Our Life in Paris: 5 Years Abroad

Mar 3, 2023

Can you believe it’s been FIVE years since we packed our 14 pieces of luggage and took our one-way flight to Paris, France?! I truly thought we would only be abroad for 14 months, max. Funny how life throws us for a loop but we are still pinching ourselves have made a life in this magical city.

Five years ago, Liv was only 7 years old and now she is as tall as us at 12!

I must say, there are things that we still aren’t completely used to yet. There has been major greves (strikes) throughout the city due to President Macron pushing the age limit for retirement up from 62 to 64. Millions of people have protested and this coming Tuesday is supposed to be a 100% strike which we haven’t experienced yet. We are stocking up since almost all businesses are going to be closed. I will say, I commend the French people for coming together in solidarity for causes they believe in. I wish Americans would protest in the millions against the insane gun violence happening there. That is one of our biggest reliefs about leaving the States. Our daughter doesn’t have that kind of threat/trauma to endure. Her school is already extremely secure, the way they build buildings here, it feels like a fortress. There are only two entrance and exits and they will not allow anyone in without being vetted first. When I go to pick Olivia up from school early, I have to wait outside the building and a supervisor brings her out. The campus is strictly off-limits without an appointment. The layout of schools in Paris often don’t have outside spaces that is facing the public street as a safety measure. Most of Paris has armed soldiers that patrol the streets. Someone messaged me on Instagram recently asking what the school life is like for us so I’m going to give you a run-down of our middler schooler experience in Paris.

School Life & Curriculum

Her school is a combination of middle school (6th grade – 8th grade) which is called college and high school. The middle school kids pretty much have their own entrance and section of the school. They have their own cafeteria, and they don’t interact with the older kids. The high school kids go to le lycée (the larger portion of the campus) and for no reason other than to confuse me, they begin to count down after 6th grade. So Liv is a 7th grader in the US but here she’s in 5eme. The French count down each school year; La quatrième (4eme), Troisième (3ème), Seconde (2nde), Première (1ère). The senior year is called Terminale/Tle. There isn’t a large amount of standardized testing in France. The students do take an exam at the end of middle school called le brevet. High school students prepare for their diploma by taking an exam called Baccalauréat général (often called Le Bac). School is only compulsory until age 16, students can choose to take a CAP or Baccalauréat technologique course. All Students are enrolled in school based on the year they are born and not how old they are in September. This means most of the kids are the same age in their class. Schools are assigned based on where you live just like in the US. We requested a special exception to enroll Liv in her elementary school because we didn’t have our lease for our apartment when we first moved here and I had to put up a major fight to get her into the school we wanted. We always assumed she would go to the high school next door to her elementary school but because of where we live she was assigned another school that we were not too impressed with but only around the corner from our apartment. Liv is enrolled in a special English program called Section International (SI). This is her second year in the SI program and her class is the first one at her school. There are other schools in Paris with SI programs but they are pretty far from our house. If you meet the English criteria for the program, you have to request an exception to attend that school with the school district. There are only 21 students in her class and they must pass a written and oral English exam to participate. This is so important to us because Liv attended a French/English curriculum in Los Angeles so we feel relieved she can maintain her English in a smaller class size. For her first year in the SI program, there were some huge stumbling blocks because the program was just being established and they didn’t have a full-time English teacher available. This meant Liv spent a couple of hours per week in an English class for French speakers. I thought she could take advantage of an easy class however, her teacher wouldn’t allow the English speaking kids to work on other projects during that time and she wasn’t a native English-speaking teacher so she would make many grammatical and oral mistakes. Needless to say, this year there is a full-time English teacher (from Britian!) and they have Geography/History class in English as well. Liv’s schedule is pretty tight. Most days of the week she starts a little after 8am, then there’s some days she starts after 9am. She has a longer day than the non-SI students because of the extra English class so she doesn’t get out of school until almost 6pm! Don’t feel too bad for her, on Wednesdays they get out early and everyday she gets a 90 minute lunch with 5 course meals. The school year begins the first week of September and ends the first week of July. This sounds like a long school year but they get two weeks of vacation nearly every six weeks. So she ends up with 56 days off of school not including summer break. When I asked Liv what is she excited about most this year, she said she got a locker inside the building the 9th grader kids use. Most of the middle school kids have lockers outside but because many of them are damaged, Liv requested one inside so now she has a cool locker she shares with her best friends. I told her she should decorate it and now all the kids want to decorate theirs. Yeah, I may not be able to help my kid with her French homework but I can make sure she has the most American Gilmore Girls aesthetic locker at the school… I’m nailing this parenting thing!

