Career Crossroads and Culture Shock

Fair warning, this post is not the most organized or well written. Welcome to my brain. 😊 It's been a while since I last posted!

Gare de sud bibliothèque - close to our current apartment

There are people who know exactly what they want to for work for the rest of their lives, and then there are the rest of us. I've never really been sure about what I want to do for my career. I even went into teaching after getting my bachelor's degree telling myself, "well, at least you got a degree in business so it shouldn't be too hard to find another job if you don't like teaching."

In one of my previous posts I talked about how I earned my TEFL and planned to teach English. I searched for jobs, applied for some, and was rejected due to my lack of experience in teaching English... as it turns out, most schools want teachers who have experience teaching English, not necessarily a native English speaker. The problem- I wasn't even upset about it. I wasn't even looking forward to anything throughout my job search. The truth is, I don't really want to teach anymore. I never really loved it. I'm sorry to any former students who might read this, but it's the truth. I loved the time I would spend learning more about photography, graphic design, publishing (yearbook) and it was nice making connections with some of my students... but I never loved it. It was just a job for me. Maybe it's because I didn't teach at the greatest school. Maybe it's because in general, teachers are overworked and underpaid. Every year, we would get a new responsibility that didn't really enhance the student experience in the classroom- just gave more work to teachers.

**Anyone who has shi* to say about teachers being overworked while having summers off, I don't want to hear it.**

So, I'm done teaching. For now at least.

Attended our first football match Nice vs some German team. It was crazy.

Everyone keeps asking me, "well what are you doing over in France??" so to answer that question ahead of time, I have a part-time job working from home doing freelance graphic design and e-mail marketing. I'm learning to speak French. I've been climbing at the bouldering gym. (and I might be strongest I've ever been as a climber right now) I've been cooking a ton. Baking a bit. But most importantly, just trying to enjoy myself and be happy living in a different part of the world.

We've officially lived in France for over a year. It took me a little more than half a year to get over the culture shock - particularly the fear of failing when speaking a new language. I felt like a complete outsider everywhere I went. I had this really strange fear of not wanting to be exposed.... for whatever reason, I didn't want people to know I was American?? I don't know why. It took a while, but I FINALLY got over it, and have been living comfortably as an expat.

There are certain things I've definitely come to love about France, and many things I miss about the United States. A lot of friends and family have asked me what my favorite thing is about the French culture. Rather than just name one thing, I decided to make a list. As I tend to do. 😊😂

Things I like about France	Things I don't like about France
The general work/life balance. Everyone values vacation and their time away from work. Most people leave work for the day and are DONE - they don't usually take their work home with them. In the U.S., nearly everyone I know has the idea that they must be working hard ALL the time. (And of course it's okay to be like that, I just never have been)	The prefecture and literally getting ANYTHING official done. We opted out of getting a car and our French drivers license partially because of this, and because we knew we wanted to go back to the U.S. at some point. It took us nearly a year to get our carte de sejour (residence permit) and we STILL haven't received our carte vitale (health insurance card)
​The love of food - especially desserts. Absolutely no shame in getting une glace (ice-cream/gelato) at any point in time throughout the day.	​The lack of Mexican food and breakfast food. And spicy food in general. I've learned how to make my own enchilada sauce and salsa to help with this.
The straightforwardness of the people. Of course, everyone has different personalities, but I feel like most people will tell you their honest opinion.	​The smoking. I listened to a podcast a couple of weeks ago that said "actually, people smoke more in the U.S. than they do in France" and I was immediately like... Pffff! Cigarette smoke wafts into my apartment from the street every day. Nolan and I were on the train the other day and saw some drunk guy smoking ON THE TRAIN? People smoke around children and babies all the time... 🤷🏽‍♀️
There is amazing, cheap pizza all over the place, and I've had the best falafel I've ever tasted here. Side note - people tend to get their own pizzas instead of sharing!! Love it. The crust is thinner so it's not like eating a whole American pizza.	​The late night partying. This is certainly because I'm too old for this now. I definitely can't keep up with most of our friends! They'll stay out until like 4 or 5 in the morning, and it's considered early when I decide to go home at 1 or 2 😂
​European architecture is beautiful.	This could just be a city thing in general, but the streets smell like piss and shi* nearly every day. Sometimes even when you immediately walk out of the apartment. It seems to get a bit better in cooler weather.
Best baguettes (and maybe butter) in the world.	While the cheese is good, I'm a fan of cheddar and there isn't a lot of good cheddar here... I also haven't seen provolone, muenster, or a decent wedge of smoked gouda. However, I still haven't been to a fromagerie so there's a chance I could find more there... French cheese is stinky..

