On Living Two Lives

Posted by Emily Gift

I’ve heard of people going back home after living abroad for a while and feeling self-conscious, out of place. As if they can no longer relate to the people from their hometown. It’s isolating, I imagine, to feel disconnected from the people and the place that witnessed their formative years.

For me, going back home for the first time since expatriating was disorienting, but I had a different experience.

Stepping back onto the soil I knew so well — the smells of Texas, the long stretches of overpasses that led to shopping plazas or nothing at all, and that heat, my God, that heat — transported me back to my adolescence.

This was the town I hit puberty in. The town where I first learned what it was to like someone so much it hurts. The town where I spent almost all my weekends at the age of fourteen at the roller rink. The same town that I knew like the back of my hand — I could still drive the same mindless routes to the superstores that my friends and I wandered around in when we had nothing better to do (and in the suburbs we almost never had anything better to do).

This was the town that I hated, that I so badly wanted to flee from, the town I associated with boredom, ignorance, bigotry. I remember so vividly feeling like an alien on my home planet.

But also, it was the town that raised me. I thought I always knew there was life outside of Katy, Texas but I didn’t really get to experience it and truly understand everything that it encompassed until I left for a while.

When I came back home for the first time I was awoken, rather briskly, by the realization that there was this other person inside of me, one that walked with her chin held high and in a confident posture. I felt unafraid of the world.

Because in Texas, I have no shame. These people don’t impress me. They don’t intimidate me. I know them for who they are — so easily placeable in a tight, little box. Film bro, sorority girl, liberal, conservative, someone who gets me, someone who doesn’t.

I’m the funniest when I’m at home. The most reckless. I have no care in the world. I’m happy, I’m generous, I speak up for myself effortlessly.

In Paris, another less familiar, less well-acquainted side comes out. I’m shy. My self-advocacy is easily thrown out the door. It’s something I have to think about. Put energy into. Relearn every day.

I’m drawn into myself. I’m self-conscious. I can come off as mean. I like to think it’s because I’m protecting myself, but really, it’s because of all my nerves and how scared I am. How hard it all is.

So at first, I was shocked and also liberated to come home and release this lighter, funnier, kinder version of myself into the spotlight again. I exhaled, so incredibly relieved. I am layered. I am complex. I am not this way, or that. No one can fit me in a box because I’ve moved away from that possibility of being stuck there for too long.

And finally it all starts to make sense — I am nice, I am adventurous, I am brave — moving to Paris, becoming an expat has made me believe I was one way, it hardened me, convinced me I’d be like this forever, but my life here is just starting out. Of course I’m acting like this. Of course all I can think about are the differences between home and here. There’s still so much room for my life to change.

I feel immensely fortunate to have been struck by this sense of duality. While I know fear and anxiety well, I also know assurance, confidence, comfortability. Not everyone gets to feel these things. I am so lucky to have two lives, one that can nourish the other while in pain. One that discovers something that helps revitalize the broken side of myself. Not everyone has this same experience being an expatriate and I will always count my lucky stars for this.

And I’m not saying I felt this ease and comfort right after I stepped off the eleven-hour plane ride. I remember initially wincing at the loudness of public spaces. The airport, coffee shops, malls. I’d cover my ears and buckle down — bracing myself for all that noise. It was the first time I truly recognized how loud Americans tended to be.

But eventually I embraced it. I rejoiced in it. These are my people. My silly, ignorant, superficially sweet people.

I learned to collect the noise, open my heart up to it, and embrace that cafe culture in America wasn’t just about working on your laptop. It was also about eavesdropping too.

I learned to feel completely and utterly at peace. Despite all the noise. Because while I know people can sometimes feel lost going back home, I felt revitalized.

Photo by Roberta Guillen on Unsplash

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people walking past paintings in the Louvre, Paris

You Have to Make Your Life

Posted by Emily Gift

Having to stand up for myself in a country where I’m trying to establish the rest of my life has been no easy feat.

A thin layer of perspiration has formed and now permanently coats my face simply because I’m trying to work up the nerve to ask a follow-up question.

Standing up for myself takes everything out of me. It takes all my guts.

And yet, I still decide to get up every morning and do it again. And again. And again.

When I’m lying on my bed at night, thinking about what little ground I’ve covered, yet how much energy I’ve used to defend my honor, I’m struck, asking myself the question: When does one learn to do this? When does one learn how to stand up for themselves? Because I think I might’ve missed the memo.

