I have to apologize to everyone. I have been failing at giving you more interesting expat interviews. I am very sorry for this but have many more lined up that I hope you enjoy.

One problem I am finding that I have right now is that I have this wonderful interview from an expat in France – but it was done many months ago. Now she is on her way moving back to the UK. But either way, if you go to her site you can find lots of great info about being an expat in France or the UK. I am sorry that this is so behind the times now, but thought it was still an interesting interview, so I am still posting it. Please forgive me!

Today we have Catherine who is a single mother who was living in France and has now moved  back to the UK. She has a great perspective on life since she has truly lived all around the world and experienced so many different things. She has many great recipes and stories on her two blogs.

Make sure you stop by and check out her two blogs after your done with this fun interview. You can find them here and here.

Enjoy this expat interview!

1. Where are you from originally, where are you now and what brought you there?

I was born in Portsmouth, in Hampshire, England.  I lived there until I was three and a half, and then my parents moved to Blantyre, Malawi in Central Africa because my dad got a contract there.  We were there for 6 years before we moved back to UK and to Scotland, where we lived for 14 years, and where my daughter was born.  In 2000, we moved to SW France, where we have been for almost 9 years.  We moved down here for the climate and the lower cost of living – there’s not much difference now though!

2. What do you like/dislike about living in France?

I love the weather.  Compared to Scotland, it is fantastic.  We have a pool, and spend a lot of our time in the summer swimming.  There are always parties and barbecues during the summer, and all the villages have their own fêtes – all you have to do is buy a ticket and turn up.

The downside is that the winters are very difficult.  They don’t last very long, and it is as though people hibernate.  The social life drops away and doesn’t tend to pick up again until the spring.

3. Do you have any advice for someone who wants to get a job in France? What was your experience?

For me, getting a visa wasn’t an issue.  I don’t need a visa, being an EU resident.  All I did was move from one EU country to another.  Getting a job, on the other hand, was not so easy.  In fact, around here, if you’re not willing to do gardening, building or gîte management then you’re pretty much stuck.  There aren’t the jobs in this area for the French, let alone the expats.  And being able to speak the language doesn’t help in the search for a job because there just aren’t any.  I have applied for all kinds of jobs, including working at the checkouts in supermarkets, but I either never get a response, or I get a “thanks but no thanks”!

If anyone was seriously thinking about moving to France I would suggest that they obviously learn the language, as living in a country being unable to communicate is not easy.  Although there are the odd people who take pride in the fact that they have never learnt a word of French!  Also they would need to do serious research into job prospects before moving.  The whole gîte/artist weekend thing doesn’t really work well enough to give you an income for an entire year.

If you’re planning on teaching English to children, before you start, find a bilingual child to talk to.  Get them to teach you all the rude words in French, then you know when your class are misbehaving and being rude!  I found that very useful, because, like all kids, they will try it on!

I don’t know anyone who is really “living the dream” – those who say they are, I think, are trying very hard to convince themselves of the fact.

4. What was the most challenging part of living in a foreign country when you first started out as an expat? Do you have any advice for those facing similar challenges?

When I first started living as an expat I was only a very small child.  The only thing I remember as being a pain in the butt was having to wear below the knee length dresses in Malawi.  It was a rule that women couldn’t wear trousers but had to cover their knees.  But there wasn’t the language problem there as it was an ex-British colony.  There were many other problems, but none that affected me directly, so I didn’t pay any attention to them!

There aren’t that many downsides to being an expat in France, but that’s probably because I do speak French.  The one problem that springs to mind is the complete chauvinism!  If I or my mum takes the car to the garage and explain what the problem is, the mechanic will not listen to us.  If my dad takes the car in, he is automatically listened to, because he is a man and therefore knows more about cars.  It’s complete rubbish, because he doesn’t, but that’s what the mechanic thinks.

5. If you were to do it all again, what would you do different?

To be honest, I’m not sure that I would do it at all.  I certainly wouldn’t move to SW France.  If I did move to France I would move to an area with more jobs available – possibly an area with more tourism as that would create the jobs.