Liv was so scared to take a video of her locker so I quickly snapped these when we visited for Back to School night

Teachers and Grading

Liv’s report card translated by Google (the column to the right is her final grade)

One of the things we gained from the pandemic is France finally shifting to digital communication and access to Liv’s assignments online. Prior to this all school communication was handled through a notebook called a Cahier des Coorespondance which was frustrating to use. The school now has an app for the students and one for the parents. We log-in and can see her daily schedule, which is a life-saver because we can see in advance if her teachers will be absent. They also upload her grades from her tests directly to the app and we can send messages to her teachers. There is no traditional A – F grading system in France. Here, it’s best out of 20. It blew my mind that getting a 20 grade is nearly impossible but after 2 years in this new school, I see that the teachers are not giving up anything higher than an 18 easily. Liv has 70% of her classes in French and those are a bit challenging for her because French is not her native language and she sometimes gets lost in the context. There isn’t much of an incentive for the students to do well academically. The teachers have openly mocked and make fun of the students not necessarily out of meanness, it’s just culturally accepted here. There’s no Dean’s List, no awards or certificates for excellence. Students can graduate with an honor called une mention (honors of the jury) but those are often for students applying to Ivy League schools. The school’s concept of academia is pretty much, you are either doing well or you are an absolute moron, there’s no in-between! Liv tells us so many horror stories of teachers bullying the students but it’s remarkable how academically mature these kids are. They are really happy to be nerdy, they read 1000% more than they watch TV. In Olivia’s experience her teachers (professeurs) are commonly strict, they speak at a speed that can be difficult to keep up with and they are (for lack of a better word) eccentric. They believe that students should be seen not heard. They believe in collective punishment (to Liv’s detriment) and there is a system called Croix. Croix (crosses) are what we called strikes, if you get 3, you automatically get detention. During Liv’s 2 years in middle school she has been the only student in her class to not get detention thus far and she is determined to keep it that way. She has seen The Breakfast Club so she is always curiously asking me what is American detention like. She came close to getting detention once because her teacher mistakenly marked her as late for class once but she was able to get it removed. However, she loves her two English and her PE teachers. It’s pretty much night and day for her in those classes. We agree it’s mostly because the English teachers are from England and her sports teacher is much younger than her other teachers.

Even though the school has an indoor gym, and has tons of outside space, her class gets to take a charter bus to a nearby park for their physical education class. The first month of this class they played ultimate Frisbee! I used to pick up Liv from school on her ballet days so I have met most of her classmates. It’s sublime that we can finally speak to her friends and their parents in English! We are included in a parents group chat on Whats App and we are in the process of creating a Parents Association similar to what the other schools in Paris with an English section have. I don’t volunteer at her current school at all, which is mostly due to the campus being restricted and there isn’t many activities that are open for the parents to participate in. Every now and then they have ceremonies for war holidays and the student choir will sing, or they have a class movie night. The last movie Liv attended was by one of my favorite French directors, Michel Gondry. The film was Be Kind, Rewind which is super cute! The funny thing about parenting an American child at a French school is, we don’t really have a clue of what’s going on half the time. The school app has been helpful, but it is in French (we use Google translate) and we are learning all this as we go. When we encounter an issue, I reach out to my expat friends or google as much as possible. So far, I have found great advice and support in our parent group chat. Liv’s class trip to London has been postponed until next year due to the retirement strikes so this year her class is taking a 3 day trip to Normandy. She is looking forward to returning to the Caen Memorial museum since our visit in 2020 was rushed because we arrived 45 minutes before they closed.

After-School Activities

Most of the kids in her class participate in after-school activities that take place at the school. There is basketball, violin, guitar, dancing, chess, fencing and many others. It blows my mind that the school offers FREE extra-curricular activities because we used to pay a pretty penny in LA. We do pay for Liv’s ballet classes but it’s through the city and the rate is based on our tax bracket. The cost of her ballet is miniscule compared to the tuition and random fees we used to pay in LA. So twice a week Liv goes to ballet after school. Some days she only has an hour to come home, have a snack, change into her ballet clothes and put her hair in a bun (never an easy feat) and get to class in time. Somehow we manage but we love Wednesday afternoons because she’s home from school early. We usually have a long lunch together, she can take her time getting ready and she can chill before going to class in the evening. This schedule is not typical for other French kids, they get out at 4:30. There’s a girl in Liv’s class who does horseback riding and tennis outside of Paris. Many of the girls in Liv’s class tried to recruit her on the basketball team but she’s not interested at all. We tried for weeks to find a volleyball team but the ones for her age group were too far from us and didn’t fit her schedule. We’ve grown accostumed to Liv coming home during the day for lunch due to the frequency of her teachers striking or being absent. They don’t have an English substitute teacher and if another teacher is absent the class usually is sent to study hall. She is always happy when she can leave school before dark. I was pretty surprised to find out the kids don’t have any formal soccer teams. They also don’t have any typical American high school sports teams or clubs. As I mentioned before, they do have a basketball team, but they really just mess around, they don’t play against other schools or even have games with an audience. There’s no football team, no cheerleaders, no band, no glee club, nothing you would see in a John Hughes movie. The sad thing for me is Liv missing out on yearbook and not going to dances. This year the students begin their third language and Liv chose Japanese. She said the class is harder than she anticipated but she is enthusiastic to learn. Other languages offered at her school is English (for the French kids), Spanish, Arab, and Latin. They do have art and technology classes and choir during school. The school does occasionally put on an art gallery show for the older students. The parents of the Sectional International kids were invited last year because the seniors wanted to practice their English skills with us. It was so bizarre seeing these students compared to how we see students in the US. These kids were extremely serious and most of the ones we spoke with were very focused on what they wanted to do once they graduated. They don’t have any graduation ceremonies nor a prom 🙁 Liv says only recently the older students have started a formal ball but it was cancelled for the last two years due to Covid. Sometimes, I get a little sad that Liv will miss out on so many social activities when I see her old classmates in Los Angeles going to their first dance. I told Liv she needs to start banding her SI class together to have a prom by the time they graduate. She is more interested in having a Grad Night at Disneyland Paris since I told her about mine at Disneyland in California. Liv spends the rest of her free time going on dates with her friends, working on her Twitch channel and watching her favorite movies (at the moment it’s Scott Pilgrim vs the World and The Craft).

