We've Adopted a French Custom -- the Aperitif!

Work Time

We're continuing to go through every room and closet in the house (next week we get to tackle the messy garage... oh boy!), and we're making decent progress. Melanie is the brains behind the operation, sorting all the crap stuff into different piles, while I'm the brawn that gets to haul everything outside.

Piles:

• Trash
• Shred (old credit cards, bank statements, etc.)
• Donate (stuff too good for the trash, but not something we want to keep)
• Storage (we're going to rent a 10x10 room at a storage facility)
• Daughter (items my daughter needs to look at later)
• etc.

We've decided that we just don't have time to sell anything, so we're donating our couches, dining room set, hutch, treadmill, etc. I've made about 15 trips to GoodWill and we'll have to rent a truck or something for the big stuff.

Aperitif Time

Campari is a popular aperitif

During breaks we like to research Paris and the French way of life. We're learning a lot, and we're not just focusing on the good stuff -- we're reading about the negatives, too. It's important not to overly romanticize everything or we run the risk of setting ourselves up for some major disappointments.

Last week Melanie read an article about a customary evening drink known as the "aperitif". The practice of drinking an alcoholic beverage to stimulate the appetite before dinner apparently dates back to 5th century Greece, but it was popularized by the French in the late 1800's.

The original "Aperitif a la Française" (French-style aperitif) consists of a dry alcoholic drink such as Vermouth, Sherry, Campari, Cognac, or Pastis (you might as well drink a black Twizzler), and a salty snack like peanuts or olives. These are consumed slowly, usually after 6:00 PM, and they signify that you have reached the end of your work day. In fact, you aren't even supposed to talk or think about work once the aperitif is delivered.

We've found this to be a great way to finally relax at the end of each day. In fact, we're finding that, just as we're starting to wear down, we begin to look forward to Aperitif Time and it gives us an extra burst of energy to wrap things up.

Selling the House

What is this? A home for ants?

We contacted a couple of realtors and told them about our house situation. (It needs a lot of work, we don't have much time before we move, etc.) They have both expressed an interest in buying our home and "flipping" it, which seems like a conflict of interest, but it would certainly make things a lot easier for us...

We're waiting to hear their offers. (I may have someone else interested in buying our house, too.)

Okay, That Was Fun...

I just discovered a perk about moving to Paris.

This afternoon the doorbell rang and I was greeted by a tired-looking young man. (It's been quite hot and muggy so I'm sure he was exhausted.)

"We're going to be in your area spraying for pests next week. We've noticed some activity in your neighborhood and several of your neighbors have signed up..."

I politely told him, "No, thanks. We're selling our house and moving soon."

He bravely continued, "Well, we have other locations in Washington, Oregon, and California. Where are you moving to?"

"Paris."

The man got a strange look on his face. "Where???"

You're moving to Paris? France???

Not sure why I was surprised by his reaction, but it definitely caught me off guard. "Paris France, in a couple of months."

Suddenly, he no longer seemed tired. "What do you do? Are you in the fashion industry or something? Why are you moving?" He had a bunch of questions and I did my best to answer them. He walked away sort of shaking his head.

I told my wife about the encounter and I have a funny feeling that we'll soon be casually mentioning our upcoming move to just about everyone we meet. Is that vain? Boastful?

Not sure I care...

Moving Overseas is Hard Work

After a surprisingly little amount of discussion we decided a couple of things about our house:

1. We've got WAY too much crap
2. We don't want to move said crap to Paris

It may seem a bit radical but we've decided to sell/donate/trash about 95% of our worldly belongings, ship a few boxes of precious/necessary items to Paris, and put whatever's left in storage. I think it will feel really good to get out from under the clutter and it will most certainly make our lives a lot simpler.

