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.