What’s University life like?

Most of the universities tuition are government subsidized for citizens and even quite affordable for foreign students. Antz took Olivia to an open house for the art school in Paris she is considering and we were pleased to find out the tuition for 4 years is how much most students would pay annually in the US.

I don’t have tons of insight on university life in Paris however based on the little info I’ve gathered, there’s no dorms, no stuff like student body government, yearbooks or college party life. Yes, kids go to bars (happy hour is very popular in Paris) and clubs but it’s not the keg stands or Greek life atmosphere like we are used to. The trade-off works for the three of us. Liv is practically a Puritan. She has informed us that smoking is dumb and she only likes white wine. There’s a cute bar on our street that we sometimes order food from and they have a trivia night that is spoken in both French and English. Liv said she would like to join something similar to that when she’s old enough. The legal drinking age is 18 in France and that was recently raised from 16!

So What else is New?

We’ve had so many highs and lows in the past year. Our best news is we have made it this long without any of us getting the Covie!

I really think that masking and not being as social in-person as we used to be has really worked. I don’t go anywhere in crowds without a mask. We have continued to travel during almost every school break. It would take another five years just to catch up with all our trips but I have posted all the details in my highlights on my Instagram (hope you follow me over there). Anthony and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last August with a family trip to Morocco. I promise to make a separate post about our trip because it was epic! If you want to see some of the photos now, click here. After a fun Mommy/Daughter trip to Berlin, Lufthansa airlines lost my carry-on bag and that whole experience was traumatic for me. I finally got compensated several months later (after publicly shaming the airline) but I lost my Insta camera, some of Liv’s favorite jewelry and some items that meant a lot to me. Another terribly sad event happened last year, our beloved cat Lola got sick and we discovered that her kidneys were failing and after being in our lives for 15 years, she passed away. It was hard for all of us, however we know we had such a long, happy time with her. We had her cremated and I bought an urn necklace for Liv to carry her ashes in.

Five months later Antz found a sweet calico kitten online to adopt from an animal shelter in central France. Liv and I took a 2 hour train ride to the town of Angoulême (the town Wes Anderson filmed the French Dispatch). Then I rented a car and drove another hour to the tiny village to pick up our new family member.

Say Bonjour to Éloïse von Toast, her nickname is Ella and she was 9 months old when we adopted her. Olivia has always wanted a calico cat. She has the same black spot on her nose as Lola did so we know she was meant to be ours.

She was described as playful, gets along with kids and perfect for an apartment in her online listing. This cat is terrific but also has the energy of ten cats! She gets the zoomies like she’s on drugs. She loves to run laps around our apartment at top speed in the middle of the night. We bought her all the toys, a cool mushroom scratcher and even a bed that looks like a piece of toast and she completely ignores them. Her favorite toy to play with is a hair tie. After she began scratching our furniture, I bought her a boring plain brown scratcher that she loves and she prefers sleeping on the rug in our bathroom. Liv likes to carry her in a sling when we go out and she usually falls right asleep. We are working on training her to use her harness. She’s so cute our hearts are exploding for this floof!

Ella has been a wonderful addition to our family and we feel a little bit more French with our petite choupette.

We have some exciting trips planned this year. Liv and I are taking a weekend trip to London to celebrate my birthday this month. Antz is staying home to babysit with Ella. We were super happy to pick up our 4 year passport talente visas, what a relief! Antz and I are pretty much still A-level in our French however, we have mastered a few useful sentences that really help us communicate. I know, nous devrions pratiquer plus!

Today we took some photos at the place where it all started, our local town hall (Mairie) and then we had lunch at our favorite place, Cafe Charlot. It’s Paris Fashion Week so of course the cafe was full of fashionable people. Liv has taken up knitting so you will always find her with needles in her hands these days. She’s getting really good and I’m going to commisson her to make me a bonnet with horns!

So, that pretty much wraps up our five year update. I am happy to answer any questions in the comments or if you follow me on Instagram, I have Ask an Expat and Expat Life highlights saved that you can always access.

Merci for following along on this journey with our family and a bientôt!

Expat Life: Three years in Paris

Mar 30, 2021

Bonjour mes amis,

It’s the truest saying that time flies when you’re having fun, well three years has passed in a blink of an eye so here’s our annual expat update.

