My First Month in France

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This is part of a series of articles about the final days of preparing for moving to France and what happens when you get here, and those articles are part of a promotional series launching our new book, 29 Days to France, a book that all the writers wish they had had before we started our French adventures.  It’s now available for preorder, and those preorders come with a free 15-minute Q&A personal session about your French immigration plans.  Click here to learn more.

You can find Luke’s first article in this series, about his first three months in France, here.

By the end of my first month in France I had experienced a good deal of the classic signs of culture shock, including strange food cravings, wild mood swings, and the ability to sleep more hours a night than I thought humanly possible.

But I was also making progress in this new world. I was no longer getting lost a few blocks from my own apartment. My ability to open doors was improving. I could more or less manage the bakery and went every morning for my croissant and daily bread.

My furnished studio had an impressive coffee maker and an electric kettle, but neither a stove nor microwave. There was instead a tiny oven with the outward appearance of a microwave (if we were making them for dwarves), and it didn’t seem to get very hot. What its purpose was I had no clue. I mostly used it to melt butter.

Having arrived at the planetary center of culinary excellence, my diet for a long time consisted almost entirely of baguettes and ramen. There were beautiful fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, but I observed that you had to take your produce to a guy behind a special counter to have it weighed. That was obviously far too terrifying to contemplate, but the internet informed me it took at least three months to develop scurvy and it was probably that long before I ever ate a nutrient. It took me a good month before I even had the courage to buy a crêpe from a street vendor.

Once again showing my naiveté, I decided to rent a car for a few days in order to get some things I thought I needed out in the suburbs at the hypermarché (these are basically like Walmart with the addition of a huge dead fish section). The topic of cars and driving in France could fill an entire book (Stephen reviewed an entire book just on the driver’s license issue), but suffice to say every hour in that car took about a year off my life — and I’m a car nut even by American standards. I returned it as soon as I could and was charged an extra 60 euros for an invisible scratch on the rear wheel, even though I had already bought their expensive insurance which cost as much as the rental itself. Had I understood French I might have better appreciated the beautiful French contours of this ripoff, but in the event I was just relieved the car hadn’t been totaled. I think driving in France is basically like being in a demolition derby, and navigating a French parking garage is to grapple with lunacy itself.

That odd experience led me to brave the buses. Yes I held up the line trying to figure out the QR code scanning deal (no I didn’t understand the possibly helpful advice from the bus driver) and of course I felt and looked like a moron. Even simple things are nerve-racking the first time, but with enough repetition they do get easier. Pushing myself over the initial hurdle usually took more energy than I thought I really had, and I admit there were times I wished I could just spend one day back in the easy world.

France too has Amazon and thank goodness, but the delivery process was a challenge for me. After being trapped at home all day long waiting for the package to arrive, not daring to leave even for a quick run to the bakery, I was informed late in the evening that “Sorry! Your package couldn’t be delivered because you weren’t home.” A rain-smeared paper slip would be found in the mailbox, with an indecipherable scribble telling me where I might go to pick it up. I learned to avoid having anything delivered to my apartment if at all possible, but thankfully in France you can frequently ship to a point relais (pickup place). These locations are quite random, they include the post office of course (usually also to be avoided), but also Carrefour, the wine shop, the book store, the vape store, the tailor or key maker, the weird printer cartridge place, and of course to the ubiquitous and versatile tabacs. There it waits until you have time to retrieve it on your own schedule — that is if you don’t forget your passport, and if the shop owner hasn’t decided to go fishing for the day.

Amidst all this running about what struck me as the biggest difference from the suburbs of America from whence I had appeared, were the vast quantity of people in…well I was about to say “in my life,” but that is not exactly correct. They were in my presence; or anyway, I was in theirs. They were out and about.

The sidewalks and pedestrian streets were every day crowded with what seemed like half the town. In America the main reason to go outdoors is to immediately get into our cars, and when we get out of the car, it is usually to go immediately inside somewhere else. This kind of lifestyle would scarcely be possible in France; even with a car one would end up doing a great deal of walking by American standards. There is most certainly no parking lot in front of your favorite French café.

Consequently being outside with hundreds of others is just part of everyday life, and not only in the big cities. It is no exaggeration to say that on any Saturday afternoon in the small French town where I live, I could leave my apartment and see more flesh-and-blood human beings in ten minutes than I saw in the last ten years combined in America.

I soon learned that it was practical and even (sometimes) enjoyable to walk distances far greater than I would ever have guessed. All that exercise and fresh air had a salutary influence on my health, and my waistline. Most notably, being in the presence of so many others in real life — not just people on Zoom, or in the car next to me on the freeway — provided a glimpse into community living that I had not seen in the US.

At the end of my first month I had learned how to get by, but my glimpse into French society remained just that. A crowd alone does not a community make, and to be present in the midst of one is not necessarily to be a participant. If anything I discovered a new type of isolation only possible to experience in the company of others, something which I think many expats can attest to.

Obviously my next objective was to get out and meet people, somehow. 

Photo of Notre-Dame d’Amiens as snow begins to fall. 

Did you enjoy this article?  TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping.  If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated.  These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment.  Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

30 Days Out: “Are You Excited About Paris Yet?”

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This is part of a series of articles about the final days of preparing for moving to France and what happens when you get here, and those articles are part of a promotional series launching our new book, 29 Days to France, a book that all the writers wish they had had before we started our French adventures.  It’s now available for preorder, and those preorders come with a free 15-minute Q&A personal session about your French immigration plans.  Click here to learn more.

You can find Vince’s first article in this series, when he was three months out from a move, here.

“Are you excited about Paris yet?”

It’s an innocent enough question. 

I’m pacing around my room while on the phone with my friend Anne: “Nope. Not excited one bit. Paris isn’t real until the visa is real,” I deadpan. It is October 7, and I think I’m unofficially five weeks out from my Paris move. I’m still not fully confident I’m actually going to Paris, actually. I haven’t heard news about my visa since I submitted the application back two weeks ago. 

I hope Anne didn’t take my answer as a snarky one.  52-year-old me was trying to be like water and quell the anxiety generated last week by my inner child — the eight-year-old version of me — who had been having a series of micro-meltdowns, worried that my visa application was anything but “foolproof,” even though I bleeping spent 1,900 € to make it so. I was still a bit raw from my mom’s passing and the end of my relationship with Sarah, as well as all the purging and the anticipation of all the major changes.

“It’s going to happen,” she assures me. I say nothing. I know she means well. “Why do you think you’ll have an issue?” she asks. I tell her what happened at my visa application appointment. 

Flashback to September 27, the visa appointment at the VFS office.

The young clerk at the VFS office (the third-party company designated to pre-process the applications on their way to the French Consulate in Washington D.C) reviews my application and notes that it is incomplete but that she’d send the application anyway, as-is. “Wait, why are you writing that?” I plead.

“It says here on the checklist that since you are starting a business you need these documents, and you don’t have them.”

“I’m not starting a conventional business in Paris,” I say, “so, I don’t need a copy of a commercial lease agreement or proof of a credit balance from an account.” She takes a few moments to process this, but I can tell by her fidgeting that this situation is deviating from her script. This was probably above her pay grade to solve problems any more than a drive-thru clerk taking orders at a fast-food joint where you can’t have it your way. I give her a curious look that means, “Surely, you’ve dealt with other Profession Libérale visa applications in the past.”

“Since you don’t have the paperwork — even if you say you don’t need them — I can’t cross this off the checklist on the computer, so it won’t show that the application is complete,” she says. “So for me to send the application, I need to write a note.”

I want to pull the good ol’ American I’d like to speak to your supervisor, please, but I don’t want the VFS office to spit in my soup and sabotage my chances for approval. I bite my tongue instead, and tell eight-year-old me, “we’re going to have to trust the process.”

“But I walked out of the office with a massive knot in my stomach, ” I told Anne.

“It’s gonna be great,” she reassures me. I roll my eyes, when I notice an email that just popped up in my inbox, entitled: MISSING DOCUMENTS. It’s from the French Consulate.

“I gotta go.” I hang up the phone. My stomach is in knots again.

I close my eyes, take three deep breaths to keep me from going nuclear, and then open the e-mail. 

Please provide the following documents in order to complete processing for your visa application:

– Your last 3 months’ bank statements showing your full name and enough funds to pay for your trip and expenses 

– Proof of income related to your business activity in France (letter containing draft work contract with remuneration indicated)

– A housing lease or your host’s property deed

Please carefully read the following instructions on how to respond to this email:

– Please scan these documents directly back to this e-mail address in the next 7 days. Send them all in one email.

– Do not send the documents you already provided at your VFS appointment. We have already reviewed those and have deemed them to be insufficient or inadequate. If you send the same documents again, your visa will likely be denied.

– Only send your documents once and please refrain from writing to inquire if we received your documents. Too many e-mails received disrupt the organization of the visa department and result in longer processing times for applications.

Imagining being spoken by a French bureaucrat, I read the e-mail trying not to be annoyed by the surface politeness disguising the indifference, rigidity, vagueness, and trickiness, all of which French bureaucracy was infamous for. Too late.

“Nooooo!” I scream up to the sky. “I paid two grand for a service to deal with this!  And now I have seven days to get the right docs!”

I’m livid. I leave the house for some air. I passed by my 95-year-old grandma in the living room reminding myself that I had yet to tell her I was leaving for Paris.