Rather than renting a truck and making multiple trips to the dump, we ordered a large trash dumpster and had them drop it off in the driveway. When it's full they will come pick it up. No muss, no fuss. You can see the corner of it in the picture below:

Our house in Sammamish, 20 miles east of Seattle

We started upstairs and made pretty good progress yesterday. I've already made two trips to GoodWill and we've managed to move a lot of stuff out to the dumpster. But this is going to take awhile. Ugh.

Moving Overseas is Complicated

Fortunately, Pretty Simple, my employer in France, provided us with a relocation specialist. Moving overseas requires a lot of paperwork and most of it has to be translated, so this gesture was GREATLY appreciated.

To give you an idea of what is involved in obtaining a work permit and visa, here is the e-mail we received today:

Dear M John CUTTER,

As one of the 2 partners of Mosaic Mobility, I would like to introduce myself to you. We have been retained to assist you in your immigration process, housing finding and settling in assistance. We are pleased to welcome you in Paris. Please, call me Carole.

Please find hereafter the step by step process for your ease of reference. The immigration process to France includes multiple stakeholders, such as the French Immigration office in France (OFII) the Labor Authorities in France, the responsible French Consulate in USA. Please note that we will manage all of the above-mentioned stakeholders on your behalf while working with you on filing these applications.

There are three distinct steps that we will take in charge:

1)    Applying for your Work Permit in France with the OFII and the Labor Authorities

2)    Assisting you to collect your Work Visa from the French Consulate in USA

3)    Assisting you and your spouse with completing a Medical Exam and Local Registration with the closest OFII, within 3 months from your date of arrival in France

Step 1: Application for Work Permit with the OFII (French Immigration Office) and the Labor Authorities in France.

Current estimated processing time is 4 weeks from date of application submission at the OFII.

We are currently filling in the necessary applications for your work permit and secure the necessary signatures.

Documents required for the work permit application:

-           Copy of Passport + all pages with visas, for you and your spouse

-           Copy of Birth certificate with filiation for you and your spouse

-           Copy of Wedding certificate

-           Copy of your diplomas

-           Scanned copy of identity photo for each family member (passport/identity card format).

We will take in charge the translations of the documents into French. We would greatly appreciate if you could send us as soon as possible a scan copy of the documents mentioned above.

Step 2: Collection of Long-Stay Biometric Work Visa from the French Consulate, in Seattle or San Francisco. I will confirm you later.

Current estimated processing time is 4 weeks, from date of the submission of your application.

A French visa application cannot be fast-tracked.

The required documents will be confirmed once we come closer to this step, as they frequently change. As the process requires taking the photo and the ten fingerprints of each applicant, you must submit the visa application in person and your wife will have to be present.

The Consulate will keep your passport and they will give you another appointment within one to three weeks to collect your passports with the visa stamped.

Arrival in France:

Following collection of your work visa, you can enter France and start your employment.

Step 3: Medical Exam and Local Registration with the closest OFII office.

Please note that your spouse will be required to have a medical visit and obtain a stamp from the OFII office on her passport, her personal appearance will be required on the day of the appointment. 

You and your spouse will be required to have an appointment at the Local Administration (Prefecture) to get the residence permit, your personal appearance will be required on the day of the appointment. Further details on this process will follow once we are closer to this step.

Please kindly be advised that the actual processing time remains at the discretion of the issuing authorities and the French administrations reserve the right to request additional information/documents should they see necessary.

Thank you very much.

Please do not hesitate to contact me for further information.

Best regards.

Carole Losa

MOSAIC MOBILITY

Service de relocation du Sud-Ouest Francilien

www.mosaicmobility.com

( +33 (0)1 69 41 82 00

È +33 (0)6 67 67 85 87

fax: +33 (0)9 57 82 06 38

           

Learning to Speak French

The company I'm going to be working for offers free french lessons, but we would like to get a headstart so we've been taking lessons online using a website called Duolingo.

Duolingo is great, and it's free to use. Melanie and I have been doing the lessons every day and we felt like we have been making really good progress.