As children, it’s our parents’ job to be our biggest advocate. Defend our rights. Speak to our needs.

During adolescence, we often wade in a state of constant humiliation, so much so that it feels like we’re drowning in it. We’re barely hanging on. Dogging-paddling to stay afloat. We couldn’t care less about fighting for our rights, what we deserve, we’re living day-by-day and our friends are our safety floats.

Then one day we wake up and come to the jarring realization that we’re the adults now. It seems as if we’ve just been living as passerbys to our own lives until suddenly we’re thrown into the wild, taught to fight it out, and see if we come out alive.

In adulthood we’re confronted with the desire to carve out a life of our own. And if you want to do that — to make your own life — it means getting used to confrontation and passive-aggressive responses and learning to be your biggest protector.

When I moved to Paris in my early twenties, my question changed in accordance with my new context. Having to deal with bureaucracy, confrontations on the street, and landlords all in a foreign language on a foreign land, I wondered, “But who stands up for us?” I felt that someone should.

Sticking up for myself within a new identity became an even bigger challenge, yet increasingly vital.

Initially, I relied on handling administrative tasks in a group effort, surrounded by my closest expat friends. This way, if we worked together, chainlinked our arms around one another’s, no one could take us down.

One thing led to another and the group eventually did collapse.

Someone would ask for a raincheck the day we planned to meet up and check things off our to-do lists, so we’d take it as a sign to put our tasks off for another week. Another would fill our souls with hope by promising to look into something for the group and relay their findings. In the end, they’d never get around to it.

Relying on others to help cushion the embarrassment by being there with you when you fall from grace is undeniably nice, but it also tends to be a huge waste of time.

I even tried relying on my boyfriend for this sort of support, telling myself that once he got home from work he would sit by my side and help me as I called CAF. When he would come home, we’d make dinner while listening to music or turn on the TV in the guise of just wanting to watch the news for a few minutes, then like magic, a movie would switch on and we’d get sucked in.

We always told each other tomorrow. Tomorrow is when we’ll spend countless hours on hold together.

The thing is, time moves slowly when you’re always waiting on others.

I watched as people made their own lives around me. Big things were happening to people. Law school. Jobs in fields that nourished them and some that even paid them well. Marriage. An evolving social status.

It felt like nothing was happening to me. People were moving around me, things were moving around me, but I wasn’t. I was stuck in the middle of a whirlwind.

I was with one of my expat friends at the Musée de l’Orangerie, wandering around the Berthe Weill exhibit and reading about her legacy and the kind of life she led in Paris. I remember feeling low at the time. Bad news kept toppling onto my lap. Yet again, I was passing nights lying on my bed, questioning everything. The central one being: why am I here? Every bright light at the end of the tunnel seemed to be misleading. Caveats adorned everything I pursued, ultimately preventing me from simply living in the city where I wished to be. I couldn’t feel any relief. But then I saw this quote plastered above some of Weill’s collection and a smile couldn’t help but creep upon my face. My stomach felt warm. My giddiness started to rise.

“I started out with just 50 francs in hand and went into debt to pay the costs involved in opening a shop. Obviously, the situation wasn’t ideal, but I couldn’t back out now. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? Not being able to hang on? I WILL HANG ON!” – Berthe Weill

Be brave. Do the thing. Bear the challenge. If anything, it won’t wear you down; you’ll wear it.

In the end, I sucked it up. I put on my big girl pants, and I learned how to fight for my life and how to find pride in saying that I made it my own. Learning to stick up for yourself in a “ce n’est pas possible” culture is not my kind of fun. In fact, I used to take offense to it. With nearly every interaction, I have to fight for what I want. As an American, having arguments, even little ones, doesn’t just brush off my back. I don’t call that an interaction. I call that a dispute, and it makes me feel icky. They stick with me. I feel ashamed, or if I’m lucky, I learn to think of the other person as evil.

Here, it’s almost like a game. Oh, you want something? You’re gonna have to beg me for it.

I now treat it as such. Once I crack the code and win the game, receiving what is rightfully mine, I become overjoyed. It’s made the reward feel even better. It’s turned it into a testament to my wit, my charm, my insatiable persistence.

