Lovely video, full of great ideas. I wish I'd had this kind of direction when I moved to London for a year in my early 20s. I'm in shock that you're in your 50s, as you look to be mid-30s! Your hutzpah in moving to a new country, becoming fluent in French, and also getting married now, is pure inspiration. Loving this channel; please do more! Merci! 😊
43 here, married to a French person too, and been in France since 2020 (yeah, that year was hard, lol). It's not my first time living abroad, actually me and my spouse met and got married in a 3rd country, so we learned to really rely on each other because we had no support system there. While in the 3rd country, we were expats, and yes we did tend to run in expat groups, but it wasn't fulfilling at all, because of the transient nature of expats, everyone wants to make friends as quickly as possible, but no one wanted lasting friendships, it's also why it was extremely rare for the locals to want to be friends with expats because they knew you would leave, I was able to make some lasting friendships from that experience, but none of them are here in France. Fortunately my spouse has a really good friend group here in France and they accepted me with open arms, and they are ok that my French is coming very slowly, though they do forget I'm still learning and talk really fast and only use English if they think I'm not getting it at all. But it's not the same as having friends that have had similar experiences to you, it can be very lonely sometimes when the only people you know are people from that country, they laugh at jokes you don't get because you don't know the cultural references (sometimes they explain them, sometimes they say it's complicated and never explain), they were raised in a different culture so sometimes they don't understand your perspective, things like that, and since Ile-de-France is a very big region, sometimes we only see people in this friend group 3-4 times a year because they have their own lives and families and responsibilities, and no one is in my town or close enough where we can visit whenever, every thing has to be planned sometimes months in advance (which reminds me I have to remind my Frenchies about us hosting Thanksgiving soon, lol). But I've also been super hesitant to make friends within the immigrant (from Anglophone countries) community and/or expat community here, maybe I'm biased or have a prejudice or something, or bad memories of trying really hard to make real friends in those groups in the other country I lived in and them all mostly being superficial. Like I do want to be considered an immigrant that actually tried to integrate and not the kind that only associated with people from my home country or only speak my native language (there are immigrants/expats in many countries that are like this, English speakers in France are sometimes no different), I met those in that 3rd country who had been there for FIFTEEN years and never really learned the native language well and only associated with people that spoke their native language, and I know there are groups like that here too. But it's also hard because I do miss being able to speak in English without having to repeat myself constantly and understand certain things about the culture I grew up in without having to explain myself, like I don't want to lose the good things about my culture, I want to integrate but I DON'T want to assimilate
So happy to see you back on RUclips. :-) Very interesting topic and useful tips, as always. You are a true inspiration. Big hugs from Hungary! :-)
Merci merci 😘more to come soon
Lovely video, full of great ideas. I wish I'd had this kind of direction when I moved to London for a year in my early 20s. I'm in shock that you're in your 50s, as you look to be mid-30s! Your hutzpah in moving to a new country, becoming fluent in French, and also getting married now, is pure inspiration. Loving this channel; please do more! Merci! 😊
You have just made my day and my week-thank you for your sweet comment and I’ll be making more videos soon!! Greetings from Paris
In her fifties!!?? No, I can't believe it! Are you sure? Yes! She said it!! Amazing.
43 here, married to a French person too, and been in France since 2020 (yeah, that year was hard, lol). It's not my first time living abroad, actually me and my spouse met and got married in a 3rd country, so we learned to really rely on each other because we had no support system there. While in the 3rd country, we were expats, and yes we did tend to run in expat groups, but it wasn't fulfilling at all, because of the transient nature of expats, everyone wants to make friends as quickly as possible, but no one wanted lasting friendships, it's also why it was extremely rare for the locals to want to be friends with expats because they knew you would leave, I was able to make some lasting friendships from that experience, but none of them are here in France. Fortunately my spouse has a really good friend group here in France and they accepted me with open arms, and they are ok that my French is coming very slowly, though they do forget I'm still learning and talk really fast and only use English if they think I'm not getting it at all. But it's not the same as having friends that have had similar experiences to you, it can be very lonely sometimes when the only people you know are people from that country, they laugh at jokes you don't get because you don't know the cultural references (sometimes they explain them, sometimes they say it's complicated and never explain), they were raised in a different culture so sometimes they don't understand your perspective, things like that, and since Ile-de-France is a very big region, sometimes we only see people in this friend group 3-4 times a year because they have their own lives and families and responsibilities, and no one is in my town or close enough where we can visit whenever, every thing has to be planned sometimes months in advance (which reminds me I have to remind my Frenchies about us hosting Thanksgiving soon, lol). But I've also been super hesitant to make friends within the immigrant (from Anglophone countries) community and/or expat community here, maybe I'm biased or have a prejudice or something, or bad memories of trying really hard to make real friends in those groups in the other country I lived in and them all mostly being superficial. Like I do want to be considered an immigrant that actually tried to integrate and not the kind that only associated with people from my home country or only speak my native language (there are immigrants/expats in many countries that are like this, English speakers in France are sometimes no different), I met those in that 3rd country who had been there for FIFTEEN years and never really learned the native language well and only associated with people that spoke their native language, and I know there are groups like that here too. But it's also hard because I do miss being able to speak in English without having to repeat myself constantly and understand certain things about the culture I grew up in without having to explain myself, like I don't want to lose the good things about my culture, I want to integrate but I DON'T want to assimilate
You make so many good points here-thank you for this thoughtful comment and bonne continuation 🧚♀️