To be honest I have had the worst case of writer’s block imaginable. Ever since the first quarantine that began three days before my birthday in March 2020, I have been pretty depressed (as much of the world, I’m sure). Without being able to travel, most restaurants are closed and we have no idea when we will get our vaccines, we have been staying home as much as humanely possible. Olivia has been handling this limited lifestyle like a champ (her attitude is much better than mine). She now has ballet class via Zoom and plays video games with her friends online.

We are currently in our third (semi) lockdown in Paris. This means only essential shops are open, schools and workplaces are still open and there is a citywide 7pm curfew. You still need an attestation (permission slip) to travel outside the house. The government has allowed up to 10km for exercise but due to the warmer weather and longer days many Parisians are spending more time outdoors despite France’s Covid numbers remaining alarmingly high.

My second birthday in lockdown!

Our family has been inside our apartment since my birthday (my 4th 40th was last Saturday) for no reason other than we are playing it safe. January 2020 we officially were granted the privilege of paying a whooping 22% of Antz income into the French social system (medical, retirement and social charges) but we still haven’t received our medical cards. Which puts us in a vulnerable situation if any of us get sick. We have been trying to get our cards but the insurance office has been excruciatingly slow. Thus far only people over the age of 70 are eligible to get a vaccine and President Macron just suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine so we have no idea when we will get the shot. The US is finally gaining traction on getting everyone vaccinated at record speed (thanks to President Biden) but sadly now that more American states are lifting lockdowns and relaxing mask usage, there has an uptick in Asian American/Pacific Islander hate crimes and mass gun shootings. Sigh, lame white supremacy is thriving more than the virus.

Thank goodness we live in a golden age of filters

After what felt like the longest, weirdest year of our lives, we finally got some snow that I was secretly wishing for. It’s still fun for us Californians to wake up to falling snow. We can’t be the only ones because many people were outside playing in the snow with us.

Last night I rebooked our planned trip to Copenhagen for the fourth time and now I’m optimistically hoping to go in spring 2022. Que sera, sera. I wish the US government would extend everyone’s passport for an extra year since we haven’t been able to travel.

I don’t have much to update you on other than an entire year of puzzles, going viral on TikTok and baking more banana bread than I ever want to eat, I’ll share a story that happened a short time ago.

We survived a fire in our building!

You guys, it was so scary but also felt like we were in a movie. I was awake around 1:45 am (thank you, insomnia) when I heard a commotion upstairs in our building’s hallway. This is pretty frequent occurrence because there are some young neighbors who throw house parties that get a little rowdy late at night. This sounded like many people falling on the ground so I went to our door’s peephole to see if someone fell down the stairs. I saw the hall light was on so I opened the door just as I heard our neighbor saying “They don’t speak French.” she looked at me and said “There is a fire!” I immediately woke up Antz and told him the building is on fire! I woke up Liv and she immediately started crying and asking where’s Lola? I was running around the apartment while throwing on my coat screaming put on your coats and slippers. I grabbed our bag of passports and my backpack and threw in my laptop. I couldn’t think because my heart was in my throat. I didn’t know how bad the fire was at first but I smelled the smoke and started to see red embers from above our stairway. Antz tried to put Lola in her carrier but it wasn’t zipped so she just walked right out the other side so I gave him my backpack and took Lola. By the time we made it out our door (this all happened in less than a minute) there was a ton of people in our tiny stairwell. I couldn’t see what was blocking everyone but I also saw something falling in the hallway so we squeezed pass some slow moving folks. Then we saw some guys holding the ends of a blanket that was carrying the elderly woman who lives above us and were struggling to get her downstairs BECAUSE SHE WAS NAKED FROM THE WAIST DOWN!) I pulled Liv into my coat and they told us to go ahead past them. Antz offered to help but there was no room and they shouted in French to just go. I saw one guy in nothing but his underwear and sneakers. By the time we got to the ground floor I was able to get a sense of how many people were in our building. This was the middle of the night on Sunday morning so our street was deadly silent. I ran across the street with Liv and Lola and sat on the curb trying to catch my breath and calm Liv down. She was upset but also incredibly astute given the circumstance. Antz was hanging out in our lobby trying to offer help or see if anyone else was coming down. Liv started to panic that the building would collapse so he came outside. It took about 10 minutes before the fire truck arrived and I just sat on that icy curb holding Lola and Liv in my lap praying the rosary over and over while crying. It was surreal. I knew we had renter’s insurance but I wasn’t prepared to lose everything we owned. Liv kept crying and laughing saying how lame it would be to lose her newly-started manga (Japanese comic books) collection. Lola was surprisingly calm and didn’t try to escape my grasp. I was trying to offer whatever I could to some of my unfortunate neighbors, one who was heavily pregnant and barefoot in the 30 degree weather. I am lucky I keep my gloves, a scarf and water bottle in my bag. Our immediate neighbors who we are close with happened to be away on vacation so I left him a voicemail letting him know what happened. Turns out the pregnant woman is married to a fireman and he was the one who knocked on everyone’s door and got the firemen so quickly. She told us he was supposed to work that night, I was so grateful he was there with us (guardian angel). When the trucks arrived, they moved us into an apartment lobby across the street. We couldn’t tell if the bright glow from our apartment windows was the fire or Liv’s colorful nightlight. We waited in the lobby for about an hour when the police came and took everyone’s keys so they could check our apartments. Based on Olivia’s translation, the fire started by the elderly woman leaving a candle unattended. Her caretaker/nurse was fully dressed but barefoot (we asked Liv to translate what she was saying but Liv said everything she said sounded like gibberish). The elderly woman has terrible dementia so the fact that the caretaker didn’t notice the candle had me fuming.