Still, I find it demanding to stick up for myself and fight for what is rightfully mine, but I’m happy to say that I try to take it less seriously these days. Laughing more about it helps. What do you mean it’s not possible to do something that is very clearly possible?

In doing the hard work, I’ve felt a strange conglomeration of feelings: being absolutely on my own, yet feeling powerful because of it. I’ve learned, reluctantly, that I can’t wait and sit back and watch how my other expat friends have done it or wait till my French boyfriend can help me.

If I want things to happen for myself, I need to make them happen. And in the meantime, regardless of what will happen with my life, I WILL HANG ON!

Photo by Diogo Fagundes on Unsplash

My Journey to France Part 2

Posted by Molli Sébrier

In case you missed Part 1, I’m sharing my unique journey from I’ll-never-live-abroad to nearly-10-years-in-France-and-counting.

I’m often asked how I did it — and while several of my articles on TAIP touch on how I’ve been able to stay, I wanted to write it all out in a way that could be copied by anyone reading. Okay, maybe not anyone. It took a lot of hard work to build my life here in France, and it isn’t over yet. I’ll be starting my journey to citizenship next, which promises to be full of paperwork and even more determination.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Below I’m picking up where I left off on Part 2: I was an au pair, didn’t want to continue on as an au pair, but didn’t want to go back to the US just yet. Here’s how I figured out a way to stay.

Back to School, It Is

I was always one of those people who said, “Never again!” after finishing my undergrad. It wasn’t that I didn’t like school — on the contrary, I’ve always enjoyed learning — but I was sick of papers and tests and all of the other coursework that went along with it.

Famous last words. As I finished up my second year as an au pair, I didn’t have many options other than the easy-to-obtain student visa. I decided I wanted to get my master’s degree. Public education is cheap here and I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t. This time, however, I was going to study something I was actually interested in, not something that would lead to a job one day.

I settled on French Literature. I’ve always loved reading and writing and I figured I might as well study the greats while I was in the city where many of them worked and lived. The only wrench in my plan? I still, after 2.5 years, could not speak or read French. In my defense, I came over here only knowing the basics, and as an American au pair, I was required to speak English with the children I took care of. At this point, I knew could understand about 75% of what was said to me, but I couldn’t speak back. It was a combination of a lack of vocabulary and confidence.

What’s more, I knew I wanted to go to a public school (again, cheap), and to do so as a foreigner I had to have a certain level of French, with a certificate to prove it. So, I looked around for some programs that would meet the student visa requirement of 20 hours per week. I found two: one at the famous La Sorbonne and one at the also famous Université Nanterre. I missed the deadline for La Sorbonne so that left me with Nanterre.

I applied, got in, looked for housing (and found the deal of a lifetime: I traded 10 hours of English lessons per week for a 9m2 sardine box in the sky), went back to America for a few weeks, got my student visa, and returned to home to Paris. Back to school, I went.

(Finally) Learning the Language

And so began my year-long journey to learning French. I loved my program — and recommend it to anyone who wants to live here long-term — I was the only Anglophone and so the only common language my classmates and I had was (broken) French. Our teachers also insisted that we speak in French instead of our native language. It was difficult, but it also felt like the best place to do it. Everyone had an accent, and everyone was trying to learn.

I met some very kind people, finally learned French, and also discovered more about French culture. We went on field trips in Paris and the Île-de-France region and ultimately all became quite close. Spending 20+ hours per week together will do that.

With my B2 certificate in hand, I was finally ready to apply for my master’s. I still wanted to study French Literature, and so started to look at those kinds of programs. I had a couple of informational interviews at various universities in town, before sitting down with one guidance counselor in particular.

She looked over my resume and experiences and asked why I didn’t want to study English Literature instead of French. At this point, I had started dabbling in freelance writing and had indicated that on my CV, and well…the whole “native English speaker” thing. I told her it felt silly to come all the way to France only to study English. Mais non! she assured me, and encouraged me to look into English Literature programs instead.

The meeting piqued my interest, and soon the curse of the missed deadline struck again — but it was for the best. Nanterre University, where I completed my French course, had a bilingual English Literature master’s program. Because I was already in their system, it was very easy to apply. I was accepted almost immediately (again, native English speaker), paid my tuition (400 € for the year), and began.

I loved my teachers, loved my program, and bonded with my peers. No, I never wanted to go back to school, but completing my master’s at a French public university was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I’ll never regret it.