Why was I so incensed? Before I submitted the application back in September, I scheduled a one-hour consultation call with Franceformation to review my application, but in the actual call, she didn’t review or comment on any of the other parts of my visa application except for the business plan. The entire reason I paid her the exorbitant fee sight unseen was for her allegedly expert eyes to ensure my entire application was foolproof from top to bottom, not just the business plan. I emailed her a message expressing my concern. This was her response:

“Your supporting documents are fine. Your business plan needs some serious work if you would like it to be accepted in a visa application. I would strongly advise against submitting it without taking into account many of the recommendations I made on our call. Please note that the guarantee included with your package is that I would help you revise and review your visa application again if it does not get approved the first time (this has never happened to any of my clients who followed the Complete French Business Incubator process). If you do not take into account any of my recommendations prior to submitting your application, I will not be providing additional feedback if it is rejected.”

As you can see by the Consulate’s e-mail above, they approved my business plan, which to be clear, I revised on the astute suggestions of expats from Facebook and other friends with expert knowledge, NOT incorporating any of Franceformation’s notes, which were similar in tone and expertise to the kind of advice my father gave me as a 13-year-old regarding how to throw a fastball, having only read a library book called The Official Little League Way to Play Baseball and watched baseball on TV but had never actually played baseball, because well, they didn’t have baseball in the Philippines when he was a kid.

Note that Franceformation stated my “supporting documents are fine,” yet based on the Consulate’s email of my MISSING DOCUMENTS, my supporting documents were clearly NOT fine. Even if she was willing to provide additional feedback, based on every single interaction I had with her, odds were quite high that she was not going to put the work into my documents besides insisting that her advice was correct, which she was/is infamous for doing on her Facebook group, where, whenever comments go off script, they get deleted.

Thanks to the generosity and experiences of the expats on the Facebook group pages and the TAIP Facebook community, I was able to decipher the Consulate’s requests. My landlord didn’t have immediate access to the property deed, so I sent copies of her electric bill and property tax documentation instead. As far as proof of income, I whipped up contracts with my current clients.

Because I wasn’t confident they would get the stamp of approval, however, until my visa was in my hand, my brain simply would not commit to expending concentrated energy on the move. Even being only five weeks out, I put off my Paris to-do list and allocated most of my time either continuing my Goodbye L.A. tour or being a Dodger fan watching every inning of their playoff games either on TV or watching games at Dodger Stadium until they finally lost in the National League Championship Series, which I secretly hoped would happen, because Dodger baseball alone ate up at least sixty hours. I spent sixty hours training tennis at Silva Tennis Academy as well.

Every day, I’d spend hours checking my email and social media accounts for signs of my ex-girlfriend Sarah, hoping that she’d get in touch with me to see each other before leaving for Paris. It was horribly co-dependent of me, but that’s what it was.

Live music ate up another sixty hours, because with all the deaths, Covid, and purging that had happened this year, live music was my religion. In addition to a series of local acts at the Hotel Café, I saw Pearl Jam and the Lumineers a few weeks ago and saw Wilco twice in October. The lyrics from “Shot in the Arm,” Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm, and What you once were isn’t what you want to be anymore… totally encapsulated why I was moving to Paris. I played that song every day on repeat as I waited for my visa…

Two Weeks Later, the Biggest E-mail of My Life 

The consulate sent me an e-mail merely notifying me that a FedEx package was on its way to me. They didn’t indicate whether my application was approved.  

No matter. The most important FedEx package of my life containing the prospects for my future is due to arrive in my lap in less than three hours. I’ve cleared my entire schedule for the day to be home to sign for the package. After a couple of hours go by, I receive a text that FedEx tried to deliver the package, but I was not home, and they would attempt a second delivery the following day. Actually, I am home, but they didn’t bother to call. I want to scream.

What occurs next is a series of tragically comedic events in which I talk to three different customer service representatives for over five cumulative hours  — all outsourced to call centers in other countries merely reading a script — to directly manage the delivery. I don’t trust their delivery process. The next morning, I drive fifteen miles to the FedEx facility.

Finally, the moment of truth is in my hand. It is anti-climactic, really, this nondescript FedEx envelope that held the promise of the rest of my life. I rip open the envelope. There’s nothing inside except my original passport. I brace myself for rejection and get ready to tell my inner child a narrative that the Universe is telling us it isn’t yet our time for Paris, then get my assistant director part of my brain to get past the disappointment quickly in order to plan for potential scenarios. I open the passport…and there it is, my profession libérale visa. I break into tears of relief and joy. It’s happening. I’m finally going to Paris. I am officially thirty days out.

I call Anne back. “Okay, now I’m excited.” “But just a little,” I added.

After I got my visa, urgency was everything. I booked my flight for November 16, four weeks from that moment. I secured a place for my cat Maddey on the plane. I confirmed my Airbnb reservations. I reviewed the procedures to obtain Maddey’s health certificate. I finally took the new suitcase I bought months ago out of the shipping box and laid it out with my two other suitcases.

Twenty days before my November 16th flight, my grandma was in the kitchen eating a Filipino dish of cow liver and rice when I finally told her I was moving to Paris. “Huh? Where are you going?” she asked in her shrill, Filipina from the poor province-laden accent. Her hearing was severely diminished, and she was too stubborn to wear a hearing aid.

“Paris,” I said.

“Where?”

“Paris.”

“Where?”

“France.”

“Frince?”

“France.”

“Frunce?”

“FRANCE.”

“Oh. France. That’s far.”

“Yes it is.”

“How long you going?”

“I’m not sure. A long time, probably.”

“Three months?”

“Probably longer.”

“Oh, so you don’t stay here anymore?”

“No, grandma.”

She started laughing. “Oh, maybe you stay there for a year!” More laughing. I wasn’t sure why she found all of this funny, but I said, “Yes, grandma, for a year.” And with that, she went back to the TV and started flipping channels. In retrospect, I don’t think she knew how to process the news that I was leaving. She was incapable of processing with nuance. At least outwardly. 

After my mom’s stroke this year and enduring the trauma of not being given the chance to reconcile my relationship with her, I moved in with my grandma as a sentimental gesture to connect and say farewell after I was forced to leave the home Sarah and I made together. Grandma is 95 years old, and she just isn’t moving well anymore. We have cousins and aunts who will look after her, but I’m the grandchild of two closest to her. My sister lives two hours south in San Diego but she has her hands full. Besides, my grandma doesn’t trust my sister after the way she handled the responsibility as the executor of the power of attorney over my mom’s affairs. I feel horrible that I’m leaving grandma for Paris, but every day I’m here, I’m losing more of my sanity, and I simply need to leave if I’m going to stay alive. Not kidding. I gave her a hug, she hugged me back, and as my emotions started to stir and make me feel raw again, I disappeared into the garage with my nose back to the grindstone and turned on a little Wilco to get me through a tedious night of deciding what was going to make it into the five pieces of luggage that would be my Paris life.

Photo: A day in South Pasadena where everything was fine, and then a moment came when I felt like maybe Paris wasn’t in the cards.

Did you enjoy this article?  TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping.  If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated.  These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment.  Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

My First Three Months in France

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This is part of a series of articles about the final days of preparing for moving to France and what happens when you get here, and those articles are part of a promotional series launching our new book, 29 Days to France, a book that all the writers wish they had had before we started our French adventures.  It’s now available for preorder, and those preorders come with a free 15-minute Q&A personal session about your French immigration plans.  Click here to learn more.

As a human being it goes without saying that I am possessed of my share of vices, but until moving to France jealousy was not usually one of them. In America at least, where every desire has been commodified and put on clearance, most of what we want or are told to want can be afforded by the average person, or got anyway on credit. But here, every French person, no matter how humble or poor possesses something which can’t be bought for any price: the ability to speak.

Even the small five-year-old on the street babbling to his mother about Père Noël filled me with envy. If only I could speak as well as a five-year-old, what high social circles would I then be soaring in?

In fact I had started studying informally even before my arrival. I did all the usual suspects like Coffee Break French, French in Action, and Comme une Française. I was sure I must have learned something, but whatever it was seemed to evaporate immediately the instant I needed to use it.

Once in France I re-doubled my efforts with Pimsleur, iTalki, and online courses from l’Institut Francais. When I wasn’t studying I had the news playing in the background. Whether I was desperately trying to learn it, or desperately trying to avoid having to use it, the French language became a ceaseless obsession.

Surprisingly along the way I felt I was learning as much about my native tongue as anything else. I was astounded to realize just how much we say with so little, and by comparison, how little I could communicate in French even with the substantial vocabulary I had theoretically memorized.

I was well aware of the cautionary tales of those who had moved to France, proceeded to surround themselves with a circle of Anglophone friends, and found themselves three years in without having ever made progress in the language. I was well aware of these cautionary tales because like anyone else in my situation, I had sat around in America watching expat YouTube for months on end before I arrived.

In my utter lack of perspective I concluded this was a serious hazard very much to be avoided. But I wasn’t long in France before I changed my mind and decided I could probably survive the risk of being ensnared by a cloistered group of Americans, if only it meant having a normal conversation for once. I told myself that the acquisition of a new language is a long-term undertaking and at each stage there has to be some concession to reality.