After what felt like forever the firemen told us we were being moved to a hotel nearby. We all walked around the corner, my family all had our coats and our slippers but I don’t know how the other neighbors walked in pajamas with no coats, in socks and some barefoot on the filthy and wet ground!

Firemen gave us masks while were stuck in the dark hotel lobby for hours with no idea how our building was. Fortunately for us, we met a few of our English speaking young neighbors and said hello to some of the quieter ones that I’ve never seen before. Turns out the pregnant lady had her cat in a carrier box, she found some socks and her husband got her a coat too. One of our neighbors (who reeked of cigarette smoke) told Liv his two kitties hid under the bed and he couldn’t reach them. I took some random photos during the ordeal but they were all blurry because my hands were shaking so hard. Afterward I posted an Instagram video on my account when I was finally able to compose myself. I talk about the neighbor who lives upstairs in more detail and incoherently ramble while my adrenaline wears off.

Lola the grumpy cat has never behaved so well in her life, she was literally hugging me the whole time. This was our first encounter with a fire other than the wildfires in California which never were a direct threat to us. By 5 am the firemen finally told us we could go back into our apartments. Hooray! When you get that close to possibly losing your life’s possessions you start reflecting hard. When we were fleeing this dangerous situation, I thought, it’s just stuff but I was also regretting not grabbing Liv’s baby shoes (right there on my shelf) Antz getting his work laptop, and Liv was devastated thinking about losing all her stuff, it’s heartbreaking. Our tiny Parisian apartment has become the epicenter of our entire world and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing all the things we’ve collected over the years. Antz irreplaceable artwork and all my little keepsakes I’ve hoarded mean so much to me. I kept hugging my little family of four and reaffirming to myself, as long as we are safe, things will be fine.

The police drove us back to our building in their cool SUVs (our driver drove down the street backwards at a high speed as if we didn’t have enough adrenaline pumping that night) and tried their best to speak English to us. They assured us the building was safe and told us the firemen would return the next day to check the smoke levels. I was terrified our ceiling would collapse since the fire started right above our living room. We could see a huge pile of burnt wood on the sidewalk and the upstairs neighbor’s window was broken. The smoke wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it was too cold to sleep with the windows open. The damage wasn’t that bad other than the hallway carpets being soaked, the stairwell walls and floors were dirty and our mailbox door somehow ended up damaged. I was worried about our building’s tiny elevator but it just needed sweeping. Later we discovered our main door was broken so we can’t buzz people into our building again (see my last post about the door drama).

The firemen were super cute! I was blown away with how young they all were. When we got home we saw they had a table set up outside and they were drinking coffee (or wine?). They were pleased to find out we were Americans and they kept trying to speak to us in English. They measured our ceiling (definitely didn’t notice those sagging beams before) and we saw all the doors had codes written in chalk. Our elderly neighbor must have been taken to a hospital because she was taken away on a stretcher (with a blanket wrapped around her unclothed body!) and we haven’t seen or heard her again.

Now that we’ve been through that melodrama, I feel like veteran Parisians. The next day we washed and vacuumed everything in our place. I packed an emergency bag and Liv baked us a delightful cake for Valentine’s day. We were ecstatic to have a roof over our heads!

I finally got my visa renewed in February (Whoo-hoo!) and we are coming up on French tax season (d’oh!). We are going to try to take Liv to a park in northern Paris to see the cherry blossoms this weekend but I’ll have to confirm we are within our allowed 10 km. After a year of being quarantined, sadly we are kinda used to not going out and socializing. Liv and I are gamer/TikTok buddies so we are excited for all the new Animal Crossing New Horizons updates.

How has 2021 been for you so far? Any life-changing events? It’s so weird that I don’t have more to share but Covid has made everyone slow down and chill out on the hectic schedules we were so accustomed to. This has been my greatest achievement this year so far. We completed it in three days, a new record!

Au revoir!