Until we heard someone speaking French today... and didn't understand a single word. We didn't expect to understand what the person was saying, but we figured we'd be able to pick out a few new words. Nope. Nada. I think I heard an "avec" (which means "with") but I can't be sure.

Of course, the more we learn the more we realize how much we don't know yet. This is going to be hard. I'm reminded of an old Steve Martin line:

Should We Move to Paris?

Should we move to Paris or not?

We thought the decision was made yesterday, but we're still waffling. It's such a huge life altering commitment for a couple of homebodies who met and grew up in Casper, Wyoming.

I've been doing a lot of Internet research about Paris and it seems that the vast majority of people who move there from other countries are under the age of 25, and they are mostly students, nannies, and the like. Melanie and I are well past 50 (I am 53 and she is 54); are we too old to pick up and move to another part of the planet?

We're a couple of old farts

We have fallen into a pretty comfortable routine here! Melanie plays games and watches TV while I'm at work, then after I get home we have a nice dinner and watch TV until bedtime. Lather, rinse, repeat. On the weekends I like to BBQ... and watch TV. Okay, on paper that might look sort of boring, but it makes us happy. Isn't that what we all want? To be happy?

On the other hand, I've seen people settle contentedly into mundane existences and I don't know if that's because they are actually satisfied with their lives, or because they have simply grown accustomed to their non-challenging lifestyles. Is that really living? Unless you believe in re-incarnation (I don't) you only get one shot on this planet... shouldn't life be lived to the fullest?

Yes! I told Melanie, "I think we should move to Paris!" Sort of zombie-like Melanie replied, "Okay, let's move to Paris." I said, "I'm not kidding! I'm going to go upstairs right now and accept the job... Here I go... I'm heading up to my office..."

As I climbed the stairs I began to yell down, "I'M ALMOST TO MY OFFICE... I'M WALKING TO THE COMPUTER... I'M GOING TO ACCEPT THE JOB... I'M OPENING THE E-MAIL... OKAY, NOW I'M TYPING MY ACCEPTANCE..."

<tappity tap tappity tap tap tap tappity tap>

"THE E-MAIL IS FINISHED... I'M HITTING SEND... RIGHT NOW... HERE I GO... I'M REALLY GOING TO DO IT..."

Silence. She wasn't stopping me.

<click>

I walked downstairs and Melanie looked at me, a little wide-eyed. "Did you do it?"

"Yup."

"Well okay then. It looks like we are moving to Paris."

"Uh-huh."

I think part of me was hoping that, once I hit send and the decision was finally made, we would both feel relieved and instantly become ecstatically happy. That wasn't the case. It took a few hours for the idea to sink in even a little bit, and when it did it filled us simultaneously with excitement and dread.

I called our daughter Autumn and left a message on her smartphone. We were to learn later that she heard the message while in a meeting at work and got a very stricken look on her face. Her boss asked, "Autumn, are you okay?" She reportedly stammered, "My... my... parents are moving to Paris!"

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

If we decide to move overseas we're probably going to accept the job in Paris. But we can't quite seem to pull the trigger for some reason. We even started a list of Pros and Cons:

Moving to Paris (PROS)

• Nice offer from an exciting new company with a bright future
• Get to experience another culture
• Easy/cheap to travel to other locations in Europe
• House needs a lot of work and we have WAY too much stuff (moving to Paris would force us to finally do something about this situation)
• Parisian food, art, history
• We're getting older (mid 50's) but we're not too old for a new adventure

Moving to Paris (CONS)

• Leaving daughter (and her fiance)
• Moving anywhere is a huge pain in the ass
• We are not very adventurous and are becoming set in our ways

Earlier today Melanie and I were talking about our potential move when I remembered my daughter's motto: "It is better to regret something you did than your decision not to do it." We have a chance to live in Paris, how on earth can we pass that up?

Holy smokes, I think we're moving to Paris!