Fuh-rahnce!

Due to some technical difficulties I haven't been able to smooch you beloved readers for a fortnight, but now I'm back. Hi! Hi. Hi hi hi hi hi hi. Or perhaps I should say... BONJOUR MES AMIES! (Picture me saying it with this face. It's at least 10 times or 30% funnier, depending on whether you use the metric system).


Brief aside: That is what I picture myself looking like had I made my first voyage to France circa 1982 and it was such a defining time for me, full of self-growth and self-realization and self-blossoming into a vraie femme, that I continued to dress like this forevermore to remind myself of those halcyon times. Not unlike a certain French professor with chunked bangs and a coiled bun I used to know...

But I digress. Dudes, I have super-hyper-mega-cool news: I'm moving to France! I've had to keep this a secret from you for so long, but now I can shout it to the world! France! France! Let's dance! Let's prance! Let's...um... eat macarons? Yes!

Almost exactly a year ago the gent casually suggested that we hop the pond for an extended stay. A  good friend of mine named Sarumph had recently spent the year teaching English to adorable French school children, and that seemed as good a way to go as any. We decided to keep things very hush-hush just in case it didn't work out.

Matt quietly started taking French classes at the community college (why? because...er...he likes Proust?) and I quietly started reading books about French etiquette and the problems Americans generally encounter when they go to Cheesy Wineland (why? because...er...I like stuff? and things?). I started working on the arduous application in October and finally got it submitted around New Years. This whole time I was just bursting with this news,  and I couldn't help myself from spilling the beans to select friends and family (OK...everyone) when I was home for the holidays, always cursing myself afterward because I knew I'd feel like a prize idiot if I didn't end up going.

Shortly after returning home I just had to tell my boss, because giving anything less than eight months' notice is criminal, right?

But the word finally came down on Wednesday that I have been accepted to the glorious Académie de Dijon, which was my first choice due to my great love of mustard. I could end up anywhere in that pink part of the map, from tiny Sens to Dijon proper. I'm hoping for the latter, because it's a mere hour-and-a-half train ride from Gay Pareee. And, like I said, mustard.

I'll find out where I'm going sometime this summer, as well as what age I'll be teaching. Sometimes the school is great about finding a place for their Americans to take shelter, and sometimes they're on their own. It's all very up in the air until I get that letter.

My manfriend and I had a meeting with the Consule Honoraire yesterday to discuss visa options for him to get over there. She suggested that he let me go first so I can get settled and figure out what's what, and then he can join me a month later on a visitor visa. When those three months are up he'll go home again for a month or two, and then come back for the remainder of my stay on another visitor visa.

"I see it all zee time," she said. "Zees will eezhair make you strongair, or he finds anozzer American girl while you are gone, and you find a beeg French hunk and zat's zat. Or maybe he mees you so much when he come he ask you to marry. I jus speak ze troof! I don't know!"

She also suggested that he learn as many Bob Dylan songs as he can before going because les francais ADORE him. She admitted to having translated "'undreds!" of his songs into french when she was a young filly.

Some housekeeping notes: Due the fact that I will probably have something new to blog about every hour, I'm planning to store those insights on a new blog solely dedicated to my time in France so I don't clog up TP with my transliterations and franglais.  I'll let you know when it's up and running so you can decide to follow or ignore it at your pleasure.

I'll leave you with a tale of Mirelle, a woman who, like me, possesses "long, slender fingers" and "a certain fondness for poking fun." When I return from France it is my hope to have completely morphed into this modern-day Bardot.

French in Action