But Wait, I Don’t Want to Leave

After my two-year program, spoiler alert, I still wasn’t ready to go home. I met my now-husband about halfway through year one and things had gotten very serious very quickly, in true French dating fashion. We were making serious plans for the future. But…what about my visa?

I obtained the APS visa, which gives you a year to look for work after you graduate from a French institution. I did look for a job but I knew I wanted to work in English (even to this day I can’t write in French beyond simply texting), and finding a job that aligned with that was difficult. I had no issue finding Anglophone clients, but there wasn’t a need for full-time English writers in Paris — or at least, the jobs that I found didn’t pay very well.

The APS visa was quickly running out, so what’s a girl in a relationship with a French person to do? The marriage conversation happens. I’m lucky that I was with someone who I knew I wanted to spend my life with, visa issue or not. So, we made plans to quickly marry at the town hall so that I could obtain the vie privée et familiale visa.

Long story short, I did get that visa and so my future in France was secured for life. I’m not saying that everyone needs to meet a French person and marry them in order to stay here (indeed, there’s an entire shady trade in this which we may write about in the future) — there are a lot of other options out there including the profession libérale visa, or even a long-stay visitor visa if citizenship isn’t important — but in my unique situation, my husband is the reason I was allowed to stay.

That’s the gist of it — a couple thousand words on my journey to France. I hope it will serve as inspiration for anyone else who may find themselves thinking, but wait, I don’t want to leave too.

Photo by Salomé Watel on Unsplash

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My Journey to France, Part 1

Posted by Molli Sébrier

I’ve lived in France on and off since 2014. I’m often asked, “How did you do it?” The short answer is a lot of determination and a refusal to take non as an answer. But, I know a lot of our TAIP readers hope to live in France permanently one day (or are already here and want to know how to stay), so I want to share, step-by-step, my own journey to France and how I made it all work.

Let’s get right into it.

How it Started

I never imagined I’d ever study abroad, never mind live abroad. One day, when I was still in Rhode Island completing my undergrad, a friend of mine had to pick up some paperwork from the study abroad office. We had plans after so I decided to tag along. While I waited for her, an advisor approached me and asked if I was interested in learning more about my options. I shrugged and said, “Why not?” (if you’ve been in France a while, you’ll also find that this is a very frequently used idiom that indicates French willingness to try something new…another topic for another article) and joined him in his office.

I was studying fashion merchandising at the time, so after taking a look at my transcript he told me that my best options would be Milan or Paris. Was I interested in leaving for an entire semester? (no). Okay, how about the J-term in between the fall and spring semesters? (maybe…). He started pulling out pamphlets and I absentmindedly leafed through them.

At the time, I had a steady job at a local boutique and a long-term boyfriend. I thought all of that was way too important to leave, even for just a few months. But, as the advisor continued to sell me on my options (do these people get a commission on sign-ups or something?) I slowly started to warm up to the idea. He asked me again, “Milan or Paris?” Without really thinking about it I said Paris — I’d seen movies, read books, heard about the French capital. I knew what it looked like at least, as compared to knowing nothing about Milan — a few taps on his keyboard as he took a closer look at my transcript and he told me that if I wanted to graduate on time, a full semester was my best bet. “What do you think?”

Again, without really thinking about it I said, “Okay. How do I sign up?”

I didn’t even have a passport at the time and thoughts of my job and boyfriend fluttered through my mind; to be honest, even to this day I don’t know what made me say yes. Unlike some expats, I never had a lifelong dream of living in Paris, and yet, something urged me to do that semester abroad back in 2012.

I ended up having the best six months of my life, completely fell in love with the city, French culture, the food… I’m sure half of my readership knows exactly what I mean. A group of four of us even ended up staying for an extra month down in Cannes because none of us were ready to leave. Alas, I did have to go back to the US to finish my undergrad, and that I did. Dreams of living in France full-time slowly but surely disappeared as I slipped right back into my former life. I graduated, got promoted at the boutique, and moved into a new apartment with my best friend. Life was “good,” though I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

A Rare Opportunity

In the winter of 2013 I was still working at the boutique and was, to be frank, miserable. So what do miserable people do when they’re bored at work? They scroll through Facebook, naturally. A message popped up — it was from a girl whom I studied abroad with who had never left after our semester. She decided to stay to be an au pair with a Franco-American family because she wasn’t ready to go back to the US.

