Are you really ready to be "French"?

But complaining about France is the French national pastime. My entire French family, all my French colleagues and friends all do it. Incessantly. :-) I have actually been told off for saying something nice about my adopted country. "Oh, stop being so damn American." grumbled a former boss when I said how much I loved living here.

Don't you know the wonderful phrase "qui aime bien chatouille bien"? :-)

Interestingly I also did the same at my English Grammar school and the history of the school excludes that satrical and very political rag. I was part of the very much more Bohemian peace movement (ban the bomb, cool jazz, trad folk and blues type of world) who wanted to be an artist. Never a hippy though. Anti-establishment through and through and yet I thrived in Cambridge! I usually describe myself as left of Karl Marx, like Proudhon a lot and whilst people expect me to be a Hegelian I am firmly a Kantian and every day's work I have ever done has been for the rights of my fellow human beings. That is a good reason to be in France. The British people are developing such a hatred of human rights that I weep, the French may be more indifferent but many sympathise. So too have many good US people I have known. Scratch and under the skin many of us come out the same and perhaps that is why we eat the lotus.

Nice one Vin!

Well said Chris!

Oh I think loving Daniel Balavoine was worth mentioning... lol

I am French myself and i have lived a third of my life in London.

I absolutely adore Britishness and I have a great many wonderful Americans friends too.

What i miss the most about my life in England is the general decency of the people, the sense of humour,the open-mindness, the energy, the pubs and the socialising. What I like the most about my life in France is the lifestyle, the healthcare and of course the sunshine :) French people and administrion do drive me crazy though...

In the whole, I guess life is what you make of it no matter where you are. :)

Because it is also a very large part of my job I have been in around 80 of the around 200 countries on this planet. Should we not say 'Survive X' to each and every one, including our places of origin, because apart from the so-called 1% are we not all to one degree or another surviving anyway?

I really enjoy Survive France, I look almost everyday on FB, although I have survived France pretty much on my own for the past 30 years, I still find it highly informative, good humoured, supportive and I enjoy any exchange which may help someone. Some of the best posts have come from French people ie. Evelyne Seymour on What do you wish someone had told you about France before you moved here? I only wish more french people would sign up. Don't forget as well as living in France we now live in Europe

Mr Corson needs to chill out wherever he chooses to live.

Celebste, he said it, so he is actually OVERT. Our Karl would also be pleased with that.

Bravo John, I totally agree.

We are all people dealing with where we are at this moment, no matter where we came from. Negativity and criticism are never helpful.

For me, I don't feel the need to 'become French'. I never 'felt American', and I know I will never 'feel French', and that's okay! I just feel like myself. Sometimes I feel I am 'fitting in' to the place I live, sometimes not, and I suspect it will be that way no matter where I live.

I wish everyone to be well where they are now!

amy

oh ok an old member lol, ooppss I forgot the marmite in my comm and the selection boxes hihihihi LOL

me too Andrew, I dont need any other sites SN is brilliant !!! well said !!!!!

WOW Corson, how surprised was I to see this blog !!!!! Lived in France for over 20 years, married a frenchman 28 years ago 3 children, the first 2 born in England the third in France, this makes the first 2 British and the 3rd French( with a british passport) Happy to be here in France with some lovely french friends and french family !!!! Sometimes things p..s me off here in France, but then again things p...ed me off in England also!!!!! The best way to survive in France is first of all have the capabilite to laugh at oneself when trying to speak the lingo and secondly to ACCEPT the different ways your adopted country works and moves, this website is not only for the "moaners" it is for the English speaking community to have some contacts and if they need advise !! Its here to make us all feel that we do have someone to talk to if things get difficult in our personal and our proffessional lives, its here so that we can chat and make new friends, have a laugh, a joke, a moan and just to have time together, its NOT here for people to criticise and to make fun of!!!!! I would think that over 90% of the people on this website have adapted to french customs, although we will all agree how nice it is when someone tells us where to buy the baked beans :-) And the heinz products !!!!! But thats because we are English and all English love baked beans and crackers for Xmas etc.....

So I hope that you enjoy living here in our adopted country and that you are happy to have left America (with all those Americans in it ) Have a nice day in France LOL

PS Take this as you will !

I absolutely love it here. Beauocracy is much the same wherever you go.I find Survive France a great place to iron out these problems that I am not familiar with. I did not know the name for Blue Tack, only had to ask the question here and was flooded with all sorts of amazing advice. Never short of a bit of Patafix maintenant.... Gina Hams

a belated welcome back and thanks for explaining yourself, I think it was needed and is proof that you understand that this forum isn't like the other expat ones (it's the only English speaking one I participate in too).

I know, I couldn't believe it and Quick is even more revolting than McDo.

And round here 'McDo' is the only place to eat outside of the reglemented lunch hours of '12-2pm' that is why they are doing so well.

I think you will find McDonalds is present everywhere in France but Subway and KFC only in major cities, hardly everywhere.

Now 'Quick' is present everywhere (and revolting) and just this week I received a fidelity card from our swimming club, offering us 20% every time as part of a new 'sports pass'!!!!

Why worry? I take it as a subtle joke and think of something else: Pogo-ing France - nah, don't work. Mind you I reallllllllly hate Marmite and that mention could raise a complaint about any mention of the by-product of road tar making with too much salt and some nasty sharp stuff thrown in. All blogs and in each language I am on have their pessimists, morons and who knows whatever else - I try to challenge their negativity with intelligence and reason and I tend to find it works - except for those who get angry and nasty! Tomorrow work again, so less time for today's pleasure, for now back to the hot stove!

OK, fair game. If you had not come back with this I would have stuck with the MA Trollery tag, but withdraw that forthwith, the Graham Greene novel never and wish that I had the particular gift of that kind of fiction to write it. I only do academic writing, Spike Milliganesque humour and stuff like this, so pass. I have had several expat 'American' friends way back to Viet Nam objectors who preferred out for that reason, indeed one who basically became a vagrant in British legal terms to get right out of line for repatriation. It was a stimulating topic bar the MacDonald bit about which I wonder why, oh why? Of all points, the 'race' thing is right and probably most important. What is a German, English or French race for heaven's sakes (bar the Tour de France in the latter, of course)? But I'll leave my academic treatise on that this time... Thanks for getting back, but a cuckoo's egg it became if that was not what you intended, albeit the bird (you) did not fly.

For all newbies who may be bemused by the name and weren't here from the early days, here's an excerpt from a blog post, which may help to clarify the site name....!!

Oh and welcome 'back' Corson...!!

C x

Talking of the network, yet again we've had someone purporting to 'hate' Survive France. This I find slightly bizarre. I can understand those who haven't yet visited the site, being initially bemused by the name, but hatred?
The SF network is a community of over 3000 people. How can you hate an entire sector of society? That's like saying "I hate Buddhists" or I hate black people" - weird.
We called the network 'Survive France' for numerous reasons, most of which, most of, our members get. Above all it is, wait for it, tongue in cheek. Yes we might bang on about crap customer service, Ryan Air and missing Marmite, but most of us do know that we are actually only across the channel, and not in downtown Baghdad. Repeated missives from the RSI may be incredibly annoying but not quite as life threatening as incoming mortar fire.
On the upside, the name does act as a firewall. Those that don't 'get' it, generally don't sign up. And trust me, this is a good thing. There are more than enough nice, interesting people in the world. I for one don't want to be surrounded by unpleasant, negative, judgmental morons in either my real or virtual life.