe it, but the executive director contacted me, and just this morning we set up a Skype interview for this afternoon.  I am so very nervous.  I suppose the interview will be in French, or at least I feel that it should be.  The interview is an hour and a half away, and my heart is already beating fast.

If I get the job (don’t worry, I just found some wood to touch / knock on), they will pay for my flight from New York to Montpellier.  That would be great for the budget!  It will mean living at the residence with the students for a month, and overseeing the disciplinary life of the program and assisting with the administration.  It would also mean working with a team of assistants, mostly local undergrads, meeting guest speakers, coordinating field trips around the region, providing pastoral care of students and supervision.  It sounds like what I do every summer with my students anyway, and since I haven’t planned a student trip this year it would be feasible.

Of course, it would mean living in Montpellier for a month while my husband and kids are in Béziers at my sister-in-law’s house, but it’s really close!  We would still be able to see each other quite often, and my nieces live in Montpellier.  I’m just imagining what kinds of doors this could open for me professionally, and all of the neat connections I could make.

So if you have read this far, please say a prayer for me today!  I’m going to try to keep the attitude that it’s not an interview with a leading professor at Oxford University.  It’s just a conversation with another human being.  If it’s meant to be, it will happen.  Thanks for reading my nervous bantering 🙂

MAY 2013 UPDATE:  I GOT THE JOB!!!!!

Meme visits France (Bless Her Heart)

This is a picture of me, my sister, and my mom.  Don’t we all look alike?  Let’s take a leap back in time about 14 years to 1998, and that was the first time that I lived in Béziers.  I had just gotten married (three times, all to the same man), and we were living in France, waiting for my husband’s Green Card approval.  All of that is a story for another time.  What I’d like to write about is the time Mom came over to visit us.  It was October, and that’s my birthday month.  Mom was still working back then, but had taken a few weeks of vacation.  She’d already been to France once, at the time of our wedding, and felt adventurous enough to make the long trip from Louisiana on her own.

Getting to Paris was no problem.  She just hopped on a direct flight from New Orleans, and ten hours or so later, she was at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.  My father-in-law very graciously met her at the airport and drove her to the Gare de Lyon.  She was to take the TGV directly to Montpellier, then make a connection to Béziers.  This was our big mistake.  We should have just had her fly down to Béziers, because she doesn’t speak any French, and she’d certainly not had any experience with train travel in Europe.

The ride on the TGV was perfect, and she made it down to Montpellier with absolutely no problems.  Before getting on the train in Paris, my father-in-law had spoken with a fellow traveler (who spoke English), and had asked him to direct my mom to the right platform to make her connection to Béziers.  The kind traveler did just that, or so mom thought. Trusting soul that she is, she didn’t think about double-checking to make sure she was in the right place.

Long story short, she hopped on a non-stop TGV that took her directly back to Paris.  I don’t think she realized it right away, with the jet-lag she was certainly experiencing, but before too long she understood that she should have been in Béziers by then!  But it was a non-stop TGV.  When the conductor came around for tickets, and she didn’t have one, he was kind and patient enough to finally understand what had happened.  They didn’t charge her anything, but there was no option except to sit back and enjoy the ride to Paris.  Now by this time, she’d been traveling for quite some time, and was really getting tired.  This was in 1998, and it wasn’t like today when everyone has cell phones.  She didn’t have one, so she couldn’t call us.

When we got to the train station in Béziers, with my husband and son who was then only 7, we fully expected to find “Meme” and bring her home with us for a nice two week visit.  But there was no Meme getting off of the train.  I was desperately worried.  Had she fallen asleep on the train?  Where was it heading to next?  We only had two or three minutes to look around on the train for her before it left for the next destination.  No Meme.

Not knowing what in the world to do, we waited for the next train from Montpellier to arrive.  Still no Meme.  I could just imagine her having fallen asleep on the train, only to wake up somewhere in Spain not knowing where she was.  I was worried sick.

We went back to our apartment, called my brother and sister-in-law (who also live in Béziers), and told them what had happened.  We waited by the phone, not daring to leave the apartment for fear of missing her call. About two or three hours passed, then the phone rang.  It was my brother-in-law, Jean-Marie.  He had only one declaration to make, and that was, “J’ai trouvé Meme!!” (I’ve found Meme).