The Best Way to Tour Rome (during peak tourist season)

Jun 24, 2020

Rome is a huge metropolis and the public transportation isn’t as efficient as other cities we have visited. That being said, we found an excellent way to see the city while avoiding the hordes of tourists. We began our day early and was surprised that it was already unbearably hot outside. We waited for a bus to take us into the east side of town and it took forever to arrive. I was already missing the convenience of French bus stops, that have electronic boards which tell you when the next bus will arrive. It was also annoying that we didn’t have any change on hand to pay for bus tickets so we just gave the driver €5 and he smugly kept the change. We couldn’t order an Uber because the city only has Uber Black service which is insanely expensive so hot and dirty city bus it was. I have always dreamed of renting a pastel pink Vespa scooter with a matching pink helmet to tour the city pretending like I am Audrey Hepburn’s character in Roman Holiday. So I had the brilliant idea to book a scooter tour for our family. It took almost an hour just to find the scooter rental company as we kept getting sidetracked by the scenery.

Alas, my dream riding around Rome in a pretty, pink vintage scooter were dashed when I saw these red and black scooters lined up outside. Fine, I could improvise with bright red only because it matched my earrings and lipstick. I was ready to hit the road until the guy leading our scooter tour asked us, “So you know how to drive a manual transmission, right?” Uh, err, no absolutely not! He also asked if we had previous experience driving a scooter in city traffic. Now technically, I drove my Mom’s 4-wheeler in the desert once and that ended in me crashing into a cactus while wearing flip flops, so admittedly, not a ton of experience. He laughed and said you think you’re going to drive a scooter in this city (in heavy bumper-to-scooter traffic everywhere). We all agreed, we didn’t want to die that day despite my further disappointment. The guy at the scooter rental place gave me our only other option…take a guided three person Vespa tour. Bravo!!

The downside was the driver wouldn’t arrive for a few hours. We decided to walk around the neighborhood and find some lunch and gelato while we waited.

We were told to check out one of the city’s best gelato places Giovanni Fassi but we arrived before they opened. I was surprised that people were lining up for this place but luckily we were first in the door.

Holy Cow! The gelato was insanely good. Liv wanted another one but we promised to get some after our tour. The place had 1960’s Wes Anderson vibes. We headed back over to the scooter rental place and met our tour guide.

Our guide/driver, Georgio, was amazing! He was so knowledgeable and fun. He asked us what we wanted to see and put together a comprehensive tour of Rome in three hours.

I was elated that we didn’t opt for the crazy scooter ride. We chilled in the Vespa and soaked in the breeze as we drove past poor, miserably-hot tourists walking by.

Georgio made stops at each site and gave an in-depth explanation of the history of the location from the perspective of a bonafide Roman. We learned so much!

Basic bitch photo but I was so upset about the construction below. Why am I always cursed?!

The time seemed to fly by. Georgio even swung by the Trevi fountain to attempt another photo but it was the middle of the day and swarmed with people.

We ended our tour by driving past the infamous Spanish Steps and it was so crowded I couldn’t even recognize them!

If you visit Rome and want to book the Vespa tour please request Georgio, he is the best!

We hugged Georgio and said ciao. I had to bite the bullet and ordered an expensive Uber Black to drive us to the other side of town. I knew I wouldn’t survive the city bus in that heat at that time of day. As we were basking in the air conditioned Uber, I totally kicked myself for forgetting to take a photo with all of us and Georgio, boo! 🙁

Well, I was immediately cheered up when we arrived at our next destination.

I was super excited to visit the Galleria Borghese. I followed the museum on Instagram prior to our trip and it didn’t look real in photos. I was absolutely blown away by the vivid colors and the 3-D painted characters.

I highly recommend visiting the Gallery Borghese even though it’s a bit outside of the city center. It was really nice to stroll through the tree-lined gardens after spending most of the day in the crowded, busy city.

We ended our day with another mediocre meal near our Airbnb. I was so tired and hungry I can’t recall what we had but you can guess it was some sort of generic pasta…when in Rome.

Expat Life: Two Years Abroad

Mar 3, 2020

Bonjour,

Today marks our second year living in Paris! It is still surreal that we have packed up our life in Los Angeles and moved into a 700 square foot apartment in beautiful Paris. At the beginning of the year we met with our immigration attorney to apply for a Passport Talent, which is a four year residency card that would allow Antz to work as a freelance artist. Another benefit of this card is we will receive access to French healthcare. The hard part for us is we will start paying French social services (just like the US public programs, the French pension which is similar to social security) which will be 25% of our income. Our long term goal is to apply for a resident card so we have to show proof of paying these taxes anyway. Antz and I will have to take a French verbal and written test so we will have to crank up our studies. We won’t find out if we got the Passport Talent until April so for now I am crossing my fingers and toes and asking for all the good vibes we can get!

In the meanwhile, we are still loving life in Paris. 2020 has been the warmest winter in France so most days are sunny even though we still have to wear our coats and scarves. I don’t think we will get snow but hopefully we will find some during our upcoming trip to Copenhagen for spring break.

My birthday is in a few weeks. I am super stoked because my favorite video game ever Animal Crossing is coming out with a new release on the same day! It’s called New Horizons and it looks so awesome.

