2024!

We’re through the first half of our time here in France…It’s hard to believe we have been here a little over 5 months. Overall, I think all of us are well adapted to our new life. Here are some of the changes I see in the family and our way of life.

School:

The boys are comfortable with school now. They have the rhythm of the day to day: getting to and from school, doing homework (with less and less help from us). Although they are still not speaking a lot of French at home and with me, they seem to understand almost everything.  I think they are gaining confidence by the day, and we will see the shift start to happen very soon to more and more French at home.

French way of life:

We walk to where we are going most of the time. It’s pretty rare that we take the car unless we are going somewhere far. We don’t concern ourselves with the weather so much either. We walk in the rain, the wind, the cold with no concern besides remembering to bring a rain jacket or umbrella.

Our eating habits have changed. We only buy enough food for the day; our refrigerator has today’s food and maybe something for breakfast tomorrow.  The only things that stay more than a day in the fridge are butter, yogurts, and maybe a few olives or pickles.  We also eat less, the focus is on quality over quantity, whether at home or in restaurants.  The food seems to be more flavorful, more digestible, and fresher across the board. One thing we have noticed is that food spoils very quickly, there is nothing in it to give it an unnaturally long lifespan.  Overall, I think we all feel better day to day because of this.

The boys have a lot more freedom here. We don’t worry about them going places by themselves. They can walk to the bakery or go get an ice-cream. Sometimes they even go out to dinner together or with friends. The other night they went out with Evie and Lexie (our friend’s daughters) to have hot chocolate in town while we stayed home.

We took away the boys’ computers before coming and now we have taken away the ipads as well. No one misses the screen time too much. There is always plenty to do.  We still watch an occasional movie together at night. The only TV we allow is in French with French subtitles, except on Tuesday night when they get to pick an English movie!

Friends:

We have made some nice friends here. The whole crew of expats that we met through our friends the Sivaks are great. We got lucky to plug into such an interesting group of people. We have also made some efforts to meet French people. We don’t want to only hang out with English speaking friends!  Cecile and Romain, who are parents at Charlie’s school have taken to us and we are developing a nice rapport with them. We are also having fun hanging out with Bruno and his girlfriend Vanessa. Bruno’s son Emile is buddies with Luke and Bruno and Vanessa are a lot of fun. They like to cook, they like music, and they are into a lot of outdoor sports like surfing and biking. They have invited us to go to see live music several times now which is really a lot of fun and we are getting turned onto some new music which we love.

Visitors

My mom’s visit, followed by Ezra’s visit were a large component of the past few months for the family.  It was a treat to get to hang out with them and show them around our new world. They were both easy guests, however, having live-in visitors changed the character of our experience in ways I did not expect. For one thing, we did a lot more activities than we might have on our own: trips to San Sebastian, Bayonne, Hossegor, hikes, visiting caves, going to Paris, etc. For another, having other English speakers around made it harder to hang out with French speakers and practice our French.

This brings me to one of the big dilemmas of our year here so far:

Whether to spend more time in Biarritz getting to know our new friends and our new home.

or

Whether to spend more time traveling and seeing sights and places we want to see.

It’s a great dilemma to have, both being great options, but it still is a tough call.

Personally, I want to see us focus a little more on being in Biarritz, and developing the friendships Luke and Charlie have started to build. It’s too hard to do if we always have company or are gone all the time, and I think that the friendships are what will bring them the most benefit over the course of their lives. Keeping them connected to this experience and this culture, keeping up their French, and opening doors to new places and people are to me the ultimate goals for this year.