I got on Meetup. I created a Facebook account for the first time in my life. I was soon meeting exchange students, au pairs, and expats from all around the world. No matter how wildly different our backgrounds, as foreigners in France we all had at least one thing in common over which we could bond. We commiserated about the various idiosyncrasies of French life and regaled each other with our humorous stories of language failures and disaster.

I even encountered that breed of person, the complete inverse of myself, and strangely not so uncommon as might be imagined. Whereas I was waiting for perfection to say anything in French, they seemed to have started from day one with complete self-assurance. With little apparent concern for when, or if ever, their speaking abilities would catch up, they daily set off and traipsed unfazed through language landmines I had hitherto believed impossible to survive. Their willingness to place themselves into precarious situations meant they had faced far more difficult challenges than I had, and yet here they were, alive and still in good spirits.

“How could this be?!” I wondered in amazement. That almost seemed like cheating. But far from being jealous, I came to greatly appreciate these acquaintances and the many other types I met as well. From them I learned the important lesson that confidence and competence do not always walk hand in hand.

As I wasn’t expecting to achieve fluency much earlier than I was expecting to attain nirvana, this came as a significant relief.

My own meager confidence improved almost immediately simply by seeing that my predicaments were hardly unique. Even if I went alone to the barber shop, the doctor’s office, or the immigration bureau, I was no longer alone in an existential sense. I was buoyed by the knowledge that I was in good company, that others had tread these paths before, and that, so far as anyone could remember, no one had died from using the wrong verb tense at any of these places.

With this reassurance I found myself becoming less flustered, even though my ability to speak hadn’t changed at all. And in a virtuous circle, feeling slightly more at ease helped considerably with speaking.

Elsewhere in life, I had begun traveling weekends to visit the glorious gothic cathedrals of northern France. In a further sign of changing perspectives I had a surreal experience when I returned from my first trip out of town. Greeting me as I exited the train station back in Amiens were all the same sights I had encountered on my first day in France: the vaulted glass canopy of Place Alphonse, the Tour Perret, the neon Ferris wheel, and the slippery beige stones of La Rue des Trois Cailloux.

All the emotions and memories of that first introduction were brought to mind anew, only now all that had been so recently foreign was tinged with the warm glow of familiarity. No longer was this little town an unknown dot on the far side of the globe. Indeed, just at the other end of Three Pebble Street, and waiting for me to come in from the rain, sat my cozy apartment.

I was home.

Photo taken as I exited the Amiens train station on my first day in France.

Did you enjoy this article?  TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping.  If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated.  These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment.  Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

90 Days Out From Leaving Los Angeles for Paris

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This is part of a series of articles about the final days of preparing for moving to France and what happens when you get here.  This is the first of two promotional series launching our new book, 29 Days to France, a book that all the writers wish they had had before we started our French adventures.  It’s now available for preorder, and those preorders come with a free 15-minute Q&A personal session about your French immigration plans.  Click here to learn more.

Vince was someone I met first as a visa consulting client who has come to be a friend and now, writer for TAIP.  You will find he takes our blog in a more personal direction than we may have previously gone here, and I think that’s a good thing, and a sign of more to come, not just from Vince, but from all of us.  -SH

I’d been considering a move from Los Angeles to Paris since Autumn 2016, but through the years, I got sidetracked by one thing or another. Still, it was a fifty-plus year odyssey, all somehow interconnected to finally get to this point…

The Origin Story

I was born in Flushing, New York, in 1969. My heritage is Filipino but for years, I regarded that as a technicality that burdened my existence. I was the stereotypical red, white, and blue American kid, engrossed in girls, sports, video games, movies, and American pop music.  I even went to West Point for college for an intense immersion into historic American leadership and subsequently served in the Army for a short stint, until I settled into Hollywood as an assistant director, running film sets, overseeing the logistical planning and execution of making movies and TV series.

Meritocracy was my religion. I was deeply convinced that passion and dedication would result in the realization of my American dreams as advertised; that my brown skin and ethnicity would be non-factors.

All my life, while I had glimpses into accomplishing my dreams — what I affectionately called chasing greatness — I’d find a way to sabotage those dreams, whether it was by pushing the rules of the system, chasing love, not completing personal projects, alienating people by pushing them too hard, or perhaps, innocently making an impish comment at the wrong time for a cheap laugh.

Especially compared to my contemporaries, I felt like a failure. Was my own brain and growing up Filipino the hindrance to myself?

Since I was ten, whether through friends, sports coaches, therapists, psychiatrists, or life/career coaches, I looked to outside sources for support to fill the gaps in my manhood whether it be gathering knowledge, repairing my behavioral flaws, or improving my emotional intelligence.

My family didn’t nurture me. My dad was more interested in horse racing and not feeling emasculated while my mother and sister were more inclined to let Jesus take the wheel than solve complex problems or learn the intricacies of the human condition.

In 2012 I felt I was headed on a path of mediocrity. I plummeted into depression. Rather than have anyone be sucked down into my darkness, it was easier for all parties concerned that I isolate myself to fight my fight, which included breaking up with my fiancée Julia in April 2016. I often thought of suiciding to relieve the pain — for me and my loved ones.

Katia, an old friend from Paris who was vacationing in L.A. with her family, invited me over their Malibu Airbnb for an evening soirée. I was still in my own mental quarantine, but I dragged myself out because anything can happen when Katia is involved. We were drinking a nice Bordeaux when she casually mentioned, “My Paris apartment is opening up in July. Might you know anyone interested in a short-term or long-term rental?”

“Who among my friends might be interested, able, and daring enough to live in Paris for three months?” I pondered. Then, my eyes got big….and on a whim, I said:

“I’ll take it.”

Ici c’est Paris

From July through September 2016, I lived on the east side of Paris, in the 20th Arrondissement, surrounded by an eclectic culture of hipster Parisiens and immigrants from various North African countries, including Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. American tourists weren’t generally coming to the 20ème, so I became a local quite quickly. I spoke French as much as possible, forcing myself not to be subconscious about making mistakes.  

By the kindness of existing friends and strangers who became close friends, I experienced a bonafide joie de vivre — a pure joy for life — in all of Paris’ distinct neighborhoods.

Dikran, a Lebanese-Armenian immigrant who spoke five languages, walked me all over Madeleine through Strasbourg Saint-Denis. Andrea and I darted through the streets of Montmartre down to Opéra on his scooter. Alex led me deep into the rabbit holes of the Pigalle nightlife. I picnicked with Nico and Solène at Jardin du Luxembourg, where everywhere in the garden, I saw pockets of genuine community. I played tennis with Thomas in the terre battue of the courts in Montreuil. At Closerie des Lilas, I enjoyed some Sancerre with Hemingway’s ghost where he told me, “Take the time to fall into whatever cracks and crevices happen in front of you and see how it changes your work.” The Cinémathèque Française in Bercy rekindled my love for French cinema, inspiring me to seek artists interested in making daring and genuinely personal kind of stuff, not the types seeking fame or Hollywood significance, like I was surrounded by in Los Angeles. I even directed a short film about love in Paris as an experiment to express my authentic voice.

I acquired a love for getting lost. As someone whose life’s work relied on efficiency and execution, taking the wrong path steered me to discover little gems such as the gorgeous doors in Le Marais or the intimate bar Le Lapis in the 2ème.

I learned the essence of c’est la vie. It was not, how we Americans view this cliché: “Welp, that’s life, I guess I have to suck it up,” shrugging our shoulders to tolerate the misery, but rather, “This is life. Even walking up seven flights of stairs every day is part of it,” with the point punctuated by inhaling a cigarette and a sip of wine.

As music is my church, in two subsequent 2018 Paris trips for concerts by U2, Arcade Fire, and Ben Harper, I was captivated by the Parisiens’ love for music, an energy that vibrated higher than at L.A. concerts.

After my initial 2016 trip, L.A. was exponentially becoming less my close-knit hometown, mutating more into an unrecognizable sprawl of people elbowing each other to snatch higher stations in life; confused with what to do, what to wear, where to be, how to be, and who to know. All of it was a monolith of noise. I yearned for the soul of Paris. Permanently.

Moving to another continent, however, felt intimidating. How does an American even legally immigrate to France? What could I do for work? Could I get a bank account without being fluent in French? Could I play tennis in the winter? What about my cat Maddey? Daunted, I returned to my regularly scheduled programming until answers emerged. The years flew by.

A few notable events shaped my path between Paris 2016 and August 2021: I suffered a two-hour mini-stroke in 2017; I discovered my true personality (INFJ) from the Myers-Briggs test; I worked on a few more meaningless TV shows, one of which prompted me, a day before my 50th birthday, to attempt suicide. (I wasn’t successful.) Upon the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, I came to the realization as a Filipino-American, that I had been drinking the kool-aid of the American Dream my whole life. A sublime butterfly moment in Costa Rica (which I’ll talk about in a future article) jolted me into making the resolution to move to Paris by the end of 2020.

Plot Twists in a Time of Love and Covid

But when February 2020 began, a long-forgotten crush named Sarah found me and we quickly fell in love. Paris took a back seat again, because while she loved the idea of moving to Paris with me, she had never traveled outside of the United States; knowing how tough Paris could be for an American, I thought we’d start with Sarah’s first Paris trip to see how they would get along.