I have played Animal Crossing ever since the first one came out on Nintendo GameCube back in the old 1900s!!! I was so bummed when I couldn’t hook up our Nintendo Wii to our computer monitor but we decided not to buy a TV because they actually have an annual tax on TVs in France. We use our iMac computer to stream TV on Sling, Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu and Amazon Prime so we don’t need a telly at the moment. Nintendo is releasing a rad Animal Crossing limited edition Switch so I pre-ordered one for my birthday gift. Liv and I are so excited to play! Let me know if you play too, I will post my friend code on my Instagram. Antz drew a cartoon me with my favorite Animal Crossing villager, cute Bunnie.

Occasionally he takes commissions so message him on Instagram Anthonyconleyart

I asked Antz to weigh in on our two years abroad and this is what he had to say:

✌🏽So two years have passed and these are some pluses and negatives.

😉Our door buzzer works now and it is great! No more running down stairs to open the door.

🤗We’ve discovered bacon exists at Marks & Spencer (a British grocery store).

🎨I am now working from home as a freelance artist which is nice because I can spend more time with the girls.

🤫We are on a path to getting a passport talent but I don’t talk too much about it cause I might jinx it.

😊I’ve been cooking a lot more (he’s an amazing chef!)

👎🏼 Negatives include, we’ll be paying french taxes soon.

👎🏼 Our plumbing in the shower still sucks!

Liv is in her third term of public school. She started in 2nd grade and is now in 4th grade. She loves her school and last week her class started swimming lessons which she really enjoys. I can’t believe California doesn’t offer swimming lessons given we live in such a sunny climate. Every French student learns to swim and that is such a great life skill to have. Extracurricular activities are included in the school curriculum and it is so helpful to no longer have to rush Liv to private swimming lessons and spend hours in traffic. Liv has started a new hobby on weekends, in French it’s called le roller. So many Parisiens skate, I bought her these peach Moxie skates.

We feel like we have a solid daily routine. Antz takes Liv to school and I handle pick up and ballet. We eat at home more than we did our first year which is saving us money. I recently went to an event at The American Library in Paris because a few of my expat friends were talking on a panel about what it’s like to be an expat in Paris as a person of color. It was so enlightening. I was happily surprised to see a crowded room full of Black expats, some who have been living here for decades and some who just arrived for a semester of school. It was cool to meet people who were going through the same challenges I have been through. I also was happy to venture across the river into the 7éme after dark alone. Lucky for me, my friend happened to be there and she took the Metro home with me.

I was so happy to join this illuminating discussion hosted by beautiful, intelligent ladies and I met a lovely reader of my blog 👋

It is so nice to have two whole weeks of school breaks instead of one week we had in LA. We just returned from a road trip in Germany (I’m excited to share a post from our Valentines day soon). Our next trip will be to Copenhagen which I am super excited about. I have always wanted to visit the Scandinavian countries and we are going to drive into Sweden for a day. I have so much planned!

It’s weird how fast these two tumultuous years have gone by. I have become accustomed to living in Paris yet I still don’t speak French fluently and I encounter issues that I have no control over.

Here is my list of great and not-so-great things about living abroad:

I feel like I have endless opportunities living in France that I no longer had in Los Angeles. I guess growing up in LA, I feel like I had been there, done that so many times that I got bored. Here, everything feels new and exciting. I still haven’t visited every museum, cafe, shop or park in Paris so there’s always something new to explore. I feel so much inspiration being here. I recently bought these gorgeous art supplies from Paper Fashion that I plan to use this spring when it’s warmer. I rarely draw or paint so this is outside of my comfort zone.

I love the freedom from being car-dependant. I occasionally miss my car because of the convenience and especially during colder days I would prefer my heated seats but our lives revolve around walking, public transportation or renting an e-scooter. I don’t miss the traffic or stress of the LA lifestyle. It’s refreshing to walk to Liv’s school and say hello to the guy who repaired my broken necklace, or stop and chat with the local baker. I never had relationships with locals on this level in LA because everyone was in their own busy bubble. There is a sense of take your time here and I notice more camaraderie among strangers because everyone walks. In LA, you spent so much time isolated in your car it wasn’t healthy. I breathe so much better and get more exercise (even though I hate sweating) taking a walk is so beneficial for your psyche.

Our finances have completely shifted. In LA, we were homeowners, we had two cars, we paid tuition for an expensive private school and we had to save for a short vacation once a year. Travel is such a priority to my well-being that I was depressed about not being able to travel more often. Now, we don’t have the burden of debt, mortgage or tuition, we are able to afford to travel more frequently. The best ways we can afford to travel are two factors; swapping our apartment and using my credit card points for car rentals. I still can’t believe I booked our flight to Copenhagen for €15 each.
We discovered Circus bakery! Their cinnamon buns are life-changing.

I wish I could figure out a solution for getting packages in a timely and drama-free way. This is something we Americans take for granted. I have pulled my hair out trying to track down lost packages, waiting weeks (sometimes even months) to get a package from the US. There is no system of accountability (May I speak to your manager only works in America) and the customer service here is close to non-existent. It was more stressful around the holidays because I paid so much money to ensure I would get my packages on-time but Paris had a transportation strike that made things difficult. A few days before Christmas I almost paid a taxi driver to drive me to the UPS facility outside of Paris just to pick up my package. The items were delivered two days after Christmas but I ordered them December 3rd with a arrival guarantee of December 15th. Nothing is on-time here and I’m still adjusting to that.

