Bonjhola

EP 65: Rebecca Reflects Upon 1 Year in France and the Forced Torture of a French Phone Call

• Rebecca West • Episode 65

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Speaker:

Welcome to Bon Jola, a podcast about two women, Aimee and Rebecca, who each move from the United States to Europe to become expats. Aimee to Spain and Rebecca to France. We're here to share the highs, the lows, and the logistics of this adventure. Encourage you to follow your own, move abroad dreams, and remind you that you're not alone when the going gets tough. Enjoy.

Aimee:

Bonjhola, Rebecca.

Rebecca:

Bonjhola Aimee.

Aimee:

You have reached the one year milestone of being an expat we thought it would be fun for you to kind of do a recap of what have I learned in in the last 12 months living outside the US

Rebecca:

And the one year milestone is a very big deal because of the visa renewal aspect. So it's a milestone in a lot of emotional ways, but there's also some extremely unpleasant bureaucratic lifting I'm facing at this one year mark that people should know about.

Aimee:

yeah. And I've not had that experience because our visa, the digital nomad visa, because we submitted it from within the country, our first round is three years.

Rebecca:

I am so jealous of you for that right now. And I will say one of the things that has been most surprising to me about doing Bonjhola and having these parallel experiences is how I. Much the same they are, but

Aimee:

Mm-hmm.

Rebecca:

many ways in which they vary has been really surprising to me. So I thought I would start with my number one piece of advice for anybody who wants to move to France, and that is choose one place to live and go through the effort of getting a proper lease. It is hard to get an apartment as a foreigner in France. Nonetheless, you need to do it now. It would've worked for us to do an Airbnb for three or six months and then move into a solid lease, and that would probably be the way I'd do it if I were giving some advice, because being here on the ground. You can maybe work with an agent, maybe see the places,'cause things move so quickly.

Aimee:

Right.

Rebecca:

You know, people make decisions about apartments without enough information. Like there's a whole lot of reasons we didn't go down that path. But the problem is that. The Visa people want you to show that you've got stability in the country, And Airbnb not only doesn't kinda show that, but they're just not used to looking at that as a legit lodging. So it's just created a. Problems for, we don't have utility bills in our names. We don't have a lease in our name. We don't have those pieces of essential paper that bureaucratic countries, which is all of them if we're being honest with ourselves. Want

Aimee:

And what are you specifically butting up against? Not having that firm documentation in Paris.

Rebecca:

before example? All right, so right now I'm working on the visa, and so since I. Don't have utilities in my name. I needed to go get a mobile account, a a phone mobile account in my name. I never wanted to do that because I've got this fancy pants. Verizon plan cost me a ton of money because it's my business line. So I was like, I'm not gonna double up. Big mistake. So if you do follow in my footsteps, get a mobile plan. You need some piece of paper with your name and your corresponding address on it. So I'm finding that with the Visa and I got the mobile account, but I got it too late. So today I had to call. I had to call people in French.

Aimee:

Oh, it's the worst.

Rebecca:

was, so I went to free mobile, which is the one I'm using. I. In person and in my French, I said, can you please, please, please help me. I need an attestation or a bill with my name and address. And I said, Nope. We cannot help you with that in person. You can call this number. I knew that, but I don't want to make a French phone call.

Aimee:

For those of you who have not had the experience of trying to navigate a telephone call in a language which. You are not skilled in. It is a unique form of hell and it really highlights how much we use our sight to yeah, to to navigate conversation, to get tone, to get inflection, like visual cues. Cues. As well as, I think to some extent, we all read lips if we are struggling to understand what someone is saying, and we just do it automatically, and so don't realize how much we do it until you're navigating a language that is.

Rebecca:

Not

Aimee:

Not your primary language over a telephone, which despite technology is still not as clear as standing across from somebody.