Then we went into lockdown. Paris was canceled indefinitely. Not all was lost, however; the global pause allowed me to develop my coaching practice, Stay on Your Path, which became the solution to making money in Paris. I spent all of 2020 beta-testing my program while Sarah and I waited for the pandemic to subside.

Meanwhile, I intended to reconcile my estranged relationship with my 75-year-old mom but in January of 2021, a massive stroke got to her before I did. She was immediately rendered unresponsive, and I painfully watched her lie in bed for months, barely human, until her passing in July. I was deeply traumatized by how things ended between us, that for much of 2021, I was not my best self.

In April 2021, Sarah broke up with me. I precipitated the situation with some asinine behavior, but in connecting those dots with other selective dots about our relationship on a global level (not incorporating dots that were integral to my narrative), she was done. I reacted with venom, spurred by my abandonment issues, which were already triggered in full tilt by mom’s stroke.

It was a tumultuous first half of 2021…but this unfortunate series of events became the catalyst that reignited my Paris dream into reality. I started to draft a plan…

Paris, I Am Finally Coming

Fully aware that any Paris flat would be a third smaller than a two-car parking garage, I planned to compress my 52-year-old life into five medium-sized boxes. But out of five decades worth of stuff — books, files, photos, memorabilia, a massive comic book collection, DVDs, CDs, clothes, and such — what would make the cut?

I hired an organizer to help me purge. I held yard sales and online sales which were part revenue-generating, part pop-up museum, part exorcism, part wake, and celebration of life. The stories behind every item unpredictably triggered me and cathartically so.

An acquaintance named Jimmy showed up at one of the yard sales and introduced me to a book called Foolproof Visas, serendipitously facilitating the next tangible step in my Paris move. 

Francemortified

I assumed from old wives’ tales and past experiences dealing with French bureaucracy that getting my French visa would be out-of-reach complicated. Cajoled by Foolproof Visas and the marketing campaign about the author’s online course called Franceformation, and also assured that her approach to prepare my application was virtually guaranteed, (no way was I staying in America for another three to six months to re-start the process), in June, I signed up on the spot and sent her 1900 €.

I found her program courses crude and confusing. Seeking clarification was difficult to come by. I’d soon discover that there were many before me who had similar experiences. 

Lacking confidence in her intel’s accuracy, I had to fight through my disdain for doing mundane research and forced myself to obsessively peruse the internet as well as post questions on the Facebook expat pages; these were all things that I had wanted to avoid by purchasing her program. An expat named Virginia led me to TAIP, where the blog entries not only proved incredibly valuable, but the information was FREE.

In July, I made the leap and secured a visa appointment to submit my paperwork for a profession libérale visa. I wanted a September 24 appointment, but December 7th was the only date available, so, all logistics considered, I earmarked the end of January 2022 for my flight to Paris, which was six months out.

Forced into action, I set out to pursue the myriad of required documents. I spent hours writing a business plan for my coaching practice complete with modest projections and a SWOT analysis. I sought proof that I had potential sources of income in France. I obtained a background check from the FBI to verify my clean record. I obtained travel insurance. The whole process was anxiety-inducing.

Not only was I paranoid that I was handling it all wrong, I was also nursing a broken heart, and having already postponed my dream for a year and a half, six more months rotting in L.A. felt like an eternity.

I was, in fact, still emotionally and mentally unsettled about leaving. I was reluctant to release myself from secure (and hard-earned) opportunities of the present in exchange for vague (and uncertain) opportunities of the future, particularly as a fifty-two-year-old, brown-skinned Filipino-American male plunging long-term into a new culture with its own rules and language. Money was a serious concern in particular, having weaned myself from the film business to focus on my fledgling coaching practice.

To add to my endless checklist, I also needed to get my cat Maddey to Paris. An EU-compliant chip and a current rabies certificate were required as part of the USDA requirements of Maddey’s health certificate, the validity of which was tied to a ten-day window within my actual flight, the date of which was tied to the approval of my visa, the date of which was tied to both my appointment and to the whims of the French Consulate.

I started doing mock run-throughs with Maddey in my car to prepare her for a long twenty-hour day in her carrier and her first-ever plane flight.

With six months to go, I started my Goodbye L.A. Tour, meeting old friends while simultaneously paying homage to my favorite L.A. haunts while introducing them to my French homie Antoine, a Parisien who recently moved to Los Angeles from Paris (via Shanghai). Antoine would rapid-fire French at me, giving me moments of oh merde, it’s serious now.

I crammed in as much French as possible, anxious that I wasn’t acquiring French fast enough to be capable of deftly handling the French administration upon arrival. I read L’Equipe and Slate.fr articles; I’d listen to a podcast called Little Talk in Slow French and watched Dix Pour Cent episodes in French subtitles to refine my listening and pronunciation skills.

A month after booking my initial appointment, I checked the VFS site again to see if more dates were available, and voila, September 24 was possible!  

It was time to batten down the hatches. Instead of four months, I now had only a month to assemble all my documents before my visa appointment, and, assuming my visa would be approved, only two more months to tie every single loose end before my new life – my authentic path – would finally begin. I was already feeling quite raw, and now, an emotionally and logistically tumultuous period loomed ahead as Paris was becoming very real.

Photo was of me and my mother on Mother’s Day 2021.  

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weight loss

How I Moved to France and Lost 20 Pounds

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I’ve mentioned over the years that I lost weight when I moved to France, but I’ve never explained precisely how.  The truth is, it took me a while to figure it out, because “weight loss” wasn’t even on my radar when I moved here.

When I moved to France in 2013 I was heavier than I had been in my undergraduate days more than a decade earlier and definitely heavier than the leanest I’d ever been, when I graduated from boot camp with the United States Marine Corps.  But that weight gain happened so gradually that I really hadn’t noticed it.  A pound or two a year over years adds up, it seems.  Three months into my time living in France, twelve of those pounds had evaporated. Turns out that with all the other things I had going on in my new country, I hadn’t really noticed, as my first clue was when I went to OFII and they called out a weight when I stepped on the scale that didn’t seem right.  I stepped on it again to make sure, and yes, the equivalent of twelve pounds had disappeared.

Over the next three months another eight would go, mostly without my notice, though clothes that I had formerly “grown into” fit properly again, and I had to get a couple of suits altered that had accommodated the “old Stephen.”

The Secret

So, given that I didn’t go on a diet when I moved here, and in fact, I drink more wine, cook with more duck fat and butter, eat more cheese, more bread, more pastry, and more desserts than I’ve ever eaten in my life, something else was influencing these changes.

Portion Sizes

American portion sizes are unbelievable.  Americans are obsessed with paying low prices for food (but we have no problem spending a lot on cars and firearms) and this low price obsession also translates into wanting “good value for money” when we eat out.  If a big plate of food comes out and you don’t finish it, we have a culture of taking home leftovers and feeling even better about our night out (“free” meal for the next day).

We are also taught culturally that you should finish everything on your plate, because to do otherwise would be ungrateful.  While part of me accepts part of that sentiment, the culture then has to own that it should put a reasonable portion on the plate, not a portion that in France would easily serve two, sometimes three people.

We also eat our food in America very quickly, seeing mealtimes as less of an opportunity to relax and catch up on life and more of a tiresome task that has to be “accomplished” so we can move on to what really matters, which is watching Netflix or texting friends.

It doesn’t take a nutritionist to know that eating a lot of food quickly not only isn’t great for digestion, but expands your stomach to accept this as “normal” and then trains you to shovel more food into it in order to feel “full.”

In France we eat more slowly, so the stomach has enough time to send the message to the brain saying, “I’m full.”

In France the portion sizes are smaller, so you normally finish a meal content, not “in pain” because you “ate too much.”

In France meals aren’t tiresome tasks to dispose of efficiently, they are simple ways to celebrate seasonal pleasures.

Food Supply Chain

But even if you solve the portion size problem in America (an enormous, pun intended, cultural hurdle), you now are dealing with a Frankenfood-infected food supply chain.  If you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation you know that as one of the largest buyers of beef, chicken, lettuce, and tomatoes in America, McDonald’s indirectly decides what the rest of us eats, even if you don’t eat at the Golden Arches.  Farmers aren’t going to grow some lettuce for consumers and use another field for the lettuce they sell to Mac-Do, as it’s known in France.  The industrial choices that McDonald’s makes bleeds down into the supermarkets and consumers reach for produce that was genetically designed for long transportation and for shelf appeal.

Those industrial foods necessarily taste blander (one of the effects chronicled in Mark Schatzker’s aptly-named The Dorito Effect) and as a result Americans drown their sad, bland food in condiments, usually ranch dressing or hot sauce (and sometimes, both).

On that point, you’ll notice something curious if you sit down with some Americans for meals.  When their food arrives, they immediately add these condiments along with salt, pepper, etc.  Americans generally aren’t interested in how the food tastes on its own.  That doesn’t matter.  What matters is that they make the food taste like what they want it to taste like, which is apparently ranch and hot sauce flavored, much like the snack food that they eat incessantly.

In France seasonality is valued and celebrated, and when foods are in season you see them everywhere, from the farmer’s markets to the restaurant menus.

In France GMO crops are banned.

In France, the Big Snack Industrial Complex is making huge strides, but their “make potato chips taste like tomatoes and cheese” tricks are not yet wholly mainstream.