Train hopping to different beaches in the summer

I completed my A1 French class in May and am looking forward to starting up again next month! I think I'll probably be in A2, while Nolan will be in B1. While I haven't found an in person job, there are still plenty things I've done since I've been here in France.

• Completed A1 level French class. Now I can tell people I speak a little French, instead of just saying "je ne parle pas français" (except, I still say that when I really don't want to talk to people......... sorry)

• Visited 4 new countries: the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Italy (Rome), the U.K. (London and Exeter), and of course France.

• Visited various different areas within France, including: Antibes, plateau de Calern, Cannes, Cassis, Avignon, Brittany, Nantes, Gap, Villefranche-sur-Mer, La Colle sur Loupe, and a few other cities that I can't remember the names of.

• Spent two months in the U.S. and went to New York City and Pittsburgh for the first time

• Backpacked for the first time (short hike in and out with camping gear! I never did that in Utah, which seems crazy to me now)

• Kayaked to and around the Isles de Lerins and the Calanques

• Led my first route in France, 5c/510.a! So proud of that one

• Had a wedding party!!

• Learned how to cook (or seriously improved my cooking)

• Attended my first European football (soccer) match

• Baked from French cookbooks

Living in France has been hard. I knew it was going to be, but I think the hardest part is that it's very isolating being so far away from your friends and family. I don't know if it's better or worse that I can keep up with people on social media, considering I can see some of what people are doing without having to talk to them much.

Nolan and I are moving into a new apartment October 1st. Long story short, we've had an ongoing mold problem in our current apartment and have been really unhappy with our living situation, so we are SO excited to move to a new place. At the end of October we'll go to Germany! I've been fortunate to follow Nolan around on his travels for different conferences he's attended. There are still a few other places I would like to visit, including Corsica, Spain, Switzerland, Scotland, Portugal, maybe Greece, and other cities within France and southern Italy. We'll see how much we can do in a short amount of time because... surprise, we plan on moving back to the U.S.A. once Nolan's work contract is over!! We're not sure exactly when, but sometime around the end of June 2023. We're also not sure where we'll go after that. Definitely to Texas to pick up all of our belongings from my parents' house.

For the rest of my time here in Europe, I'll continue working on the things I've been working on, including graphic design, baking, cooking, and learning how to speak French! I still occasionally looking for jobs I feel like I would enjoy and be qualified for with my lack of fluency in French, but unfortunately it's slim pickings. Any who, thinking of writing another post specifically with pictures and details of our travels through Europe. If you've stayed with me throughout this long post... thank you, I love you!

Best,

Summer Balance: Avocado Peach Summer Salad and Mojitos

Hi!

Well - we have finally moved into our new apartment and we are so happy about it! It is in a great location, with farmers markets within a 2 minute walk almost every day. There are many restaurants and bars nearby, and it feels much more like "home" than the welcome center ever did!

One of the better things about our move... we now have an OVEN! Not just any oven - probably one of the nicer ovens I've used in my time as a baker. You don't have to wait for it to preheat: there's a fan inside the oven, so you can put your dish in and the fan heats to the correct temperature while the oven is warming up. In our Salt Lake house, I was working with a super old gas oven that I had to light myself with long matches. The oven didn't have a built in thermometer, so you had to use this old thermometer that sits in the oven to see whether or not it was at the temperature you needed it to be. And, it took FOREVER for the oven to preheat- especially in the winter. (However, it was nice in the winter because it warmed up the basement a bit 😂)

I am excited to be baking more, but I have really enjoyed cooking lately as well. So I decided to start off my blog posts, I'm going to review some recipes from a few blogs/ book/ etc. This week's blog post is focused on tasty summer recipes, starting out with this delicious Avocado Peach Summer Salad from What's Gaby Cooking! Click on the link below to make it yourself! 😊

What's Gaby Cooking - Avocado Peach Summer Salad

I want to try and start off my week's with a salad every Monday or Tuesday to kind of set the tone for the week, and this salad was perfect for a Monday!

The salad was made up of butter lettuce, fresh avocados, peaches, nectarines, and cucumbers topped with a lemon shallot vinaigrette. It was light and fresh and perfect for a hot summer day.

The recipe called for chives on top, but unfortunately the chives I had purchased for the recipe went bad in less than a day 😐😑😐 so I left them out. I think a green onion substitute would have been tasty as well, but I was sh** out of luck with those, too. 😂 Oh well.

My favorite thing about this recipe is - it's PEACH AND NECTARINE SEASON! And I got the most beautiful peach I think I've ever seen 😍

I mean - look at the color of those slices! Definitely not what I was expecting when I cut into it, but I was pleasantly surprised. 😊

For presentation of the salad, the recipe called for a large platter and uncut leaves of butter lettuce. Unfortunately I didn't have a platter/ large plate, so I used this bowl instead. I think it still looked nice! However, I felt like it made serving the salad a bit more complicated. I ended up cutting the lettuce in the bowl and then using tongs to serve the salad.