“What??  Where is she??”  Jean-Marie explained that he’d received a phone call at home from my mom.  She’d arrived in Paris, and had called the only number she had with her, which was his.  You know how it is, hind sight is 20/20 when it comes to traveling, especially to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language.  She’d explained to him what had happened, and thankfully his knowledge of English was MUCH better than what he’d ever led me to think!  Not wanting to disturb my parents-in-law in Paris (though she should have, but that’s not her style), she’d purchased another ticket to Béziers that very night.  How many hours had she been traveling??  I’m not sure, but we’re probably beginning to move beyond the 24 hour mark.  This particular train was not a TGV, it was too late for that.  It was a very slow-moving night train.  Meme was scheduled to arrive in Béziers around 8:00 in the morning.  Poor thing, and as a born and bred southerner, there’s only one phrase that fits.  “Bless her little heart”.

I sure didn’t sleep well that night, and keep in mind that I hadn’t yet spoken to my mom.  At 8:00 in the morning, we were at the train station waiting for her, still with a doubt in my mind whether she’d step off of the train or not.  Lo and behold, an understandably exhausted and somewhat frustrated Meme emerged (though she’s a Southern Lady, and you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong if you’d seen her).

We brought Meme home, had a big ole pot of American-style coffee brewed and ready, and heard her firsthand account of her adventure.  Now how many grandmas have that kind of story to tell?  I can tell you one thing, now that she knows we are moving back to France, she hasn’t sworn off traveling over there to see us.  However, she will not be taking the train.

Annual Languedoc Festivals (that I’m putting on my calendar)

January-March:

Limoux:  Carnaval de Limoux

Approximately ten weeks of festival, this is one of the longest running carnivals in the world.  Masks, costumes, music, pranks, King Carnival burned at the stake,  swapping of roles, and it’s all done in the Occitan language.

March:

Nîmes:  Féria de Primavera

This is the pre-Lenten carnaval , and the first of several annual féria in Nîmes.

April:

Sommiers:  Medieval festival

Street festival featuring costumed merchants and performers, markets and music.

May: 

Pezenas:  Cavalcade

Annual festival, artisan craft market, medieval period-costume parade.

Nîmes:  Feria de Pentecôte

The main focus is bullfighting in the Roman amphitheater.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer:  Gypsy Festival & Pilgrimage

Traditional gypsy music,  traditional gypsy costumes, white horses of the Camargue, solemn procession of over 3,000, headed by the king of the Gypsies and the archbishop, weaves its way through the village streets, singing a repetitive chant until everyone reaches the sea.  Bullfighting, concerts, lots of food.

June:

Beaucaire:  La Fête du Drac

Traditional festival in honor of the town’s dragon mascot.

Pavalas:  The Maguelone Music Festival

The cathedral is home to a festival of ancient music.

Montpellier:  Le Printemps des Comédiens

Theater and live performances,  proposing between 20 and 25 shows and drawing more than 40,000 paying spectators.

Narbonne:  Festival National de Théâtre Amateur

Ten evenings of open air amateur theater.

July:

Sète:  Fête de la Saint-Pierre

The town pays homage to St. Pierre, patron saint of fishermen.

Montpellier:  Festival de Radio-France

Music festival focusing on opera, classical music, and jazz.  90% of the concerts are free.

Beaucaire:  Medieval Fair

A week-long recreation of the medieval market and other celebrations.

Avignon:  Festival d’Avignon

Theater festival that runs for three weeks.

Carcassonne:  Dance, music, and theater festival

Opera, Dance, Theatre, Classical Music, French and international popular music, Modern music.  Many concerts are free.

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert:  Annual fête

Baroque organ and choral music is held in a medieval monastery.

August:

Sète:  Water jousting

Originating in Sete centuries ago, this sport is now a passionate fixture of Languedoc traditional culture.  The most important tournaments take place on August 25, la Fête de Saint Louis.

Orb Valley:  Festival de la Vallée de l’Orb

Takes place in various town squares throughout the Orb valley, this festival features lots of wine and folk music activities.

Béziers:  La Féria

Five day féria focusing on bullfights, concerts, food.  Attracts over a million visitors annually.