Snacking

Speaking of snacking, that’s simply not done here.  In America I snacked all the time, because it was culturally acceptable and facilitated.  I often tell the story of being at a gas station in Saint Louis around 11pm at night and going in to pay for the gas and smelling this wonderful aroma of cinnamon rolls.  No one has any business having a cinnamon roll that late at night, no matter how wonderful it might be.  But culturally that’s acceptable, so we all do it.

In France, it’s not culturally acceptable for adults to snack, so it’s not done.  Kids normally get a goûter around 16h00, but as they get older this custom goes away.  If you read Pamela Druckerman’s insightful Bringing Up Bebé you’ll find that this programming happens from infancy: babies are fed at set times, not “anytime they feel hungry.”

In France you don’t snack, because that would imply you were hungry, but you’re not hungry, because you are content and full from your last, leisured meal.

In France obesity is an oddity, causing you to stand out, and hence less culturally acceptable.

In France, one snack is allowed to kids per day, and ceasing to take this snack is part of their passage to adulthood.

Walking

This last benefit is Paris-specific, because once you leave the capital, or other towns like Lyon, Bordeaux, and Nantes, that have wonderful public transportation, you probably will own a car.  By contrast, car ownership is necessary for survival for the vast majority of Americans.

Indeed, whenever I have visited America in the last ten years the absurdity of this car obsession has been driven home to me as I run errands and watch my fellow Americans derive the only exercise of their day getting out of their car and going in and out of whatever buildings they visit.  The more disciplined ones may then drive to a building where they use a machine to run to nowhere, then get back in a vehicle to drive back to their home.  There is simply no “casual exercise” in the American way of life.  A car-dominated society leads to a culture that only exercises by choice, not by necessity.

Not so for the millions of people who live and work in Paris.  The overwhelming majority don’t own a car, and if they do, they don’t use it for their daily commute, because then they’d have to deal with traffic and parking, issues that only continue to get worse for drivers as Mayor Anne Hidalgo edges Paris into the top five of bike cities worldwide.  Instead, commuters hop onto their world-class public transportation network after having parked their car at one of those stations, and sleep, read, listen to music, watch a series or a movie, or occasionally, talk on the phone or with each other.  They then have to walk upstairs, downstairs, across stations, across streets.  My average day living in Paris (and I didn’t even have a commute!) always had a minimum of 5km of walking, and many days was easily 10km.

Walking a 10k every day means you don’t need a gym membership.  It also means that you, like your ancestors before you, didn’t need to do artificial exercises in order to stay “in shape.”  Those ancestors did so simply by living their daily lives.  Now, we’re not ploughing fields or working in the mines, but do you know what sort of weight loss revolution would happen in America if we had designed our cities and lives so that we walked even 3k a day, not for “fitness” but just to get about our days?

Instead we chose the nightmare chronicled by James Howard Kunstler in Home from Nowhere in which Americans drive by strip malls inhabited by Weight Watchers and Domino’s Pizza (sometimes next to each other) and then obsess over the next diet fad, sure that this time, it’ll be different.

In Paris, being outside and in sunshine and green space is coveted.

In Paris, parks are not places you drive to, but parts of your neighborhood.

In Paris, fitness isn’t something you have to pay a gym for, it’s just something you do every day by accident.

So, the cultural reasons why I gained those twenty pounds over the years while living in America are just as valid as the cultural reasons why I lost them all and am now at my “natural weight” here in France.

Culture is a great molder of minds and hearts and bodies.  Those cultures that have positive food cultures have positive health outcomes (it’s not solely genetics that leads to the Japanese — and Okinawans specifically — living so long).  Those cultures that have dire food cultures have negative health outcomes.  While my story is only my own and is hardly scientific research, it only takes a set of eyes to confirm that at least as far as food goes, we’re killing ourselves in America.

And in France, we’re not.

Photo by Samuel Ramos on Unsplash

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Moving to Moret (During a Lockdown)

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As I mentioned in my Why I Left Paris article, I never planned to leave Paris, and would not have known what a “lockdown” was if you had mentioned it to me prior to 2020.  But in May 2021 I found myself not just moving out of Paris, but doing so during our second lockdown.

Thankfully, this would be one of my easiest moves, not just because I’d previously lived in four apartments in Paris, but because, as always, things really fell into place.  I didn’t even bother to pay to change my address as so much of my French administrative life had become paperless by then.

Finding a Place

Finding an apartment in Paris was always a special challenge, but I assumed that finding an apartment outside of Paris would be much easier.  Wrong.

At first I checked with all the immobiliers (real estate agencies) in Moret.  There are about five, along with a community board near the town hall where you can see listings of apartments.  Unsurprisingly, not all of these immobiliers have websites or if they do, the sites aren’t updated with new listings.  I had to visit the town, look at the listings posted outside, and then make appointments to see apartments.

I managed to view at least two of them.  One was wonderful and perfect for me, but when I submitted my dossier, the owner had already accepted a new tenant without informing my agent, and I had to move on to the next prospect, which was far more dismal.  While viewing it I concealed my disappointment from Margot, the young girl who had shown me both apartments, and told her I would let her know whether I would apply within the coming week (I only took a couple of days to realize I couldn’t accept the layout of the new place, which would require guests to walk through my bedroom to access the only bathroom in the apartment).

Another immobilier requested that I turn in a dossier before I was even permitted to see the apartment.  The owner wasn’t satisfied with my means, and I confirmed by asking around that French landlords don’t really place any merit in your non-French assets and income: they might as well be science-fiction stories.  I’ve purposely kept my French business at a certain level of income, in part to avoid VAT, and as such its income seemed unimpressive to the owner.  A polite non was conveyed to me: I wouldn’t even be permitted to look at the apartment, thank you.

A bit discouraged, I started to expand my search to other nearby towns, including posh Fontainebleau, but even as I planned to stop by Fontainebleau to make the same blitz of immobiliers and their listings that I had accomplished in Moret, I hit upon an idea.

Airbnb Hosting

I had hosted hundreds of people over years in Paris as an Airbnb host (even becoming a Superhost) and personally knew that the market had dramatically shifted during the pandemic from tourists to French nationals.  I mused that the effect would have been even stronger in a “day trip” town like Moret and so I did a search of all the listings in Moret and studied their occupancy rates and most recent reviews.

One listing in particular seemed to suit me and I sent a message to the hosts, asking if they would consider a long-term rental.  I did this knowing as a fellow host that the tourist premium which causes a higher nightly rate had mostly vanished in the previous year and when it would precisely come back was unknown.  Why worry about now-uncertain short-term rental cash flow when you could have a reliable tenant?

My gambit paid off and the hosts agreed to meet me the following week to show me the apartment.  A charming penthouse at the top of a two-story townhome, located across the street from a church consecrated in the Middle Ages, the space was perfect for me, and I told the potential landlords so at once, refusing to play any sort of negotiating games.

Negotiating

I wanted a long-term lease right away, and they agreed to a three-year one.  My landlords-to-be were a young couple who had met on a work-abroad program in America, and they enjoyed switching between English and French while we worked out what was to be done with the furniture already in the space (I would move most of it downstairs to the shared cave, a giant unfinished community basement) and when the lease would start (I wanted to give my current landlady the maximum amount of notice, as I knew she planned to sell the apartment if I ever decided to move).  We eventually settled on May 1 and since we agreed to this at the end of January, I had about 90 days to pull off the move, plenty of time by Paris standards.

Selling

I started my adventure in Paris in 2013 in 6 square meters, then moved to 8 square meters, before a three-year stint in the 2nd, at what was then an enormous 39 square meters.  My last apartment in Paris, in the 19th, was 53 square meters and had two bedrooms, so a few things would need to go so I could fit into my new 23 square meter space in Moret.  Thankfully, the Internet helped, and I sold hundreds of euros of furniture, linens, and appliances on LeBonCoin, Facebook Marketplace, and Nextdoor.  Almost all of the buyers came to the apartment to pick up the items themselves.

In a city like Paris, there really is someone who wants pretty much anything decent you are selling (I even sold the planter boxes for my windows!).  The key to selling on these platforms is replying early and making an appointment with the potential buyer as soon as possible.  While the number of tire-kickers and those who will ghost you after showing a lot of interest is not insignificant, I had generally good experiences and sold 95% of what I wanted to, leaving the rest as “gifts” for the future owners of the apartment, who were likely to gut the place anyway (it seems everyone in France wants to completely makeover any apartment they buy).

Moving Day

I rented the largest moving truck I could find (I sold a lot of stuff, but I still had plenty of books and furniture that were going to come with me) and a couple of friends were kind enough to take a day off and help me load and unload the truck.  I finished up the following day on my own and then set about unpacking.  I had set up internet service and electricity weeks before so what remained was getting some shopping done (the markets are much bigger and feature cheaper pricing outside Paris) and taking a few walks around the town that was the center of my new French provincial life (one of my sisters, Clare, insists on referring to Belle’s song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to refer to my life now 🙂 ).

While all moves are tiring, I don’t think the momentousness of this move really hit until a week later, as during the move I was on autopilot knocking out tasks one after the other.  My previous Paris moves, believe it or not, had all been executed using the Métro, and all but one of them were pulled off solely with multiple suitcases.  I hadn’t acquired furniture and appliances until my most recent move to the 19th.