There are only a few changes I would make to this recipe for future use: for one, I like having chopped lettuce instead of whole lettuce leaves. Second, I liked the vinaigrette, but I felt like it could have been a bit sweeter - even with the sweetness of the peaches and nectarines. The vinaigrette recipe called for grated parmesan. I think I would have liked it a bit better if I left the grated parmesan out of the vinaigrette and just put it in the salad. Overall, it the salad was still quite good!

The night we made our salads was the first night we really had a big event/outing since moving to France.... or in the past YEAR since friggin' COVID started! We went to the Nice Jazz Festival and got to listen to some lovely jazz music. To go with our salad, I made some cool and refreshing mojitos.

At the beginning of COVID, we were fortunate to live in a house with nearly 6 other people, so we did not get as lonely as many people did throughout quarantine... but I will say, we started to drink a bit more, because there wasn't much else to do. So, I decided I should try and start making better, higher quality beverages that we would appreciate.

Once I started making some drinks, I was wondering why I haven't always been doing this. And then I moved to France, without a job and remembered - it's kind of an expensive hobby. It's also, obviously, not the healthiest. However, I think I drink less ever since I've moved to Europe. Just by choice. My body is happier when I don't drink very much. This is why cocktails are perfect: I can be satisfied with just having a single cocktail. 😊

In hopes of learning some new cocktail recipes (and improving the cocktail recipes I already know) I purchased an ebook on Amazon called "Mixology."

You can buy the book here!

I'm going to be honest about my thoughts on the book so far: it's okay. Maybe I should have gotten something a bit more advanced, because this book is very clearly for beginners. Everything is explained very simply, and it seems like some of the steps included in making drinks are almost too detailed. But - for a beginner, that is perfect! I would say this book is perfect for someone who has never made a drink before. I have learned from the book already, like the different types of strainers to use, some of the equipment that is very helpful in making drinks, certain techniques etc.

In conclusion - we like mojitos! I will definitely make these again - but without club soda, because in France we just have tonic water and sparkling water. (as far as I know)

Thanks for reading 😊

Bienvenue en France!

Hello everyone!

I know it's been a long time since I've posted... but, we did it! We moved to France! And I've been trying to adjust to all of the changes that come with moving to a new country... where I don't speak the language.

The view from our first apartment

We have been living in Nice, France for nearly four months now. We arrived on April 1st (haha) and fortunately, we have been able to live in the University Welcome Center for new students and expats who have just moved to France. Having a safe place to live as soon as you arrive is definitely something that helps to adjust and deal with the culture shock - especially during COVID when you are already feeling isolated.

We got to France and it was like we had gone back in time to our first COVID quarantine. Our friends and family back in the U.S. were getting vaccinated, ditching mask requirements, and things were kind of going back to normal there. Meanwhile in France, most of the country was under a 6AM - 6PM curfew, restaurants were closed or only accepting take out orders, gyms were closed, non-essential shops were closed, and you were only supposed to be going to the grocery store once a day. Nolan and I thought the curfew was interesting.... you were only allowed to be out of your home between 6AM and 6PM - forcing everyone to go to the grocery stores at the same time. It just didn't make sense to us. 😂

So, I published this blog not too long before we moved, all excited because I knew I would have time off of work and I could focus on getting better at baking, taking food photos, etc....

I knew we would have a limited kitchen area, but I get here and this is our kitchen. 🤷🏽‍♀️ No oven, no counter space, two burner electric stove (that won't even fit two decent pans at the same time). I wasn't surprised and I wasn't even that disappointed: I knew we would only be staying in the Welcome Center for a month or two. Plus, not having an oven has given me a chance to focus more on cooking than baking, which has been nice. I thoroughly enjoy my time spent in our tiny kitchen area. Cooking is now something I look forward to, rather than something I dread doing at the end of a long work day!! It's been a long time since I've felt that way about cooking. Of course I don't feel that way all of the time... but now, I like cooking more often than I don't. 😊

So we've been here nearly four months and.... we're still here at the Welcome Center! Everyone warned us ahead of time, but we didn't really know how bad it was until we got here... Literally getting anything done in France is a HUGE pain. My uncle even said something along the lines of... "Good luck dealing with all of the bureaucratic bullsh**" as we were leaving 😂 I appreciate that "good luck" now, more than I did before.

