Eight measly months of my life I spent living and working in France ruined my life. I was twenty three at the time, recently graduated, and determined to acquire French language and culture before applying to grad school. With a suitcase suited for a year abroad, I landed in Paris and found my way to the prefecture I was assigned to teach English.
There is no way to prepare for this kind of transition: finding a home immediately, in a foreign language, translating documents to qualify for a residence, wrangling French bureaucracy to obtain a visa, and opening a bank account to pay bills with cheques.
I quickly learned that nothing works the first time in France.
It’s typically over a petite erreur (in my opinion) like forgetting to write your surname in the mandatory caps. But once I jumped through the hurdles and was in the French system and bureaucracy was behind me, life got easier. I worked twelve hours a week, had 2.5 hour lunch breaks, and got six months paid vacation (in eight months).
Coming from America, I thought it was no-big-deal to commute to the tiny town I would be working in three days a week. So, I settled in the larger town, paid a pricey 100 euros per month to take a semi-private charter bus 45 minutes to my schools (usually only 3 others would be on…