My French adventure was still continuing, but I had started a new, non-Parisian chapter.  I could still easily get into Paris 3-4 days a week (and have continued to do so) but I also appreciated being off in the countryside, by a river and a canal and a forest, in a town of 4,000 people.  Life is slower, less expensive, and friendlier.  My dry cleaner always wants to chat when I drop off shirts, and I dutifully wait outside while she catches up with other customers; I’ve even seen the local bus slow to a stop while the driver chats with a friend through his window for half a minute (or longer: no one honks at a bus).

But a near-decade of living in France meant that I had the experience to pull this off during a lockdown (which ended up causing no practical difficulties), by reverse-engineering Airbnb (because the “regular way” wasn’t working), while covering almost all of my moving costs by selling stuff I no longer needed (with just a little extra effort on my part others could find a good use for these items).  It was a dream exit to one of the happiest periods of my life.  Yet, a year on, I wonder if I haven’t entered an even happier one.

Photo is the east-facing view from my apartment in Moret.

Did you enjoy this article?  TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping.  If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated.  These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment.  Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

​​How to Get the APS (Autorisation Provisioire de Séjour) Visa in France

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When I first came to live in France in 2014, I originally planned on staying for one year as an au pair. One year quickly turned into 2.5 years with the same family, which turned into three more years at a French university. The first was an intensive 20-hour per week program to learn French, and the last two years were to complete my master’s degree. 

At that point, I knew that I wanted to stay in France for the long haul, but I was at a loss as to how to do so legally. I didn’t want to be a student anymore, but I also didn’t have any major job opportunities lined up yet, at least, not with a company willing to sponsor a work visa for me.

Enter: the Autorisation Provisioire de Séjour (APS) visa. This type of visa is basically an extension of a student visa after obtaining a higher education diploma. In other words, the perfect visa for someone like me! 

Requirements to obtain an APS visa

The APS visa allows foreign students in France to stay in the country for one year after they graduate for a variety of different reasons. If you’re granted the visa, you have all of the rights that you had as a student, which means you can keep that student job of yours in the meantime as well!

Here are the requirements to obtain an APS visa:

  • Graduated with a licence professionelle (an undergraduate degree)
  • Graduated with a master’s degree, or equivalent. This can include an engineering, political science, or accounting degree
  • Graduated with an undergraduate or master’s degree with the desire to open your own company in France

How to apply for an APS visa

There are two situations in which you can apply for an APS visa:

  • You need an extension on your student visa to finish your final exams
  • You need an extension on your student visa after you have already passed your final exams

You can apply for an APS visa with your local prefecture. As usual, you’ll have to come prepared with a pile of paperwork. 

If you need an extension to finish your final exams, get in touch with the prefecture at least 15 days before your visa expires. This type of extension is free. You’ll need to physically go to the prefecture with the following documents (don’t forget to make copies, too):

  • Official letter from your university stating the date of your final exams
  • Your passport
  • Your residence permit (carte de séjour — étudiant)
  • Proof of address less than three months old

If all goes well you’ll receive a récépissé de prolongation de droit au séjour en qualité d’étudiant, which will give you the right to stay in France until you’ve finished your exams. As a note, if you want to stay even longer once you’ve obtained your degree, you’ll have to follow the procedure below.

If you need an extension to look for a job after you’ve obtained your degree OR you want to open your own company in France, you also need to physically go to the prefecture before your visa expires. This type of extension costs 75 € in “timbres fiscaux.” You know what that is if you already have a visa to be in France. Bring the following documents (and those copies!):

  • Your passport 
  • Your residence permit (carte de séjour — étudiant)
  • Proof of address less than three months old
  • 3 photos
  • Your diploma
  • Proof of health insurance
  • If you hope to open a company in France, a business plan

If you have all of the correct documents, you’ll receive a récépissé while the prefecture goes over your application. If you’re approved, you’ll be called back to the prefecture to pick up your new APS visa!

What to do when your APS visa expires

When your APS visa expires and you’ve either obtained a job or created a French company, you’ll have to change your status and ask for a new residence permit. Here is what you’ll need to have accomplished in order to change your status and stay in France for even longer:

  • If you’ve landed a CDD (a contract for a set amount of time, for example, six months or one year) or CDI (a contract for an indefinite amount of time, also known as the Holy Grail in France), it must be validated by the DIRECCTE (Direction régionale des Entreprises, de la Concurrence, de la Consommation, du Travail et de l’Emploi — Regional Department of Competition, Consumption, Work, and Employment). You also must earn 1.5 times the minimum wage per month. If you meet these requirements you can apply for a “temporary employee” resident permit.
  • If you’ve created your company and can prove its viability, you can apply for a “temporary freelance entrepreneur” residence permit or a multi-year “freelance entrepreneur — talent passport” resident permit.
  • If you are a researcher and have landed a research gig, you can apply for a multi-year “researcher — talent passport” resident permit.

It’s important to note that if you do land a job or your company takes off that you change your status as soon as possible. Don’t wait until your APS visa expires! And, of course, if you haven’t obtained a job or opened your would-be company, you must leave France. 

As for me, I was lucky in that I met my now-husband by the time my APS visa ran out and I was able to change my status thanks to my relationship with a French person. I didn’t find a job with the requirements above, but I did open my own small business in France and officially became an auto-entrepreneur. I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t met my husband in the meantime, but believe me, I’m glad I did. The moral of the story is that if you have a desire to stay in France legally do some serious digging well before your current visa expires. There is usually a way to do so if you go through the correct processes and have a passion for paperwork.

Molli offers private consultation services which range from help with visas and adjusting to life abroad to Paris travel itineraries. Fill out the contact form to learn more.

Photo by Seyi Ariyo on Unsplash

Did you enjoy this article?  TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping.  If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated.  These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment.  Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

prof lib visa renewal

How to Renew a Four Year Profession Libérale Visa

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I always tell readers of the blog that getting a visa is usually much more challenging than renewing one, for the simple reason that for the former you are trying to prove to the French that something is at least plausible (this business will work, I am enrolled in this school, I am in a relationship with this person).  For the latter you are simply offering evidence that their original judgment was correct.

I remember how I felt in 2017 when I got a four-year card for the first time.  After three years of building my entire travel schedule for each year around a renewal, the idea of not seeing the immigration office for four years was a dream.  I said so at the time.

I’d like to say this article was four years in the making, but that isn’t true.  This is just the soonest I could write to tell you about a renewal.  And there’s not too much to say.

Below are a few key facts you should know about renewing your Profession Libérale Visa.

One Year Probation

All of us, when originally applying, are given a one-year visa (what attracts a lot of people to Passeport Talent is that it gives you the possibility of a four-year card to start).  With Prof Lib the French are using the “trust but verify” mentality: can you actually do what you said you could do in your original business plan?

Now, there’s nothing published on the internet from the French government about this (one of the many reasons this blog exists in the first place, to fill a gap of information), but if you don’t have a good first year, you are only going to get a one-year renewal, and are effectively on a sort of probation.  What does a “good first year” mean?

The French expectation is that your Prof Lib business does at least the SMIC, which at the time of this article is 1269€/month, or 15,228€/year.  For those who don’t know, SMIC is the nationally-established minimum wage.  The thinking in the French bureaucracy is, if you’re going to bother to start your own business, you should at least make the minimum wage.

Now, this doesn’t mean that if you have a “bad” first year you’ll lose your visa status.  If it’s very bad, you may.  Meaning, if you only bring in something like 2,000€ for the whole year, the French will consider this essentially a scammy method for you to stay in France, and without a wonderful explanation about how new clients are just around the corner or that you have had a major personal/professional issue, you will not get a renewal and will have to leave the country in 60 days.

But if it’s anything north of say, 12,000 € for the year, you have a decent chance of at least getting a one-year card, with the expectation that you make it above the SMIC the following year.  If it’s significantly above the SMIC, let’s say at 22,000 €/year or more, you have a good chance of getting a four-year card on your first renewal, as I did.

Renewing the Four-Year Card

Renewing the Four-Year Card follows the exact same process as obtaining it in the first place.  Your main evidence, apart from the usual proof of address, renter’s insurance, etc. will be your tax forms* and invoices.  The tax forms will be a shorthand for the health of your business and the person looking over your dossier can see in an instant your topline revenue and your take-home profit.

Many small businesses in France had an off year in 2020 (understandably) and it seems the authorities have been willing to give a pass on that year to pretty much everyone, as long as in 2021 there was an increase in revenues compared to 2020 and that there’s a through-line narrative from your previous years as well.

One reason I have seen people not get a four-year card for a few years was a lack of diversity of clients.  If you only have one whale client and no others, the French consider your business very fragile.  This doesn’t mean you need to have dozens, you just can’t have only one or two and expect them to necessarily sign off on a four-year card.

The big difference for me this time from 2017 was that instead of going to the big Paris prefecture I had come to know through two different visa classifications and three renewals, I would be going to Melun because of my recent move to the Seine-et-Marne department (77).  It would be a completely new experience for me, but that experience turned out to only differ in Covid-19 restrictions pushing a security guard out front to forbid entry to any people not already cleared on a list.

Two Complications (That Weren’t Really Complications)

I went for my appointment in September 2021 with the thought that surely I would get a new card before my planned three-month visit to the United States which would begin in January 2022.  That didn’t end up happening.

Yet, I wasn’t worried insofar as I had traveled without my residence card during the pandemic (because the card had been stolen and I didn’t want to pay to replace it) and the US authorities, which guarded the border I was focused on crossing next, didn’t care about my status in another country.

