Categories: Montpellier Area , Moving to France. I moved to France when I was 9. My parents bought a holiday house in Goult, Vaucluse when I was little and then after their separation my mum wanted to spend a year living in France. Our holiday home was just that, a home for the lovely hot summer months.
It had little to no heating so to begin with my mum and I shared a bed that we put in the sitting room where the fireplace was. I went to the village school, spending my mornings in Maternelle and my afternoons in CE2. I could only speak a few words when we arrived. By the time our year was up, we were settled in our new lives, I was bilingual and my mum decided we should stay. She has lived in France for 31 years now! And then I moved to Avignon for Lycee and University.
After University I decided to move back to the UK to try it out. A few years later, on a boat on the Thames, I met my now husband James.
We moved in together, got married quickly and decided to try and start a family in Dubai, UAE where James got a job. We had our 2 girls there. Building a family really made me want to connect with my French roots again. Of course I had been visiting France throughout those years: my mum lived there, then my dad married a French woman and moved to France, my brother settled there with his family, and all my childhood friends were there. But I really wanted my girls to be bilingual and understand the strong bond I had with the country.
I have spoken French to them since they were born, they went to a French nursery in Dubai and in Toronto, Canada where we lived for a year. We moved back to the UK for our eldest to start school. I contacted the French embassy and got a list of the French schools in the UK and we got her into the only free bilingual school in the UK. The school has French summer holidays — 9 weeks — so we pack up and go to France every year.