Rebecca:

That's actually a really important aspect to this.'cause when you and I were youngsters, ma Bell, you know, the sprint, you could hear a pin drop. They don't care about audio quality anymore. So yeah, that does level it up. So, and I'd already tried, you know, I'm not a complete. So I had tried, but I couldn't effectively navigate the phone tree. I couldn't even give to a person because of the French. So I'd given up kind of easily. I admit that I went to free mobile. Can you help me? No, you can call this number. So I said, okay, fine. So I called the number and I I said, in French ur, is there anybody who speaks English and can help me? And he says, in French. Yes, but we're not allowed to help you in English. And I, I'm guessing, and I have no idea why. I'm guessing it's because they wouldn't be able to really quality control that could. They make sure that they were giving proper information in an alternative language. This isn't set up for expats and foreigners. There's no need for this to be a bilingual company.

Aimee:

No, and I will say quality control, if someone is yammering at you in a language you don't understand fully, is uh, going to never get high marks.

Rebecca:

I, well, I'm not sure if you mean if they're speaking English or if I am

Aimee:

No, I mean, I mean in in terms of the quality of service you will receive if they do not, if they refuse to service you in English, the ability for you to get your needs met is significantly lower and your quality experience as their customer will inevitably be lower.

Rebecca:

Well, I luckily, that's not the experience I had today.

Aimee:

Thank goodness.

Rebecca:

I know because he, he was very understanding, first of all. He wasn't like, he wasn't like the guy at the kiosk. He was like, no, just, it was just a no. The guy on the phone was like, um, you can speak in English and I can answer in French. And I was like, and that just, that also just calmed me down. I was like, okay, I'm gonna try in French. And we ended up doing most of the thing in French and he did, don't tell the free mobile people, but he did sneak in a little bit of English and he was so patient with me

Aimee:

Oh, nice.

Rebecca:

and he was like, you know, your bill's gonna show up on the renewal date. And I'm like, yes. And that's five days after the Visa cut off by when I have to get them this piece of paper, put me on hold for about five minutes. Came back and he said, you should have in your system a invoice on Friday. And that's well ahead of that cutoff date. So I've got some time to still play. So that's an example of. The hoops that I'm having to jump through because of my choices. And then also today, you know, I finally, in the past episode we said I'd finally applied for the health insurance

Aimee:

Right.

Rebecca:

twice'cause they didn't get my paperwork the first time. And I'm putting that in quotes. Um, but now I got a letter in the mail. So this is exciting'cause it means they got my paperwork. This one has three check marks. Um, because my, apparently my application, uh, it's incomplete. It's incomplete.

Aimee:

Oh.

Rebecca:

So I need to justify my residence in France. And it says, and I'm translating as I read this, if you are living with a individual, like Red Flag was like a roommate, you need a photocopy of. Their bills. Oh yeah. Of their utility bills and an attestation of living covering a period of at least three months without interruption. In addition to that, and this is again for the, for the French health insurance and you guys, I have no problem with this. I like that governments are gatekeeping social. Um, Services. that the, they have paid for. So I have no problem with this, guys. I'm just saying if you wanna get on this system, don't do it the way I did. So I have to do that. And then to get my social security number, I need to add, um, a copy of my birth certificate that is, um, authenticated. I don't yet know. Which version of authentication that will be, but I'll figure it out. But some version of French notarization and I need to give them my bank details, which I'm pretty sure I already did, but I have no proof of. So yeah, so this is what I mean. The fact that I don't have utility bills in my name is creating obstacles that basically, uh. I don't know if I can overcome them yet. That's the answer. I don't know every step that's ahead of me.

Aimee:

now you will be able to. Have the proof of three months residency with the Airbnb. Right. Can you reach out to your host and get that presumably.

Rebecca:

Well, that depends entirely on the host. So our first host, which we had for six months, um, it was amazing. He worked with us, we worked with him. It was so, so easy. He would've given us anything we needed. Second host, didn't matter because it had nothing to do with Visa. So, I don't know. This host, for some reason is a, is a nervous host. She's working with a rental company. So my rental company is great, or property manager I guess, but the actual landlord is a little stingy with paperwork'cause we tried to do some of this. And the attestation she wrote doesn't count because she wasn't willing to share her lease. And as I recall, the utility bills are in her parents' name or something.

Aimee:

Oh no.

Rebecca:

yeah. So I could reach out to her again, but I already know that it was kind of a non-starter. I already asked the lawyer who's helping us with our visas, if it would be worthwhile to reach out and try and improve that attestation, but they, he said the, the French government has already rejected that form. So pursuing that wouldn't be, uh, it wouldn't go anywhere.