We were just chatting, catching up, when my curiosity got the best of me. “How were you able to stay?” I asked. Was it difficult? I can’t stop thinking about Paris myself…

She filled me a bit and then told me that in fact, she planned on leaving her au pair position in May of next year. She loved the family (and had been with them since June 2012. It was November 2013 at this point) and was helping them find her replacement. She ultimately wanted it to go to someone she knew — she really cared about the kids — was I interested? I hesitated. Maybe. I told her I’d think about it.

Life got busy with the upcoming holiday season and I soon forgot about the conversation. Fast-forward to March 2014 and my friend messaged me again. Did I have time to think about coming back to France as an au pair? The family still hadn’t found a replacement. Like most young women my age, I had plenty of babysitting experience and I even nannied for a few summers when I was a student.

Just like that fateful moment in the study abroad office a year and a half earlier, without really thinking about it, I said, “Okay. What’s next?”

A New Experience

While I’m the first to admit that I stayed in my English-speaking-au-pair bubble for longer than I maybe should have, living and working in France was much different than studying abroad. I had to navigate French culture much more often (I was living with a French person and French children, after all), and learning how to adapt was difficult at times.

I was often homesick after the first six months and the initial excitement wore off — I also struggled to find a core group of friends. But, I did adapt, grow, learn, and eventually, thrive. My years as an au pair were some of my favorite that I spent in Paris and when I did find my people I felt like I truly belonged.

The caveat(s)? I still couldn’t speak French, my au pair contract was running out, I knew I didn’t want to work in fashion anymore, and I also knew I wasn’t ready to go back to my life in Rhode Island.

I had to figure out a way to stay.

Well, I did figure it out, but that story will have to wait until Part 2.

Photo by Clément Dellandrea 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.

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

Posted by Vince Duqué

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.

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Reflections After More Than 7 Years in France

Posted by Molli Sébrier

Sometimes it’s still hard for me to believe that I have lived abroad for so long. If you’ve read any of my other articles for The American in Paris, you know that my journey to France never involved years of dreaming or yearning to live in a different country. I’m from southern Rhode Island, which is filled with small beach towns and people who rarely leave. I was content with this idea until the first time I left the United States.

I found myself in France for the first time in early 2012 when I came here for my semester abroad. If you would have asked me in September 2011 if I thought I would ever travel internationally, never mind live abroad, I would have laughed and said no way. To put things into perspective, I had never left the country before (no, not even to go to Canada or Mexico), I didn’t have a passport, and I thought the life I was starting to build was too important to ever even consider leaving, even if for a few months.

And yet.

Something was pulling me in the direction of France and I couldn’t really shake it. A study abroad advisor at my university very easily convinced me to come to Paris for six months. I loved my time abroad and when I got home I became that girl, starting all of my stories with “This one time in Paris,” but at the same time, I didn’t believe that I would come back to live here. I thought it may be nice, but that life that I had started to build in 2011 kept sneaking back up on me: it was way too important to ever leave long-term.

And yet.

I found myself yet again in France in 2014 and this time it stuck. I’ve been here ever since and now have a master’s degree from a French university under my belt as well as a French husband. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the past seven years more and more.

What I don’t miss

I don’t miss the fast-paced American life.

I don’t miss 60-hour work weeks and I definitely don’t miss the standard two weeks a year off (and being expected to be happy with/grateful for that).

I don’t miss the materialism and capitalism and consumerism and all of those other -isms that seem to be such essential parts of American life.

I don’t miss the competitiveness that spills over and swells through every facet of that life.

I don’t own a car or a home and I don’t feel judged for it.

I don’t miss being bombarded with advertisements everywhere I look.

I don’t miss hearing “Ask your doctor if this pill/cream/potion is right for you” on television.

I don’t miss worrying about what I would have to pay if I end up in the hospital, and I feel fortunate that I was able to continue my education without thinking about the price tag.

I don’t miss being chased out of restaurants the moment I put my fork down on an empty plate.

I take long lunch breaks. I walk everywhere and I enjoy a glass of wine after a day at work. I like to spend hours at a time in cafés, people-watching, reading, and chatting with other café-goers around me.

What I miss the most

I do miss my family and my friends.

