Requested post

Hello dear Readers,

Today I am writing a requested post for Paulita from
 http://paulita-ponderings.blogspot.fr  she is planning to move to France this year and wanted to know how we chose our house and why we came here.

After being here for a bit over 8 years it is not easy to recall why, the when is easy, we came in January 2009 after having made a visit at Christmas and making a very quick decision to do so, we went back and from then we had about 19 days to pack our house and belongings up and get over here.
The why is not so easy as it is a very long story, we came here 25 years ago on a holiday with friends and fell in love with the country, from that day on we were hell bent on coming here to live, you know if you want something enough you can get it.

We had one failed attempt to come over as we had a promise of work which turned out to be a figment of a friends imagination, it was destroying to find that we had sold our home and came over with a promise that was in the head of someone who had mental issues, but we are survivors and went back to UK to re group, it was to be 14 years later that we came over on a visit to view some properties when we found this one, it was nothing like we wanted but it was so cheap that we thought we couldn't miss it and at least we could renovate it and then sell it on, needless to say we are still here and now wonder if we have left it too late to move now.

Our love of France as I have previously touched on was the instant love of the country, it somehow felt like I had come home and I have always felt at home here, also the peace and tranquillity that is rural France is so relaxing for us when we returned to UK it always felt like a rat race, there are places in UK that you can find this same peace and tranquillity but we would never be able to afford such a place, here we have a property which is well over 200 years old but we bought it for pennies back in the day when the French didn't know the value of properties, they have since realised and put the prices up but they are still not what you would pay back in the UK, I can't call it home as home is now here for us for as long as we are able to stay here.
There have been many stories along the way which you can read through old posts on this blog.
One thing that we noticed as soon as we got here were the seasons, we really hadn't noticed them so much in UK (too busy running the rat race) but now we embrace them one and all.
Life in rural France is just as it was in UK 50 years ago when we were children, everyone speaks to you in the street, children are polite and family is so important, it is safe to let your children out to play, safe to walk the street at night, so as you can imagine it is very difficult to pinpoint a reason for coming here because it is lots of little ones that when put together become the reason.

My advice to anyone thinking of coming here to live,  live in an area to see if you like it before you buy and really look at a house for a long time to make sure it is what you want. and learn the language it is so important to your complete happiness.

If you are making the move to France please tell us your reasons

Life changes

Hello dear readers,

I have been doing some thinking about our life here today as someone asked if our lives had changed since we made the move,  I used to think there was no change in fact I would have said there was no difference in our cultures but over the years we have realised that there are some,  but nothing that is insurmountable, we came to France because we loved the fact that here in the rural countryside they seem to be at least 50 years behind England,  life is just like it was when we were kids,  safe to run around outside without getting robbed or attacked,  people especially children still have respect for others and elders,  don't get me wrong, it is starting to change now sadly and as you travel closer to the big cities you will see the graffiti some of which I find very artistic, the french in some areas are getting wise to it now and growing trees instead of concrete walls,  I very often see council workers trying for hours at a time to clean it off but I feel it would be much quicker if they painted it, I wonder why they don't invent a surface that rejects paint in the first place,
Here are a few differences we have found
.
●  Children behave in shops
●  Everyone greets you even if they don't know you
●  men kiss men to greet them (usually family)
●  food and the way we eat is different
●  The French are creatures of habit
●  If you buy the barman in a bar a drink he has to buy one back until neither of you       can leave or at least that is what it is like at our bar. and of course the wine is so           cheap.

That's just a few for today.

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