Do you live in France?

[ggglimpopo]

Where do you live?
Why did you choose that region?
Why did you come here in the first place?
Do you work?
Do you regret it/love it?

Tell us all!

I live in Bordeaux.

I initially chose Montpellier and had everything (sort of!) set up there, but found it too hectic - and my original holiday accomodation was vile - so came to Bordeaux on holiday and stayed.

I came here post divorce!

I have had an epic time here - a very very rough ride, but life events rather than simply french ones, and am here to stay.

I love the region and will stay put in the south west. I would LOVE a house by the sea - dream on!

I don't regret it and have married a Frenchman to prove the point.....

Et vous?

We work in estate agency, Belgianchox. The market is very flat at the moment, and in Burgundy vendors are beginning to drop their prices (or accept quite low offers).

I think the market has been artificially inflated for some time, and prices are beginning to get back to reflecting the REAL value of the houses, not what the vendors think their properties are worth. It's definitely a buyer's market at the moment - and I don't think that will change any time soon.

thank-you, that's what I wanted to hear! We viewed a great place this morning, for once, and I'm really hoping we can get the finance sorted to make an offer. Given the size and location of the place, I can't see its price dropping further, so I hope we can go for it. Where we are there"s not a great deal of supply in the housing market, with it being a valley, so prices are maintained slightly higher than they would be in a more spacious location. I suppose you have to pay for the moutain scenery.

Hi - I'm very late joining in and I have skimmed through the other comments so I hope I'm not too off subject!
I'm in Vincennes just outside Paris but moving to Rouen in August. I work in Paris and will carry on in same job distance working in Rouen. Moving because we're fed up of house prices in Ile de France and travelling to work. I don?t think that whatever happens in the rest of the country prices will drop much here (our landlord is selling now that we?re moving and is asking 460,000 Euros for a two bedroom 80m² in a pretty grotty state). We?re hoping to buy once we?ve decided which area we want to be in ? for the moment we?ve found a flat to rent in the middle ? hedging our bets!

DP is French and DD (6) is more French than English although she says she's English when she wants to go out without a coat. She's just finished at the maternelle and two out of three years were fantastic. This year particularly she's had a really inspiring teacher and classroom assistant. I haven't found the grande section too academic - if anything compared to her cousin in the UK (who's three months older than her) the French programme?s much slower - like someone said for reading and writing there is lots of preparation in GS.

Someone mentioned the Hôpital Franco-Britannique in Levallois-Perret ? dd was born there. I chose it because I wanted an English speaking doctor (even though I do speak French) and my English doctor in Paris recommended Dr Julia Bache (who was lovely) so I ended up travelling half way across Paris for consultations which wasn?t very convenient. In fact when it came to the crunch, dd was breach and I had a caesarean on a Friday afternoon. Everybody who spoke English (consultant, sage femme, etc.) went off for the weekend leaving me in the tender care of the nursing staff who all spoke French. On the Saturday after forcing me to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom everybody left me alone. dp was away at a wedding so my mum was there my drip ran out and she ended up having seek out an aide-soignante to explain in broken French that ?elle a très mal? and it might be a good idea to give me some pain killers. I also had to fight to have dd brought to me in the night so that I could breastfeed ? because of the caesarean I was in for 6 days by which time I was climbing the walls (I think you have to be dead to stay in a UK hospital for 6 days) but then when you leave you have no back up at all.

Sorry to go on a bit ? but it?s nice to compare French experiences.

at 460k euros for 80sqm. That's worse than Milan and I thought it was bad here.

I'd originally wandered over because I'd been having vague musings about accepting a job offer in Paris but now I've seen how much housing is I can see what they're paying me isn't going to go very far. Also, we'd be single income for a while as DP doesn't speak French. As I said, twas only a vague musing. I shall scuttle back to the little Italy thread now I think.

Ladies,

I am also late to this thread, and apologise for coming in with lots of questions. I am about to move to Paris because of DH's work - not exactly sure where, but most likely 16eme if we can afford it. We have a 9mo daughter, who'll be almost a year by the time we move, and I will stop working for a while (and most likely try to get pregant again). I speak good but rusty French, my DH none to speak of, so we will speak English at home with French media in the background.

If you wouldn't mind answering these questions, I'd be really grateful!

• How can I expect the move to affect DD, esp her lingustic development?
• Do I need to do anything immediate we arrive about her education? I was reading about HG and wondered whether I'd find it difficult to get her into one?
• Has anyone had experience of gestational diabetes in France? What kind of care did you receive?
• What do you wish you'd known about moving to France / Paris, or leaving the UK? All advice welcome!

Sorry to be so long about this, thanks for reading and for any help or advice you can give.

Pregnant, that is. And immediately. Perhaps I should have reviewed that message before I sent it...

yellowmamma

GD question....

IME (2 children born here) they test everyone at 22-24 weeks for GD with the standard gloucose/blood test. If you are suspected to have it then further tests will be carried out for a day in hospital and then if diagnosed you will be placed on a STRICT regime to control it throughout the rest of your pregnancy.
I got as far as the dietician explaining the regime after a day of eating syrup (yuk) for the consultant to then realise that my midwife to begin, and all of the hospital staff that day had miss read my results and infact my gloucose levels were reading low not high.

That test they do for GD is horrible too. I thought I was going to faint there and then. No breakfast, big drink of foul sugar solution, then wait an hour. (seemed like 2) Not nice!! After having DS1 in the UK, and 32 weeks preg with DS2 I've found it very different....

How do they test for GD in the UK.