I do miss being able to call my mom whenever I want without having to calculate the time difference.

I do miss going to dinner at my dad’s house on Wednesdays and eating dinner with him on his deck.

I do miss having a backyard.

I do miss the beach, the ocean, the pier, New England, and I miss having access to so much natural beauty at all times.

Sometimes I do miss driving, although I don’t miss owning a car.

I do miss the wide-open spaces that the United States is so famous for.

I do miss paying less in taxes.

I do miss good, quality coffee and inexpensive beer.

I do miss breakfast and hot sauce and good Mexican food.

I have missed seeing some of my closest friends get married, buy a house, and get pregnant. I can’t get any of those moments back.

A different kind of homesickness

These days, newly married to a French guy who my parents have only met a handful of times, I’ve been considering what it would be like to go back home for a year or two. Between my selfish decision to spend 2019 in Europe to “Not spend all of my money and time on a trip home,” and the pandemic of 2020-2021, I haven’t stepped foot on US soil since the summer of 2018.

Enter what I’ve been calling, a different kind of homesickness. I have, like any expat, of course, felt homesick before. It was the worst when I first arrived in France for the long haul in 2014, and I remember it getting bad again 9 or so months in. That kind of homesickness was pretty standard: I missed my family and friends and I ached to be in the place where I grew up and everyone knew my name (cue the Cheers theme song).

The homesickness I’ve been feeling recently goes a lot deeper and is even harder to describe. On one hand, I love my life in Paris and I feel like I’ve started to hit my stride here. I’m married, have a great group of friends, and I consider myself bilingual. When I walk through my neighborhood I see people who I know and say hello to. I know how to get around the city and I rarely find myself confused or disoriented. I have mastered the métro and even know how to rent a bike using my Navigo.

No, this homesickness goes beyond all of that. I am fully integrated into French culture and yet so far from it at the same time. I get frustrated when I don’t understand certain types of slang or cultural references. Much of this comes down to the simple fact that I am American. I grew up in the United States. In the same way that most of my French friends wouldn’t understand some of the vernacular that I use with my friends back home, or won’t know the obscure reference to some YouTube video that went viral in high school, sometimes I can feel lost. I feel misunderstood, simply because I am not French and I will never be.

It’s been hard but I’ve also started to realize, is it so bad that I will never be French? I have been striving, working, climbing, and scratching to be more French, but I can’t turn back time and change the fact that I wasn’t born here. And I’m becoming more and more okay with the fact that I am and may always be, an American in Paris.

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 Rafael Garcin on Unsplash

How to Earn Money as an Expat Student in Paris

Posted by Molli Sébrier

I’ve had almost every student job imaginable since I’ve been in Paris. I’ve traded daily English lessons for my apartment and picked up a child after school while speaking exclusively in English. I’ve cleaned Airbnb properties and met guests to hand over the keys. I’ve done babysitting, dog sitting, cat sitting, and housesitting.

As a student, you’re legally allowed to work “up to 964 hours per year, or the equivalent of 60% of the maximum working hours permitted.” That’s around 20 hours per week.

If you’re an expat student in Paris who wants to start earning an extra euro or two, below you’ll find several different options that aren’t soul-crushing and actually kind of fun.

Childcare

Providing childcare is one of the easiest and most common ways to earn extra money as an expat student. There are a lot of French families who want their children to learn English, and a great way to do so is through an English-speaking babysitter:

Au pair “lite:” one of the biggest benefits of being an au pair is that your “host family,” or the family you’re working for, provides your housing. If you don’t want all of the responsibilities of a traditional au pair, like dinner, bathtime, and bedtime, keep your eye out for what I like to call au pair “lite.” I’ve had several of these types of positions. One was 10 hours of English lessons/babysitting per week in exchange for a tiny apartment. Another featured the same hours but in exchange for a salary.
English lessons: this doesn’t mean you’ll have to come up with a strict lesson plan. If you cringe at the thought, opt for families with younger children, who learn much better through games and simply speaking in English around them. Those 10 hours of English that I mentioned above? Those were 10 sweet hours of simply speaking in English while playing with a 5-year-old.
After-school pick-up: my favorite childcare student job in Paris was so simple that I couldn’t believe someone paid me to do it. I was required to pick up a 10-year-old from school, walk him home, and stay with him until his mom got home from work. All in all, it was about an hour and a half per day. The caveat? I was required to speak in English the entire time, which wasn’t a problem.