The récépissé I was given had a six-month validity, which was double the length I had been used to in the past, but I didn’t actually expect them to use that entire time. I thought to mitigate this by getting a new récépissé before leaving, but since you cannot apply for a new récépissé unless it’s 60 days from expiration, with a 17 March expiry that meant I couldn’t apply for a new one until 17 January, when I would already have been in America two weeks.  I found this out the hard way when they cancelled my appointment to get a new récépissé the morning of that appointment with an “ineligible” note in the cancellation.

As you can see from the featured image for this article, the date of my new card is from 31 January of this year, but it wasn’t until 23 February that I received the text message from the government that I was welcome to pick up my new card and could I please bring a fiscal stamp to cover the 225 € it cost them to make it (you can purchase said stamp here; what a world of difference from 2014 when I bought a bunch of stamps at the tabac!).  You still need to make an appointment to pick up the residence card, and while I’ve heard that’s been hard to do lately in Paris, in Melun they had plenty of slots for me to book.  So from start to finish, it was six months from when I showed up for my renewal to when I could pick up a new card.

So the complications were:

  1. I didn’t have my residence permit: all I had was a police report which stated that my residence permit had been stolen.  I had carried that around while traveling for the last couple of years.  As I’ve shared elsewhere, I’ve come to realize that you need your residence card for exactly zero things in France and carrying it around only risks adding one more headache if your wallet is lost or stolen.  Keep it at home.  If and when you do need to show “ID” your passport will always win and if you want you can always store a picture of the front and back of the card in the cloud.  And as I told someone recently who worried that having her passport with her new visa sticker inside stolen invalidated her visa: your right to live in France lives inside the French bureaucracy, on a computer, not in your passport/residence card.
  2. My récépissé would expire on 17 March, but I wasn’t due to land in France until 1 April.  I knew the system well enough to know that I could flash my expired récépissé, with the text message, with the convocation that I had printed out to pick up the CDS, IF I was asked.  What happened at the French border?  Was I asked for my vaccination status?  No.  Was I asked for a PCR test?  No.  He asked me to remove my mask and stamp, I was in, just like old times.  As I often say: be prepared for the French to ask for everything, but realize they may not ask for anything.

So, like I said, there were two complications that weren’t really complications.

Today I picked up the card and voila, here’s the article explaining what you need to do to renew the card.

Now some of you may be thinking…wait, Stephen didn’t you take the A2 test last year so that you could get your ten-year card?  Yes.  But I also realized then that this was the last piece of the Prof Lib story I hadn’t told.  That if you had gotten a Prof Lib, renewed it, and gotten a four-year card, you would need to renew one more time before you were eligible to apply for a ten-year card (at least five years of fiscal residency)  Part of why I started this blog in the first place was to give information that isn’t out there, and I don’t think there’s an article on renewing a four-year card, so here it is, as brief as it might be.  I figured I could wait a bit before moving on with my own next step to put together an article with this info.

Related to a willingness to wait to apply for my next big status upgrade in France is that I’m no longer in a rush.  The pandemic has proven to me that residence gives you 99% of the privileges of citizenship, at least in France, as I was able to come and go as I pleased, and was even eligible for personal and business aid from the government.

When I first moved here, I was in a hurry to get citizenship, as I was under the delusion that the French were looking for any excuse to deport me at any moment, whether I mispronounced a word or forgot a piece of paper in my dossier.  Ten years have shown me the naïveté that that was and I try to pass on a sense of calm to people who hire me to consult with them or who take my courses**.  Citizenship is no guarantee that you won’t lose your rights (ask the Americans of Japanese descent what their citizenship meant in America after Dec 7, 1941, or what happened to people of a certain race in France the following year, in 1942) and the term “permanent resident” is a misnomer for the vast majority of resident visas worldwide: almost all require some kind of residence over some period of time, and then need to be renewed…not exactly “permanent” by any definition.

Just realize you’re going to be a foreigner in France for at least a while, and get comfortable with the “odd” feeling of being a long-term guest.  You may be kicked out at any time, but rest assured, it’s not going to be because you forgot a piece of paper in your dossier, and in fact, it’s not likely to happen at all.

What’s next for me, of course, is citizenship and/or a ten-year card.  Stay tuned; I’ll keep you in the loop and try to provide a template you can follow, as always.

I am certainly happier than the photo would indicate, but as you may know, you are not permitted to smile in official French photos. 🙂

*I don’t know how many times I have to say this: you MUST FILE TAXES if you live in France, even if you don’t earn any income in France!  I know it’s not told to any of us when we get here by the French government (I only learned, as I’ve learned so many important bits of information over the last decade, due to the newsletters of Jean Taquet), but your proof of filing taxes every year are the most important documents you must have if you ever want to apply for a ten-year carte de resident or for citizenship.

**Anyone who charges more than 1000 € to help you get a profession libérale status is probably running a scam.

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moving to Paris

Why I Moved to Paris and How I Made It Happen

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If you’d like to learn a bit more about Alexa you can click here.

During the first lockdown I was living alone in Princeton, New Jersey, and when the opportunity to move to Upstate New York presented itself, I took it without hesitation. I expected to be part of a creative and supportive group of friends, inclusive, and fun. My experience in that area was, to be polite, different.

I can appreciate that people move thousands of miles to live in the Hudson Valley and find what they’re looking for. Yet, despite our similar goals, there was little compatibility between me and them. If I had stayed, I would’ve melted into oblivion.

It turns out Paris is what I wished New York could have been.

A Time to Search and a Time to Give Up As Lost

I had the summer off from work in 2021, right as France reopened their borders. I needed change, so I called a friend living in Paris and asked for her insider knowledge. “Is it actually safe there?” She was very reassuring. Remember, at this point during the pandemic, traveling was taboo. But I made up my mind and got in touch with her friend who rents out his studio to visitors in Montmartre. I could stay for the entire month, so I booked my flight.

From idea to reality, it was about two and a half weeks until I arrived in France.

Unsurprisingly, I wanted to move here as soon as I arrived. I chalked it up to being whimsical or naïve, but it was like going to a pet store and saying, “I’m just looking.” I should have known better since that was how I ended up with my childhood dog (RIP Julie).

It wasn’t my first time toying with the idea of moving to France either. Five years earlier, I was living in Turin and took a bus to Paris for the weekend. I wanted to stay forever. It rained the whole time, but I only saw sunshine — it was le coup de foudre. Love at first sight. In retrospect, I wasn’t ready then, so I didn’t take it seriously.

An integral part of why I fell in love this time had to do with old friends from the States living close by in Montmartre. Days before I arrived, they moved to an apartment down the street from where I would be. I was immediately embraced by them and their friends.

From Day One, (Unlike New York for Me), It Was Easy to Love and Be Loved in Paris

One day, at the aforementioned friend’s house, she starts telling me about a situation needing figuring out. Her friend across town was away visiting family and needed someone to feed her goldfish. Unfortunately for this fish, his secondary caretakers were also going to be away longer than he could stand without food. I was available that weekend, so I offered to take care of Harald the fish for this girl I’d never spoken to before. I got her key and number, and she gave me the rundown of how to take care of him and his tank.

I found it all kinds of comical and wanted to see this girl who I’d met through a fish, so we made dinner plans for when she returned to Paris. We didn’t need much of an introduction, despite having never met before in person.

I should mention that on my way to her place while grabbing moelleux au chocolat and berries for dessert, I settled in my heart that I wanted to stay permanently. I was going to take it seriously this time. Walking down the steps to Lamarck-Caulaincourt I remember begging God to let me live here. I guess that prayer worked because it was this dinner that officially started it all.

A Time to Keep and a Time to Throw Away

She mentioned to me that her friend was in need of a sublessor for her apartment for a year starting in October and that I should take it. Of course I was interested, but it came down to impossible timing. Although I did text a friend back in the States to see if anyone in his group could take over my lease in New York, I would need to get my documents in order, find remote work, apply for a long-stay visa, and obtain said visa in two or three months. Plus, I’d already agreed to return to the family I was working for in the autumn. If I was going to do this, I wasn’t about to burn bridges and leave everyone in a dramatic tizzy.

I came away from this conversation knowing two things:

  1. what was out there for me
  2. where I was wanted

To be sure of the second, I wanted further evidence. Was this a casual or halfhearted invitation? For months I kept my eye out for proof that I found the kind of friendships I’d been looking for, being careful not to project my own hopes and ideas onto them.

My first tip came in August, a month after I left France. I was on a bus in Croatia looking out of the window wondering: Would I be supported in this move? Would I be a burden? I wanted clarity, and soon clarity would come. When my phone connected to WiFi that afternoon, I noticed a missed call from a French number I didn’t know accompanied by a text which read “Just wanted to say welcome.” I was stunned, not only by the sweet sentiment, but by the impeccable timing.

We share mutual friends, and she was under the impression that I had already moved to France. Nevertheless, it showed me what I needed to see.

A couple of months later I found cheap tickets from New York to Paris and went for a weekend in November to visit friends (yes, a weekend trip is possible.)