As many friends as we have made here, we spend more time together as a family than before. We really enjoy hanging out together. Liv and I share the same hobbies, we play Pokemon Go, hunt for Invaders and we like going to shops in Paris that sell cute kawaii items. We are already planning Liv’s kawaii themed 10th birthday party because I have learned my lesson and I am ordering all the supplies months in advance.

The language barrier, it isn’t really an issue in our daily lives however when it comes to administrative things like dealing with our landlord or visa stuff, it can be a nightmare. Google translate isn’t helpful when I really need to use it. You see, the French language is very idiomatic which can make translating it difficult. Imagine having to read the fine print in a contract written in legal terms. It’s English but I still don’t understand what they mean. All I hear is how adults talk on Charlie Brown cartoons.

I translated a recent email and was left utterly confused. I get what they are attempting to say but it feels like it’s written by a robot.

Dear users,

No containment measure now applies to people who have stayed in risk areas (northern Italy, China outside Hubei, Iran ...).

Indeed, these stage 1 measures, intended to avoid the entry of the virus into France, are no longer useful according to health authorities as soon as the virus circulates in France. Only returnees from Hubei province or one of the two "clusters" of French territory (Oise and Haute-Savoie) are subject to such measures as a precautionary measure and until further notice.
 
Students living in Creil, Montataire, Nogent sur Oise, Villers Saint Paul, Lamorlaye, Crépy en Valois, Vaumoise, La Croix Saint Ouen and Lagny le Sec are therefore asked not to come to the conservatory until further notice and to inform the tuition department for the reasons for their absence.

These measures obviously apply to conservatory staff.
 
Thank you for your attention and the spirit of responsibility that you will be able to demonstrate alongside us.

The Directorate of Cultural Affairs

I endure this often and it leaves me feeling like a frustrated child. I also find it challenging the way Liv’s school communicates with the parents. I have such limited contact with the staff that I have to use a notebook to send and receive messages. This means Liv has the burden of giving us information from school and you can guess a nine year old isn’t the greatest at remembering things. I feel so out of the loop compared to how overly involved I was in her previous school. We rely on Liv for translating and that can be stressful for her. I feel so grateful that she is so mature and can take on such a task for her immigrant parents.

Sometimes I find myself annoyed with the French logic. Now that I’m an expat, I am more aware of cultural differences I never paid attention to before. For example, I observe people set you up for failure here rather than help you succeed and it feels frustrating to fall into these traps. We wanted to sign Liv up for her roller club. We were told by the skate shop to call 48 hours before the class to register. I called them on time and we were told the class was already full and we should have called sooner. Well, I followed the instructions on the class brochure so… sigh! When I signed Liv up for ballet, I asked several times how much would her lessons cost. For me, this is a big factor when I do anything, how much will it cost? Well, turns out the cost is determined by your tax level, ours being tariff 6 out of 10 (which is on the high end) so I had to go to city hall to get a form that proved our tax tariff. Once at the town hall, there was no one available to give me the tax letter. I had to go to another town hall to get it which was really inconvenient. I tried to set up an account online but there was a glitch in the system that no one could help me with. Weeks later, I finally got the tax letter and submitted the form in person. I was told I’ll get a bill in January and they didn’t know how much it will be. This all took place in September. Liv was in ballet class for four months before I even found out how much her classes were! I was relieved to finally get our first bill but I still have no idea how long we will be billed or what any future classes will cost. This is baffling to me but totally normal to French people. There is no real direct answer to questions. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone at times but it’s manageable. Maybe I need to relax and go with the flow more but I am so accustomed to planning ahead and not being so last minute.

My sweet Mom sent us a care package with some fun toys inside 👽

Whoopsie! I forgot to update you on how Lola is doing. Grumpy old Lola is content as can be. She sleeps all day and drives me crazy because she’s up all night, meowing and using her litter (which is in our bedroom because it doesn’t fit anywhere else) 😩
Lola has her own Instagram account now leavemealola she says to please follow. I am looking for a cat hotel to board her during our trip to Copenhagen in April.

Overall, as weird as this may seem, the annoyances are worth it. I know I appreciate simple things more. I encounter more friendly people than not. There are times when I tackle it like a game and I am determined to win the person over. I still am at odds with our apartment manager, she is the hardest nut to crack. I am so proud of our kid for her ability to adapt and thrive in an environment where she is often left to her own devices. I am tremendously grateful for Antz for making sacrifices left and right for us to have this incredible life. He left an amazing job, financial stability, his family and friends to move to this foreign place all to make us happy and if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

So again, thank you to my kind readers who have followed along on this journey with us. We feel supported and in good company. It really warms my heart when someone says to me they read my blog. I love making this connection and I hope to spark the expat fire in you! Throughout all the challenges, we only have this one life to live and I’d rather try and fail then not try at all and never open the possibility of succeeding.