- - - - Skip ahead if you don't want to hear about the boring technicalities of moving to another country- specifically France! I'm making a note of all of this to remember all of the things to think of if we move to another country after France, and in hopes that it might help someone else who is moving here from another country. And note: all of these things kind of had to happen in order. We had to have a bank account to get a phone, a phone to find an apartment and finish our residency application, etc. - - -

At the end of April we went to get a bank account at La Poste. We spent an hour and a half working on the application and deposited 50 Euros and didn't even hear back from them for three weeks. I went in by myself with all of our information, and the lady we worked with said she had tried to e-mail us but our "inbox was full." 🧐 we signed some papers and she said she would contact us within the next few days... and didn't hear back for another week.

** Moral of the story, don't get a bank account with La Poste!!**

View of Nice from Castle Hill

Luckily, getting a French sim card was fairly simple for me, as my phone was easy to unlock. Not so much for Nolan. After spending hours dealing with AT&T and Samsung, he couldn't get his phone unlocked and ended up purchasing a new phone.

After getting a phone, we needed to apply for residency in order to extend our long term travel visas. This meant paying to get all of our official documents legally translated into French, including our passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate... it was not cheap. Applying for residency was straightforward for Nolan, as they moved most of the application online due to COVID. For my visa comment/type, however, they had no specific instructions and we had to print everything out and mail it in.

Waterfall at Castle Hill, Nice

Then, we had to find an apartment to move into. Searching for new apartments wasn't so bad, but most places require what's called a guarantor, (aka a cosigner) in order to sign the contract and move in.

*There are two main work contracts in France: a CDI and a CDD. A CDI is a permanent contract, essentially meaning you plan on working for that company for the rest of your life. Without a CDI, you need a guarantor to ensure you can pay for your apartment. *

We had our friends help us call a couple of apartments that didn't work out, but I was fortunate enough to find someone who spoke English to meet with and show me an apartment. We got lucky because he had TWO apartments he could show, and we loved the first one. 😊 We will be moving in less than a week! And there's an OVEN!! Finally!

- - - - - ANYWHOOOOOOOOOO..... Done with the bureaucratic BS for now!!!

France finally started lifting COVID closures in mid May, and things are mostly open now. The country is accepting tourists from "green" countries, restaurants are open, gyms are open - Nolan and I even went to the Jazz Festival this past week!

We were fortunate enough to kind of have a built in set of friends through Nolan's work at the University. The PhD students who work in the same building as Nolan have beers after work every Friday in Sophia Antipolis and we have had a few group outings together.

While we have done a lot of the things we need to do to stay in France, we still have not purchased a car, and I don't see that happening any time in the near future. Some U.S. licenses are accepted for trading in France, but unfortunately Utah is not on that list, which means Nolan will likely have to go through driving school in order to get his license here in France. It's like 400 euros. 😩

Overall, I have been enjoying life in France, but I am definitely starting to get bored after not working for 6 months. It took me a minute to realize that it will be difficult to find a job that's NOT related to teaching in France... so I've finally accepted it and I have been working on my TEFL certification so I can get a teaching job here. TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Do I want to continue teaching? Currently, the answer is no... and it doesn't help that my TEFL certification course is EXTREMELY boring and honestly kind of ridiculous. Anyone taking an online TEFL course who is already an educator - I'm going to recommend that you don't use the International TEFL Academy.

Why? Throughout their course they talk about making class entertaining and fun for the kids. But guess what their entire course is made up of?

Literally just reading and writing. I've watched like two videos. It is SO boring!! And to tell you that you need to make engaging and fun lessons while providing an extremely boring and non-engaging lesson....... 😒

It doesn't help that I'm already a teacher though - I'm probably going to critique every class I take for the rest of my life having taught for 6 years.

I definitely miss the U.S... a lot. I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss being in a closer time zone. I miss having a job. I MISS THE FOOD SO MUCH. I miss feeling like I actually belong somewhere. We have friends here but... not being able to speak French and being an American in general, I just don't feel like I truly belong here... 😔😢

But, I'm nearly done with my TEFL, we're about to move into a new apartment with an OVEN and I'm very sloooowwwwwlllyyyyyyyyy learning French. Things are [kind of] looking up!

With that, I've [finally] decided that even though I don't have an oven, I can still practice food blogging and food photography. I can't tell you exactly why it's taken me so long to make this decision. Before we left France, I was so set on starting a food blog and being serious about it, but once we actually got here... everything changed. Everything has been so different. And I thought I was only good enough at baking to start a food blog... but after cooking some DANK food over the past three months in my tiny kitchen, I've decided that's not true. 🤓

So at that - you'll probably see less personal posts from me here, and more food reviews and photos from this point forward. I never really intended on starting a "travel blog." But being halfway across the world from most of the people I know and care about... I guess it's kind of hard not to do that!!

So - enjoy the photos from our first adventures in southern France. It's been beautiful so far, and I look forward to the next two years of adventuring a new part of the world.