Franceaversary

22nd April marked one year since we moved, potentially forever, to a city we'd only been to for one day in 2019. That trip was part of a two week camper van trip from Nice to Barcelona. At that point I had just had an operation 6 months earlier so we wanted to have some nice family time, and we wanted to make the most of the fact that Eric wasn't quite two years old and so was still free on flights. We'd never seen that bit of France before, and apart from the van being too small and Dan having to sleep in an "L" shape around Eric it was a pretty good trip. 

This photo was taken on our 1 random day in Perpignan in 2019.
I'm pointing at the mountain that we can now see from our window.

We were not really thinking about leaving back then, it's always been in the back of our minds, but we were pretty settled in Liverpool, my parents hadn't long moved up north, and remote working was less of an option. But we did really like all the places along that coast. It was pretty strange but exciting swapping a nice but entirely predicable life for a year where everything changed and really anything could have happened. And really I think in general things have turned out well. 

Some major things are harder: we have less money because we used our savings on the move and I am not currently working, we have less space in our house, although we've gained a second toilet and although our garden is smaller, we use it more because it hardly rains. We have fewer friends. They're some pretty major downsides. But I am the kind of person who likes change and there's been a lot of good change. 

We have made some new friends, not many, but we've met some cool people here. Among our old friends we're part of maybe 5-10% of people who would take the step to move country. No judgement on people who wouldn't choose to move, in some ways I wish I had no desire to move, it would be simpler, but among the community of other foreigners here, we are the very dull play it safe ones. I've met a few people that have moved multiple times within France or internationally, moving their kids schools each time. I know someone who first moved to Barcelona with a family then it didn't work out, so they moved to France and lived with their in laws, their husband couldn't find work here so got a job in London and the rest of the family will move back in the summer. I thought moving here was stressful but in comparison our lives are pretty easy. 

I've been getting to know some more Ukrainians. There's one on my course that told me the story of how she came here. Her city was very close to the Russian border and was the first placed to be bombed. She had an hour to pack her car and she focused on packing all the things her cats needed to survive. The day they left was her 19th birthday. She first travelled to a different city in Ukraine, but the roads were jam packed and a journey that should have taken 5 hours took 24 hours. They also struggled to get fuel as everyone else was buying it too. They were very cold in the car, it was February and they had to turn the car off when they weren't moving to preserve fuel. They then left to Romania and were sleeping in their car or on church floors. Eventually they came to France. Then for 3 months she moved back to a safer part of Ukraine to work and see her boyfriend. She remembers being on a bridge in a city and the very next day that bridge was bombed. 

In a weird set of coincidences I met another Ukrainian who lives in my village. When we arrived a year ago a Ukrainian family also arrived and were living with a French host family. The head teacher managed to find funding to put on some extra French lessons for Percy, the Ukrainian girl and a Portuguese girl. Then I started my A1 French classes in October and met some Ukrainians (who I didn't particularly talk to) but then, last week, I went to the boys end of term music concert and this woman (who I really recognised but I didn't know where from) started talking to me. At first it was awkward because I really didn't know who she was, but eventually I realised she was the Ukrainian from my old French class (I'm now in a different class in a different place). So she'd been in my village the whole time and our kids have been taught together and we had been in the same class but, have never met. We've exchanged numbers now and hopefully we'll hang out a bit, but we can only communicate in bad French currently. We sat down together to chat after the concert, and her daughter and Dan acted as our translators, translating our bad French to good French and then sometimes her daughter translated back to Ukrainian. 

On our Franceaversary weekend we travelled down to Barcelona to meet my parents, who flew there. On a plane, unfortunately they can't actually fly if, they could I probably would have mentioned it back when I started this blog in 2009. 

Anyway, I love Barcelona it's probably my favourite city but I am from Coventry, so the bar is low. I've discovered I really would like to live in a major city. I discovered this too late in life though and Dan is not a big fan of big places, plus having outside space and fields to walk in is nice too. But it was great being in Barcelona for a few days. We did some fun touristy things and I got to do my first comedy set for a year! 

It was a very lovely comedy night with a perfect audience in a very aesthetically pleasing basement. 

I talked to all the other acts who were all very friendly and from all over the place. I met a Mexican who did a gap year in Leeds, and I told him that's the wrong way round. I met a British comedian based in London who knew a load of my comedy friends from the north and it was just really cool to be in that environment and make those connections again. I just am a bit sad that I can't do it very often. 

I was a bit hesitant in the first half of my set, trying to remember it as it was 100% new material, but I relaxed into the second half and I think I have at least one good new bit. In England I could then do this set again, 10 times in different places improving it and tweaking it, but it would be pretty impossible to do that here. At the end of May I'll be performing IN FRENCH! I've no idea how that will go. It's very hard to learn it and I won't be able to do any ad hoc bits unless I need to say "J'ai douze ans" or "ou est la bibliotec" that kind of stuff. It could be a disaster, but then it might be great material for an English show that I might do one day about all the disastrous things I did when I lived in France.

My next blog will be about Eric's birthday and then I might possibly write a serious blog, I'm not sure I'm still thinking about it.