Narbonne:  Semaine Bavaroise

In alternating years, Narbonne honors twin town, Weilheim in Germany, by a week of celebrations of Bavarian food and folklore.

September:

Pavalas:  Féria d’Automne

Nîmes:  Féria des Vendanges

Basically a repeat of the Féria de Pentecôte that takes place in May.

Le Grau/Port Camargue:

Traditional water tournaments and bull fights.

October:

Aigues Mortes:  Annual fête

Béziers:  Les Primeurs d’Oc

Premier wine festival in Languedoc.  Features wine, music, dance, and theater.

November-December:

Pezenas:  Occitan Christmas

Montpellier Christmas Market

Béziers Christmas Market

Perpignan Christmas Market

Carcassonne:  Marché au Gras

Christmas market with lots of artisanal crafts and regional food products (and FOIE GRAS!!!)

I highly doubt that I’ll make it to all of these festivals and events, but they do look like fun.  I think I’ll opt most likely for the various markets, medieval festivals, Christmas festivities, and wine festivals.

What have I missed?  If you know of other worthwhile festivals/markets/events going on annually in the Languedoc, please tell me about them in the comments.  Maybe there’s a festival that you think is great somewhere else in France?  If so, I’d sure love to hear about it.

Teaching English and French Classes Online

As many readers will know from my previous posts, I’m a high school French teacher.  I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and teaching is my calling.  I love it.  I work at an awesome high school where all of the students are amazingly motivated and the parents are supportive, my colleagues are my friends.  So as I quit my job to move on to the next stage in life, which is making a permanent move to France this coming summer, I have mixed emotions.

For the last year or so I have been thinking very hard about what I’d like to do for work once we’re in Béziers.  One thing I know, at forty years old and with two kids under the age of ten, is that I want to plan my own schedule.  I want to work on my own terms.  I know, after having lived in France before, how wonderful it is to be able to pick up the kids from school and bring them home for lunch between 12 and 2.  Also, as I look at the schedule of school holidays in France, I know my family would benefit greatly by my being able to be off with the kids during those times.  Who am I kidding?  I’ve been a teacher for fifteen years, and I enjoy life with school holidays (coming from someone who has the whole next week off for Spring Break).

Sometime last fall I got the idea of teaching English online.  I have a colleague who taught Chinese online for a while, and she talked to me about doing the same.  I investigated many online language schools, and some are certainly more reputable than others.  I sent my CV off to several of the more established schools, and waited to see what would happen.  It wasn’t long before I started receiving email responses from several of them.

One of them is actually a French online school, but they’re looking to expand to teach English classes as well.  They are based in Montpellier, which is very close to where we will be living in France. That’s where they’re based, but given the nature of the business, one can live anywhere in the world.  The French owner, who is about my age, is in Thailand for the time being.  Another has recently relocated to Tahiti.  They all have children, and they all home school them.  I’m not looking to home school my children, but I love the idea of the freedom we will have.

I actually feel much more comfortable teaching French as a foreign language than English, but that’s just because I have a lot more experience doing that.  I have a BA in English as well though, and I think that’s what gives me an edge in the business even though I’ve spent my whole professional life teaching French.  I went through several Skype interviews over the months of December and January, and finally I was hired!  I’ve given a total of 8 classes via Skype so far.  These classes have actually been in French rather than English, even though I’m not a native speaker.  At first, I was very nervous about it.  Fear of the unknown!  After the first fifteen minutes, I was once again at ease.  It’s so much fun.  You just use the chat box like you would a white board.

I’ve also started creating free French lessons on YouTube.  This is just for fun, and there are only three lessons on my channel so far.  I put a link to my YouTube channel at the top of my blog page. I’m going to try to put up at least one lesson per week and we’ll see how that goes.

I wanted to get started with this new method of teaching right away, so that I could become familiar with it and hopefully get established before moving (and before my teaching paychecks stop this summer).  Looks like I’m on the right track.  I’m also getting a website, business cards, and flyers ready for one-on-one English (or French) classes in Béziers.  Wouldn’t it be great if this took off?  Call me an eternal optimist, but I really think I will find success in this venture.  I always see the glass as half full, and so far that’s worked out very nicely.

House has sold, and we’re really moving to France.