If you’re interested in childcare and have control over your class schedule, you’ll want to try and keep your Wednesdays free. Most French children don’t have school on Wednesdays, or only for half a day, so, it’s a great day to get in those hours!

You can find childcare jobs in several different places online. First and foremost I would look on Facebook for groups of au pairs, students, and parents in Paris. Then, you may want to check out other websites such as MisterBilingue, Mômji, or Angloinfo. You’ll find a lot of French families who are looking for a helping hand who can also teach their kids a new language. Or, you may find Anglophone families who are looking for a babysitter who can speak their language. Either way, it pays to be an English-speaking babysitter in the French capital.

Pet sitting and dog walking

Another one of my favorite student jobs in Paris was dog walker. If you miss your pets from back home but don’t want the responsibility of owning one here, the next best thing is pet care! I’ve walked dogs of all shapes, sizes, and ages, and it is one of the easiest and most rewarding student jobs I’ve ever had. Pet care is a great option if you don’t like kids or don’t want to teach English:

Dog walker: there are several different dog walker jobs out there. I’ve had everyday gigs and others just one or two days a week. Some people will want to pay you hourly, others, a weekly flat rate. Dog walking is also a great way to get outside and enjoy the city — while getting paid for it.
Pet sitter: whether it’s for a dog, cat, or both, pet sitting is another easy way to earn extra money as an expat student. Most pet owners will require that you stay in their house or apartment, but I have also come across some people who are willing to take their animal to you. However, most people who want a pet sitter will also want you to be their house sitter — but more on that later.

I’ve had great luck as a pet sitter in Paris, and, in addition to being a way to make money, it also gave me the opportunity to explore certain areas of the city I would have never gone to. And, for those of you with teeny tiny apartments, it will give you the chance to stay somewhere with a little bit more room, while getting paid to do it.

I found most of my gigs in a Facebook group called Paris Expat Dog and Cat Owners.

Housesitting and Airbnb

If you don’t want to work with children or pets, you may consider housesitting or working as an Airbnb cleaner and/or greeter. I’ve done all three in Paris and, again, it’s a nice way to earn money and explore different areas of the city:

Housesitter: as mentioned, a lot of potential pet sitting jobs will involve housesitting as well. But, there are also people without pets who are simply looking for someone to water their plants and keep an eye on their place while they’re out of town. Sometimes you’ll be asked to stop by a few days a week to check in on things, other times you may be asked to sleep there.

Airbnb: Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, but did you know it has more than 50,000 Airbnb listings? What do all of these properties have in common? They need to be cleaned between each guest. Some Airbnb properties will also require that someone be there to meet the guests for a key handover.

Again, I found most of these types of jobs in Facebook groups and on Craigslist. Similar to childcare and pet care, once you build up a good reputation you’ll also be able to find more gigs through word of mouth.

These options are not the end all be all for making extra money in Paris — far from it. Other options include working in a bar, restaurant, café, or even at walking or bike tour companies. Rest assured, there are plenty of ways to make money as an expat student in Paris.

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 Steven Lasry on Unsplash

Book Club: My Life in France, by Julia Child

Posted by Stephen Heiner

Julia Child is best and rightly known as the woman who brought French cooking to America in an accessible and sensible way. You may know her through her recipes and her famous TV show, but this book, My Life in France, is all about the woman herself — her life in Paris and Marseille, and other places throughout Europe as WWII ended and the Cold War began. You would hardly guess that she worked for the OSS, which was the forerunner of today’s CIA — but in a way that’s believable as she really did “infiltrate” into an American kitchen that was focused on frozen foods and items you could make out of a box or tin.

It was also fascinating to hear her describe the French and their ways — it reads like it could have been written today, even though Julia is describing post-war France, almost 60 years ago!

Here’s a story she recounts about her sister Dort and struggles with French:

“Monsieur; voulez-vous couper mes chevaux avant ou après le champignon?” The hairdresser looked at her quizzically while the ladies under the hairdryers broke into laughter. What Dort had been trying to so earnestly ask was: “Sir would you like to cut my hair before or after the shampoo?” But it came out as: “Sir, would you like to cut my horses before or after the mushroom?”

She also reflects on the reason why she felt so at home in this country:

“I looked out the window. I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.”