I wanted further proof that I wasn’t forcing this move, but rather that it was organic and healthy. I arrived, was invited to meet people the next day, and stumbled upon the last and final piece of evidence. I had met everyone that evening, but it was like we’d known each other for years. It felt like home. I was being encouraged to move and reassured everything would work out. It wasn’t empty words either. My friend who I was visiting offered to let me stay with her long-term until I got on my feet. She was willing to host me and prepare all the documents necessary. She went above and beyond anything I could have ever expected, even ordering me a SIM card for my arrival.

A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot What Was Planted

The process of applying for a tourist visa was actually quite easy. I can’t say what it was like pre-Covid because I never looked into it. During the pandemic the timeline of events went like this:

  1. Submit the visa application form online
  2. Make an appointment with the nearest VFS
  3. Gather the following documents:
  • visa application and checklist
  • copies of my passport and license
  • three months of bank statements (I also included my meager 401k and volatile crypto investment accounts)
  • proof of additional income (from June 2021 until June 2022 I will receive $500 of guaranteed income per month, so I included this letter in my file)
  • proof of employment (I had my company write a stamped letter stating my salary)
  • expat health insurance (WorldTrips was quick and easy, they also provided me a confirmation of coverage in French upon request)
  • a sworn statement that I would not take up employment in France
  • visa cover letter explaining why I wish to come to France, including my intentions to return to the US
  • Attestation d’hébergement (including my friend’s lease and copy of her passport)

If you purchase the special VIP package with VFS like I did, they will make high-quality copies for you along with taking your picture for the biometric visa. I came prepared with my own photo to be on the safe side, but in the end I didn’t need it.

I researched for months which extra documents I thought they wanted, read countless blog articles (including TAIP), and called friends of friends of friends to learn every detail. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to calm down and follow the simple checklist included in the visa application. That’s all they required.

Due to the pandemic, all consulates are closed, so the visa application center (VFS) has taken over. They are incredibly nice, but it’s worth mentioning they have no influence over whether your application is accepted or not. Their job is to organize your file, make sure it has all the needed documents, take your biometrics, and send it along to the embassy.

Still, I was stressed out on the day of my appointment. I was having these irrational fears that they would take one look at me and think “I don’t like your face” and dismiss me without taking my file. That didn’t happen. The process was painless. They even took me before my scheduled appointment time. I believe it was 30 minutes from start to finish.

My appointment was on Friday the 14th of January and my Long Sejour Temporaire 12-month visa was delivered on Wednesday the 26th of January. 12 Days in total.

A Time to Embrace

I’ve been here nearly three weeks, and I’ve landed a new job, a roommate, and beautiful friends. All in all, I’ve found what I was looking for.

I brought what could fit in my Osprey backpack, a carry-on, and a personal item. I donated everything I owned, minus some sentimental furniture I left with my grandparents. It was worth it.

Forgetting the Things Behind and Stretching Forward to the Things Ahead

Next on the agenda is finding a permanent apartment and figuring out how to change my visa type for my new job.

But I’ll save all that for a future article.

Photo was taken while vintage shopping in Les Halles.

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An Expat Discussion of CSS vs Mutuelle

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A note from the authors: In these articles, we (Molli — MS and Gracie — GB) have a conversation about a topic that’s familiar to both of us. In addition to providing information, our aim is to explore it from two different angles and give you a more in-depth view of the complexities of French life and the expat experience.  To get the most benefit, make sure you read our previous articles explaining CSS and mutuelles.

GB: Since moving to France, I’ve been both impressed and mystified by the French healthcare system. For a long time, I assumed everyone’s carte vitale was a magical debit card that paid all their medical expenses. Eventually, I learned that this isn’t the case and that many French people also have a mutuelle which acts as additional health insurance. My American perspective is to assume health care plans are linked to employers, so I figured a mutuelle had to come from a full-time job at a French company, and since I arrived in France on a specifically non-working visa, none of these options felt accessible to me. What were your first impressions of the French healthcare system, Molli? Did you have someone to help you avoid my misconceptions?

MS: I had a similar perspective as you! I think that in the U.S. there’s this big narrative around the fact that yes, health care is free in most other countries, but that it means low-quality care, long wait times, and old-fashioned hospitals and healthcare centers. I was also shocked to find out that the “free” health care so bragged about here isn’t actually free.

The first time I had to go to the doctor or hospital was when I was still an au pair. I cut my thumb on some broken glass and when the cut got infected my host dad took me to the hospital. I was pleasantly surprised at the normal wait times, friendly doctor, and standard hospital equipment that I was used to seeing in the US Yet another stereotype bit the dust that day. 

That said, one stereotype did come true that day, and it was the fact that health care here is extremely affordable albeit not free. You definitely don’t have to worry about going bankrupt if you end up in the emergency room and you don’t have a carte vitale, which I didn’t at the time. I was on some special au pair insurance that my host family had set me up with. If you’re wondering what a carte vitale is, think of it as a healthcare card similar to the insurance cards in the US. You use it at the doctor’s office, pharmacy when you pick up prescription drugs, and at the hospital. It also has your French social security number on it, as well as your name and picture.

I actually didn’t get my first carte vitale until I opened my auto-entreprise three years after I had been living in France. Interestingly enough, I should have been given one automatically when I began the intensive French language program I began after I decided to stop nannying, as all students are part of France’s social security system (which includes the carte vitale). But, in true French bureaucratic fashion, halfway into the school year I still wasn’t issued one. Luckily, I decided to start my auto-entreprise while I was still a student. 

I also had never heard of the concept of a mutuelle, and naively thought that I could go to any sort of doctor or specialist for free. I have since learned that if you have to go to the dentist, eye doctor, or physical therapist and you don’t have this extra coverage, things can get really expensive. Gracie, do you have extra coverage now that you understand the system better? And, speaking of which, when and how did you start to wrap your head around how everything works?

GB: Yes, I have extra coverage through complementaire sante sociale (CSS) in addition to a carte vitale. Having both of those together means the French government pays for most of my healthcare which makes me feel amazing and lucky. That said, it did take about a year and a half of filing paperwork and waiting to get the whole thing in place. And to qualify for a CSS, you have to be making very little money so I’m not sure if it will be a permanent solution, especially since you have to reapply each year. As with all French bureaucracy, they don’t make it easy. 

I started to wrap my head around how everything works after being in France for about two years.  I’d always assumed that I had to be a French citizen or have a more permanent visa (at the time all I had was a long-term visitor visa), but that wasn’t correct. France is actually fairly lenient about including immigrants in its healthcare system, and all you have to do is prove that you’re living in France in a “stable and regular manner.” This means you do not have to be born in France, married in France, or even working in France to register. It does mean you do have to have spent at least three months in the country and have a valid titre de séjour. 

This was one of those classic –– why didn’t anyone tell me this –– revelations. From there, I learned more from the assurance maladie office which told me I could apply for a permanent number and a carte vitale after I was PACSed and had a VPF visa. My primary care physician was also extremely helpful and advised me to apply for the CSS in the first place.

What about you — were there any specific moments or people who illuminated this process for you? And once you were in the French system, what made you decide to get additional coverage?

MS: It seems like I’ve had to just figure out everything as I go ever since I arrived in France. In all seriousness, when I was an au pair, my host family was very helpful, but almost too helpful because my host parents took care of almost everything for me, including a lot of paperwork. Once I became a student and was no longer living under their wing, a lot of things came as a shock and there was a massive learning curve!

I was really hesitant to get a mutuelle because up until very recently I had the mentality of “I’m healthy, I’m young, I’ll never have to go to the hospital, and I don’t want to spend the money on something I’ll never use.” And, until I was 26 and still under my parent’s insurance back in the States, I saved my yearly dentist and eye doctor appointments for when I went home to visit. 

My French mother-in-law actually pushed me to finally get a mutuelle. Since I’m turning 30 this year, it was about time, and ultimately I’m happy I took the plunge into the world of paying for my own healthcare. I pay around 30 € per month, and most of my prescription drugs are covered as well as the dentist and the ophthalmologist (I wear glasses and contacts). I have to admit, there’s something so sweet about going to the pharmacy and picking up medicine for free!

My last question for you about the CSS is, do you have the same coverage as someone like me who has a mutuelle? Or, are there things that I have access to and you don’t? 

GB: I’m pretty sure my CSS has the same coverage as a mutuelle, if not more. Although I haven’t taken it to every possible doctor, the documentation says it reimburses most glasses, prosthetics, and hearing aids, as well as all visits to the doctor, dentist, and hospital. I wear insoles and have been meaning to see my podiatrist about those, and I’m assuming that’s covered as well. I also have lofty ambitions to work with a kinesiologist and would love it if that was reimbursed since I know it’s only partially covered by the normal medical system. 

My admittedly American approach is to show up to any doctor, assume it will cost hundreds of euros, and be pleasantly surprised that it’s significantly cheaper than in the US. That said, the medical system here is much more transparent about costs –– all doctors post their fees on their website and in their offices, and they will explicitly tell you how much a procedure is and if you’ll be covered when discussing it with you. My dentist wanted to x-ray my teeth and told me it would only be partially reimbursed –– the x-rays cost 50 € and I’d get back 60%. The total cost was laughably small, especially since I used to pay $300 to have my teeth cleaned. That said, I’m grateful she had the conversation with me and wish the American medical system had the same transparency.

We hope this has been a helpful discussion of our experience with the French medical system. Feel free to comment with any questions or health insurance adventures of your own.

Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Did you enjoy this article? TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.