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Holiday home forever

My husband and I moved to France in June 2001. As we are in our 50's with grown up children we bought a small maison de ville with a small courtyard garden. It was planned as a holiday home for us, but we found that we just fell in love with everything and now stay here most of the time and return to our house in London for the holidays! I spoke no French and my husband spoke some. You do feel like children and you need to find someone in your vicinity who you feel you can trust. Our estate agent has actually become a good friend and still helps us if we get letters or bills we don't understand! We found watching films on TV with the subtitles on in French has been very helpful. I bought a woman's magazine called Femme Actuelle, as it had some interesting articles which - with the help of a dictionary - started to give me a basic vocabulary. I also wrote the names of things on post it notes and they stayed there until I had learnt them. Our new French friends thought it was very funny but they also removed them as I knew the words. We found the people so welcoming! We have a market and I have made friends with some of the stallholders and they now tell me how to cook things I hadn't tried before. Buying a simple French cookbook will help you with learning the names of ingredients and the words associated with cooking, which may be an opening for talking to some of your new neighbours.After 17 months I can now read short stories and can make out the local papers. I have found a student with whom I work for 2 hours a week and I use the library facilities.

Sent by: Carol

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