On the French attitude towards “modernizing,” which I laughed out loud reading:

“The individualistic, artisanal quality of the French baffled the men Paul called the “Marshall Plan hustlers” from the USA. When American experts began making “helpful” suggestions about how the French could “increase productivity and profits,” the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: “These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we have a nice little business here just as it is. Everybody makes a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think, as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make these changes you suggest.”

Indeed — it is this contrarian view against the rush of globalization and frenetic intemperance combined with a balanced attitude of “enough” that attracts so many of us to France.

Of course, this is a book by Julia Child and you will find yourself, if you have even the slightest inclination towards cooking, jotting down recipes or tips she casually sprinkles throughout the book.

It’s a great read, with quite a few photos, many of which were taken by her loving and devoted husband Paul Child.

A version of this article originally appeared on my Goodreads page.

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Book Club: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

Posted by Stephen Heiner

After the November attacks of last year many French begin reading this book as an act of defiance. It was left among some of the tributes at République and other places. More than one French friend told me that it was a chance to look at Paris through a foreigner’s eyes, and its sudden resurgence made it okay to read something that is often seen as too “cliché” for the French to read.

For those of us who write in Paris, it’s impossible to avoid Hemingway’s shadow. Whether we are browsing the stacks at Shakespeare and Company, or walking near the Place Contrescarpe, or even when writing in a café, we might imagine Hemingway himself toiling away in a corner over a notebook near empty glasses of rum. He’s writing, and he glances up to see a girl sitting by herself waiting for someone. She has a face “fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow’s wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.” If the description of her strikes you, you can imagine the effect she had on Hemingway as he tried to refocus and concentrate on the story at hand.

“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”

And what was that writing process like? “So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there” and “Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.”

While Hemingway describes some measure of poverty during his time here, it’s nowhere near the harrowing account that George Orwell gives in Down and Out in Paris and London, a book I will cover in a future installment of this series. Yet, almost 100 years later, I think this is still very true: “In Paris, then, you could live very well on almost nothing and by skipping meals occasionally and never buying any new clothes, you could save and have luxuries.”

More than anything, A Moveable Feast is a snapshot of life in Paris, amidst writers and artists, between 1921 and 1926. We see all the usual suspects —Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald (and Zelda), as well as so many landmarks that are still around like Le Deux Magots and Brasserie Lipp. And of course, there is his wife, whom he manages to lose in the course of the writing, due to his own self-admitted infidelity. She’s not an integral enough part of the work for you to really feel the loss, but she does provide bookends to the story and to his time there.

Read it because you’re an American or because you’re not but want to get the quintessential “American in Paris” viewpoint. Or because you want to see just how little the city has changed in a century.

The featured image is of Hemingway in his Left Bank apartment in 1924.

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.

Book Club: Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik

Posted by Stephen Heiner

My favorite book written about Paris from the expat perspective is the series of essays written for The New Yorker by Adam Gopnik that was later compiled into a book called Paris to the Moon. As the book’s magical title promises, it is a thoughtful and earnest look at a city Gopnik never intended to permanently live in, but experienced more deeply in six years than some people do in a lifetime.

Gopnik has gifted me with some ways to express feelings and sentiments I have in my new country, from saying that we “breathe in our native language, but swim in our second,” to his chapter on “Distant Errors” in which he deconstructs, albeit kindly, the French tendency to look at problems or errors as distant — as something external rather than related to their own thinking and behaving, to his explanation of “white helicopter” thinking among the French (in contrast to the American “black helicopter” idiom, which is a meme for conspiracy theories) that there is always the possibility that a future government will offer a higher pension and a lower retirement age.

Adam’s approach to life in France is certainly one I wish to emulate, though my French needs to improve in order to do so. He is at home as the American he will always be, while truly attempting to live life as the French do, day in and day out, in dealing with strikes, protesting the takeover of a favorite restaurant, by enjoying holidays enthusiastically (I wonder sometimes if the French love the planning and anticipation more than the holiday itself), and even in the ceremony of childbirth, which both he and his wife participate in.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the book particularly germane to the subjects covered in this blog: “Everything about moving to Paris has been wonderful, and everything about emigrating to France, difficult.”

As it perhaps, should be. This life should only be available to those who truly want it.

Photo by Rafael Garcin 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.