An Exclusive Glimpse Into Our Expat Life in France
Here on The Francofile, Jalen and I endeavor to share our life in France and love of all things French in creative ways. From diary entry blog posts, to vlogs on YouTube, to stories on Instagram, and more, we love shedding light on our expat experience. While explaining the broad strokes of our time as English assistants with the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF) and reviewing our years as graduate students at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne is relatively simple, capturing and conveying the day-to-day is much more challenging. In this blog post, we hope to illustrate a routine week in our life through photographs that showcase one hand-picked moment per day. Keep reading for a glimpse into our world!
Reims boasts the third largest marché de Noël, or Christmas market, in all of France. We had already visited several times in December to drink mulled wine and get presents for loved ones, but we couldn’t let the market close for the season before we got some Alsace-style bretzels. Jalen’s pretzel was topped with emmental cheese and lardons whereas I opted for the gros sel, or coarse salt, version. Even though it was a rainy evening, we savored every bite of our pretzels and thoroughly enjoyed our last trip to the Christmas market of the year.
Clementines from Spain are in season during the winter months, and we can’t get enough of them. We often eat them at lunchtime alongside a sandwich, wrap, or soup. Jalen peeled mine for me – I hate how the rind gets stuck under my fingernails. While we enjoyed our fruit, I told Jalen about a Spanish phrase I learned recently: mi media naranja. It literally translates to “my half-orange” and is used to mean “my better half” or “my soulmate.” It was interesting to reflect on the similarities and differences between terms of affection in different languages.
Receiving packages in France often feels like a wild goose chase. It’s nearly impossible to have anything delivered to our home address, meaning we usually have to go to a point relais, or collection point, to get our packages. We’ve gone to collection points located at a gas station, a sporting goods store, a cell phone store, and multiple grocery stores over the years. This time, we headed to a supermarket in Reims called G20 to get a box full of American snacks that we were gifted for the holidays. It was dark and wet outside and the box was heavy, but sharing a Reese’s chocolate tree afterwards made the effort worth it.
Though we’ve spent three winters in Reims, we didn’t get the chance to ride the seasonal grande roue, or ferris wheel, until this year. Although we felt that 8 € per ticket was a steep price for just a few minutes of amusement, we decided that we would regret missing out on a bird’s-eye view of the city we have grown to love. We hopped in our spacious cabin and rode up to the top just as the sunset turned the sky pink and orange. We pointed out some of the iconic landmarks and even identified our own neighborhood. Reims is decidedly beautiful from above!
Sundays are almost never busy at our house. We like to spend quiet time together watching movies, doing self care, preparing for the week ahead, and working on The Francofile. This Sunday, Jalen edited a vlog for our YouTube channel, and I made headway on some upcoming blog posts. We both kept at it until nightfall, stopping occasionally to chat. While running The Francofile is admittedly a time-consuming hobby, it remains a challenge that we enjoy taking on together.
We decided to take an evening walk to stretch our legs after a long Monday, and we ended up at our favorite bar in downtown Reims called Ernest Hemingway Café. We get the cheapest beer on the menu, the Bofferding, and our number one bartender always pours our pints before we even open our mouths to order. This evening, he warned us that the price had gone up by 30 cents due to l’inflation et tout ça (inflation and so on). We paid and had our drinks outside even though it was chilly.
Growing up in the USA, we usually ate dinner around 6:00 PM. In France, it’s customary to eat around 8:00 PM. We tend to have our evening meal around 7:00 PM nowadays, but this Tuesday, we didn’t dig in until around 10:00 PM! Using a box of pre-made mix that came in our American-snack-filled box and our two-burner hot plate, we made a huge stack of pancakes together. Jalen is firmly Team Pancakes while I tend to prefer waffles, but even I have to admit that this dinner was delicious!
And just like that, you’ve spent a week’s worth of moments with us! No two weeks are exactly the same, but these seven snapshots illustrate the reality of our life as Americans in France. Which entry spoke to you? What does a week in your life look like? Let us know in a comment!
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