6. Do you want to move back to where you came from? If not, what is it about the expat life that makes it all worth it to you?

I would love to move back to Scotland, but I don’t think I could afford to live there now.  In France, I have the good luck not to have to pay rent as I live with my parents.  I don’t think that I could get a job that would pay enough for me to live in the UK, and pay for child care too.  As a single parent, I’m in a Catch-22 situation.  There are very few jobs here, and to get a job in the UK I need to be there, and I can’t be there without a job.  It’s a vicious circle.

The main bonus about living here is that although the winters can be hard, they are also short.  In Scotland we had the central heating on year round.  Here, we rely on a wood burning stove and electric heaters in the bedroom and we use them probably from about October to late March.  For the rest of the year, the weather is generally very good, and ranges from fairly warm to flaming hot!

7. What are some of the good, the bad, the ugly…and the funny things you have experienced living in France?

I don’t think I have any particularly amusing stories about France.  The expat community here can be very cliquey, and there can be a lot of back biting, so I just try to stay on the periphery and not get involved.

The weather can be quite extreme.  In the summer it gets very hot, in the winter extremely cold.  We also have massive electrical storms throughout August, and in January this year we had Hurricane Klaus which caused an enormous amount of damage across SW France.

There are pleasant things to be experienced here too though!  Between the 10th and 15th August the sky is full of shooting stars.  We lie outside by the pool really late at night, and just watch the stars.  You can see loads of shooting stars, and it’s quite a magical experience!  At about midnight, we jump into the pool and have a midnight swim.  We only do it for one night during this time, because there’s normally only one night that’s cloudless enough, as it is also storm time!  It’s one of the nicest nights of the year.

8. Did you experience culture shock when you moved? What was that like? How did you overcome it?

I don’t think I had any culture shock – it took a while to relearn French!  Although I had studied French at school and at university, I hadn’t used it for at least three years while I had been working in Edinburgh, so it took a little while to come back.

The other thing that I found difficult to get used to was shop opening times.  In UK, everything is open all the time.  There are 24h supermarkets, petrol stations with shops etc and it is very convenient.  In France, however, a lot of places close at lunch time for up to 3hrs sometimes.  On Sundays, almost nothing is open.  I miss the convenience of being able to go shopping any time I want.

9. Any practical tips for the new expats out there?

One major one is don’t change your driving licence to a French one.  You will be told that you need to, but the reality is that you only need to if you spend more than 6 months in France.  Most people don’t – most people go back and forth to the UK.  As soon as you change your licence to a French one the French authorities contact DVLA (UK driving licence authority) to cancel your UK licence.

Personally, I’d much rather keep my UK licence than have a French one!

10. Where do you think you’ll go next?

I think the question is more like where would I like to go next!!  Reality bears no resemblance to my daydreams!

I would love to move to the south of Italy, or Australia.  The first isn’t too much of a pipe dream, but I suspect that the job prospects would be as bad, if not worse, than here!  Australia is a dream – I would need to be swept off my feet by some rugged type, and whisked off to Australia!  And the chances of meeting a rugged outbacky Australian in SW France are slim to non-existent!

More realistically, I have thought about moving somewhere else within France – somewhere where there are more jobs, and possibly less of an expatriate community, but more tourists to make job finding easier.  Or back to UK, but with the current recession maybe that’s not such a good idea.

11. Anything else you want to add or share about expat life or culture shock?

I think the most important piece of advice would be to learn the language of the place you are moving to – if possible, before you go.  Life is not necessarily easy in the country of your choice and dreams, but it can be made a lot easier if you can speak to people and understand what they reply to you.  Also, you need to understand letters that are sent to you by your utility providers.

Find out if there is an expatriate website for the area to which you are moving, and register yourself on it to find out a little more about the area from the people who live there.  Also, go on to the forums and chat to people there.

I hope you have found this interesting and/or useful!  You can check out my blogs here and here.
Thanks Catherine for that great interview! I never knew they had hurricanes in France. You always learn something new! Good luck on your current venture, I cant wait to hear more about it!

Are you an expat in France? Tell us more about your experience in a comment below!