British Expatriate Network

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on emigrating to France.

We are planning to move at the end of 2009, me, my wife, 2 year old daughter and baby daughter. We toured the Loire Valley last year and would like to try the Dordogne area this year. We have been in talks with the emigration for a year now doing lots of research and plenty of reading! Including learning the language! I am starting a home study GCSE course next week so we are being very patient and careful with our planning.

We plan to sell our house and rent somewhere. We will have enough money to see us right for a year if the worst case scenario happens, that I can't find work. We currently have our own ironing business here in Bridlington UK. We hope to set up with an ironing service in France or find a suitable job.

My questions would be to you are firstly do you think this would work?

Am I likely to find work? I am 35 and male. Also are we likely to find long term rental accommodation? And where would you recommend to fulfill our plan? The Loire region or Dordogne?

And what about schools for when my daughters start? Is it easy to get into a French and English teaching school? Where do the English expats take their children to school?

I am most grateful for your advice as I realise you can never get enough advice!! Also I know that you can't always believe what you read in books. I always take the reading seriously but I think it's obviously best to ask those, yourselves, that have actually done the move! A great book I'm reading is Living & Working In France. Quite daunting it says that getting a job is difficult and that I wouldn't be able to pop an advert in the local paper straightaway to advertise a sole trade business.

We are happy to take the risk of things not working out as we will get a good year in France whatever happens at least.

We love France and would love to make it our home.

I will have a good daily look on this excellent website and trail through the Forums to see what everybody is up to in France!

Many thanks

Carl

get cracking on the language. Find a converstion group. Don't rely on self study alone. I would suspect that is going to be the main problem if you are not yet even at GCSE level.

Try renting a holiday cottage in the area you fancy for a month if you can, get to know the locals, sound them and the job situation out. google ironing services in the area. obviously you'd need to google in French or using a translator.

I imagine your kids would go to a regular french school.

There is a good site for brits in France, i just can't remember it off the top of my head and our links directory is currently broken But i'll post it when I remember.

Welcome to Britnet

I don't have much to say on the whole France thing, beyond a school exchange and a weekend here and there in Paris I haven't really spent any time there. I can say something to learning foreign languages though.

I went to Germany with post A-Level german experience, and it was hell!!! I'm not going to lie to you, god I was so tired everynight when I got home from work that it was all I could do to fix a sandwhich and stumble into bed. It got a lot easier though when I got a TV and found a radio station that I liked. One or the other was alway on. I started watching shows that I knew - Fresh Prince and the like, things that didn't take a lot brain power to follow the story. I soon found that I was understanding what was being said without even trying, my brain got used to hearing the german and quit translating into english. I just understood it in it's natural form.

Once you get your GCSE behind you (and maybe even before) rent DVDs with french soundtracks. Start out with movies or series that you already know really well. Use the french soundtrack with the english subtitles to start out with. It wont be long before you get frustrated reading the subtitles and start to only glance at them once in a while and before long you'll turn them off. If you can get a french language radio station (maybe one of the satelite or HD stations?) that would be great too, just let it play in the background. As for reading, this may be a little harder to do in the UK, I got the same book from the library in german and english, again they were authors I know didn't need alot of brain power to follow (no Grisham for a while) and I would read a chapter in german and then read the same chapter in english. It took about 2 books before I got so bored reading the same thing twice that I quit the english and went through with the german.

Something else I did was keep a notebook - if I came across a word I didn't understand I would write it down and look it up later, I say later because I found stopping to look up a word there and then too distracting - after all, we all come across words in english still that we don't understand but can figure out more or less what they mean from the context.

Where ever you decide to settle in France I'm sure you'll love it. I'd kill to go back to Germany, but I think my hubby might object to being 6 feet under . As for being able to find work out there - I wouldn't have thought you'd have a problem - so long as you can speak the language

Learning French is very, very important - the French are intensely proud of their language and will show respect if a visitor has learned it. Around the bigger cities (Paris, Lyon, etc) lots of people will speak English, but once you get out into the countryside (especially if you're thinking of the Loire Valley) you'll find that hardly anyone does. So get going on that - there's actually quite a few "learn French" podcasts on iTunes you can subscribe to which will help.

There are certain areas where small British ex-pat communities have built up, especially in parts of Brittany and down south around Bordeaux - might be worth checking into those if you want to be around some fellow Brits and you're flexible about where you go.

Through Europe you have a correct to live and work there, but once there you will have to build your own private medical insurance. Bear in mind, if you leave the UK to emigrate to France then formally you will not be free to use the NHS in the UK except for for emergency treatment, even though you have paid into the NHS all your life. Many Brits who go abroad fail to tell the NHS that they have moved abroad, but as you intend paying your taxes & national insurance, then you may have to tell them.

Regards:
Hank Freid