I had to have a blood test 'à jeun' every month and I am a big breakfast eater. It was particularly difficult during my second pregnancy because I had to give DS his breakfast before heading to the lab with him.

We were both rewarded with 'pain au chocolat' at 10am once a month.

Thanks ladies. I asked for a blood test because of a family history of diabetes, and when it came back high I took a blood glucose test in hospital. You are right, it is disgusting, the room started spinning and I felt like I was fainting. Once diagnosed I was on a strict diet and four insulin injections a day. I am almost certain to develop it if I get pregnant again, which is why I ask about it since I do not know how my French will cope with quite technical medical conversations like the ones I had while pg in the UK. The care I had here was brilliant, led by specialist midwives who only dealt with mothers with chronic illness, whom I met with every week before the birth. Will it be comparable in Paris?

yellowmama, do not worry bout the language barrier, honestly, it will not be an issue with Drs here. Although I speak a little French IME they were all more than happy to talk English.

I don't know about Paris sorry, I'm in rural France. I have had one dc in the UK and 2 here, if I had to choose where to have my pgcy care France would win hands down. That doesn't mean I had any probs in the UK, I just liked the commitment and eye to detail of the medical staff here.

OSOTC - AFAIK they don't test for GD routinely in the UK, only if suspected or a history of it.

yellowmama - please try not to move to the 16th (it's so dull...).

17th, 8th, 7th, 6th much much much better.

I don't know how long you are planning to stay, but if your daughter is 9 months now she will be starting école maternelle in September 2010 ie two years time. So you really need to think about living near a school. Some Paris state schools are OK and some are definitely not OK and you may in any case want to put your daughter in an international school, in which case you really need to think about it now before renting.

You will not get a place in a state crèche or halte garderie. There are however private garderies in all the decent residential areas.

The Hôpital Franco-Britannique in Levallois-Perret and the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine (both 5 minutes from Paris and 3 minutes from one another) are the traditional expat Anglophone maternity hospitals.

Thanks, this is really helpful. Schools, eek. Upheaval aside, is there any reason why I couldn't move to Paris now, then move again in a year to be close to a school of my choosing? For instance, am I likely to encounter horrible waiting lists for popular schools, or tight catchment areas? Or, if I really do need to think about schools straight away, how do I do that from the UK, in the next 3-4 weeks?

Moving is really hard and expensive, that's why.

The school my daughter is at, EaB, has a good website and I have written about it on this thread so you can check that out.

Do you know what kind of school you want - French, English, bilingual, IB curriculum?

'ello, 'ello

Can I just sneak in on you ladies and ask something? I keep reading in threads about France that people find life simpler there and I'm a bit curious, in what way is life simpler?

A small example ; my sil in Essex has 2 DD'S, 12 and 8, every single night of the week, and most of Saturday is a complex balance of running them around to various activities, sometimes 2 each on certain days - Brownies, dancing, swimming, extra maths tuition etc etc. It has to be planned with absolute precision, and if traffic is bad the whole thing falls apart. Here, my DS will have a friend around after school and maybe go out on their bikes for a bit, Wed we have a swimming lesson and the afternoon is at the pony club (5 min away) I imagine most of the summer will be on the beach....we seem to do things, but it just seems sort of easier! I think there is less pressure to have the latest trainers/Nintendo game/whatever too (maybe that will change though...)

I don't think life is particularly simple here in Paris . In fact, the basic logistics of life (getting children to school and back and to activities, doing the shopping, going to the doctor etc) are ridiculously burdensome and/or bureaucratic.

the stressful life of city slickers I think Anna! Maybe Paris is the big exception?

It's interesting what you say jenpet, so you feel where you live, dc can be left to their own devices a lot of the time and their lifestyle is less commercialised?

I actually work pretty hard at trying to keep life as simple as possible - it's so easy to let life's logistics completely overwhem you here. But yes, I'm sure that life in big cities is generally more stressful than life in towns.

yes, I agree with Anna that life in a big city is probably as stressful/complicated as anywhere in the UK. However day to day life in the small town in the mountains where I live is certainly simpler than I imagine my life would be in the UK. I do mean simpler in the sense of easier, not quiet and boring btw.

I agree with Anna that many of the logistics of life in France are anything but simple. I frequently rant wildly about small things that seem utterly ridiculous, in fact.

But living in a small town just outside the city means that our children have freedom to roam as well as easy access to the city's facilities and opportunities, which I like. The "rural idyll" definitely isn't for me - families I know that moved to very rural France have found that with young children it was lovely (all that freedom as Jenpet describes) but once children become teenagers they spend much longer driving them about because they are bored in the sticks.

As for commercial pressure, yes up to a certain age it seems less prevalent, but again once the teenage years hit there is plenty - they all want the same brands of shoes, jeans etc, as is the case with teenagers everywhere.

Could someone help with a couple of translation questions?

I need to fill out census documents for DH & myself but can't figure out the terms for diplomas.

We are asked to tick the box next to diplome obtenu le plus eleve, which would be university (bachelor) degree for DH and MBA (master) degree for me. Which one of these correspond to our degrees?

• Baccalaureat
• Diplome de 1er cycle, BTS, DEST, DUT sante
• Diplome de 2eme cycle, master 1
• Diplome de 3eme cycle, master 2 et ingenieur
• Diplome d'une grande ecole, agregation

Thanks for the help!

I'd put:

DH: Diplome de 2eme cycle, master 1 (i.e. 3-4 yrs' study)
You: - Diplome de 3eme cycle, master 2 et ingenieur (i.e. 5 yrs' study: even if you've not done 5 yrs, you'd be devaluing your MBA if you put on a par with a master 1, IMO)

Thank you