After seven months of pursuing our dream of selling our house then moving to France, today it has officially happened.  We closed on the sale of our house in St. Louis!  Neither of us was quite ready to believe it until all of the closing papers had been signed.  Until the last minute, we were living in doubt.  Since putting our house on the market back in March, 2012, we have had six different contracts fall through for one reason or another.  We really wanted to move to France this past summer, and it was a harsh reality to accept that it just wasn’t going to happen, not exactly the way we wanted it to.  Looking at the big picture, we can both see that leaving next summer will be much more practical on many levels.

We will be staying on in St. Louis until mid-June 2013 due to the nature of our jobs (we are teachers), and also to avoid interrupting the school year for our children (ages 5 and 8).  This wait will also give us the opportunity to save more money, as we will now be paying to rent an apartment rather than paying a home mortgage!  In addition, we won’t feel rushed and unsure about everything as we did last spring.  Not knowing if we were going to move put us in a position where we couldn’t really talk to  many people about our grand adventure.  This time, we will be able to share our dream coming true with friends, family, colleagues.  There will not have to be any secrecy about it now.  In the spring, when we were hoping to sell our house quickly, we still knew that there was a huge amount of uncertainty involving our move.  We couldn’t inform our employers of our move, just in case things didn’t work out.  We knew that if the house didn’t sell, we would need to have our jobs in the fall.  That was good thinking on our part, even if it was very difficult to stay quiet about it all.

Our first step now will be to find an apartment to live in for the next seven months, and it shouldn’t be hard to find one right in our neighborhood.  The next step will be to eventually inform our employers that we will not be returning in the fall.  I think that can wait a few months, still giving them time to find our replacements.  Beyond that, there’s everything we need to get done logistically speaking for the big plunge:  French nationality for me, and American nationality for my husband being the two main tasks at hand.

As the months go on, we will plan out (as best we know how) our first year of living in the south of France.  We need to find jobs, some reliable source of income to support our family.  I feel very optimistic about this as we are two very marketable professionals with many talents, and we have some pretty good ideas already.  My husband is a little less optimistic, but I think that’s just a result of (1) being a husband and father, and (2) being French!

It does help to know that we are moving to a very familiar place where we have family, and we have also already spent a year living there (14 years ago).  We have also spent the last 14 years spending the whole summer over there, so we feel comfortable.  The kids and I already speak fluent French, which I’ve read all over the Internet as being one of the main obstacles of other American families who have the same dream of living in France.  Here in the US, I’d say we already  live as much of a “French lifestyle” as possible.  It’s just the way we are.  The way we live daily and the way we raise our children corresponds much more to a French norm than to the American way.

Over the next seven months, I’ll do my best to record the steps we will take to get prepared.  Hopefully this blog will serve to help others in the same boat (we can’t be the only ones doing this, right?).  So now, let the fun begin!  Thanks for reading, and I’d love any comments or questions that my readers may have.

Putting France on Hold…. Hanging in there in St. Louis

I haven’t written on this blog since the month of May.  4 months ago.  I think I just spent so much of last year getting ready for the move to France that wasn’t.  We spent almost a whole year getting the house ready for the market, packing, taking care of administrative details, and just gearing up emotionally.  We’d decided 100% that moving to France was what we wanted for ourselves and for our family, and we never really put much thought into what would happen if our house didn’t sell.

We still are very fortunate in that we were able to spend two months vacationing in France this summer.  It’s a good thing neither of us quit our jobs, that we went ahead and enrolled the kids in school “just in case”, and that we booked round-trip flights.  Our flight back home was scheduled for August 6, and until the end of July we were still holding out for something to happen with the house so that we could stay in France as planned.

August 6th has since come and gone, and here we are back in St. Louis working and living our lives as usual.  St. Louis happens to be a wonderful place to live and raise a family, but we are still hopeful about our move to France.  We’re just putting things off for one year (hopefully).  The house is still on the market, and we even have a contract.  Closing date is supposed to be on October 19, but we have learned not to get our hopes up too high.  If everything works out with the sale of the house, we will move into an apartment for the remainder of the school year and make the move to the South of France next summer.

So I apologize for disappearing without a trace.  Something about writing it all down just made it not possible for me there for a few months.  Talk about an emotionally charged summer!  But I’m back now, and ready to keep on keeping on 🙂