Aimee:

Right.

Rebecca:

So it might work for the cart vial, the health insurance, since that's new hoops that I'm jumping through. But since they're the same hoops, I mean, I honestly, I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I only got that piece of mail today. And folks, this is what it's like to try and live in a different country and I don't regret it. But like I said, my biggest piece of advice would be come here, do an Airbnb for three to six months if you need to, because you do need. To show up with a steady address too. That was part of getting the first visa. Do that as long as you have to, to get established and then as quickly as you can, if you can't do it from your first address, get on a proper lease. Get those utility bills. I.

Aimee:

This will vary country to country. So in Spain, we did not have to have three months proof for our Visa to be approved. We just needed an address and so we planned on a, our Airbnb when we arrived was six weeks, and our plan was arrive in Gerona, spend those six weeks looking for a longer term rental. If nothing was available then, you know, just do another Airbnb and, and suck up that painful cost. Right? Because we were arriving in the middle of summer and we were expecting it was gonna take a while to actually find a place to live based on what people were saying. I. However, for, for the Visa process, we actually only needed, you know, a, an address in Spain where we were staying. It was not for a specific time. By the time we were actually able to submit our Visa paperwork, which was actually about 90 days after we arrived, we did have a long-term lease, and with our Visa application process, we did need to have. Private insurance purchased a T, yeah, a telephone number. We did need to have a Spanish telephone number in order to get a lot of other things in line that were needed, and so we were able to get a telephone number despite the fact that we did not at that, oh wait, I think it was the telephone number was needed to have the bank account, and then the bank account is also needed to have a telephone number, but. were workarounds to where as expats with a American passport, we were able to get a bank account, even though we didn't have a Spanish phone number yet, and or Shane was able to get a Spanish phone number before we got the bank account. One of those, we were able to do a workaround that allowed us to, to break in, so you just have to keep asking the question. How do I make this work? How do I make this work? With everybody with in expat groups, with officials, like because somebody somewhere has figured it out, because people are doing it and it's happening. So when you get into those impossible situations where it's, well, you need this in order to have that, but you need that in order to get this, because that seems to be a common thing here in Europe and when you're trying to obtain a visa, just keep asking and somebody will have figured it out. Also, as the world continues to have such fluid migration or HA has to cope with the fluidity of migration that has been happening the last five to 10 years, these things are being figured out because hundreds of thousands of people have done it before you. So the answer is there, you just have to do some digging around. And as far as you know, how accessible this will be in the future as. All countries seem to be restricting border flow. A little bit more remains to be seen, but it has been figured out and I suspect those pathways will remain open regardless of whether or not it's easier or less easy to cross borders in the future.

Rebecca:

I agree with all of that. You know, I, I wanna speak directly to the people listening who are like me, who have spent their life achieving by being planners and being able to see the whole path. You can't do that in this adventure. You are lucky if you can see one to two steps ahead of you and you just have to go on faith that there are steps after that and you have to be able to let go of the idea that you can control the outcome. There is a possible outcome where I don't have a visa renewed, and then I figure that step out. There's no, point. I'm not saying I don't worry about it, but there's no point in me worrying about it because that step may or may not ever need to be addressed. So, you know, milestone in.

Aimee:

there's no reason to borrow anxiety without proof that it's real. That's just a setup for sleepless nights and not enjoying your life wherever you happen to be in that moment.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Which I would say takes me to my next biggest takeaway, which was, and it goes back to my personality again too. I was not. Realistic with what the first year would feel like. You know, I was in a position with my husband going to school. He, he just had to go to school and have a visa. It was fairly straightforward. I took a business apart and needed to build a new business while learning a language, while navigating, getting and renewing visas and establishing a life in a new community. And. In retrospect, even though because of the choices I made, there wasn't really another path I, I chose to do this. I was not gonna do this. And that means I have to figure out my new income. I, in retrospect, I need to give it two to three times more time than to get to the place in my business where I want it to be. Then I would have if I were back at home doing exactly the same work because there simply is less time and energy available to me for building my business because it's all being sucked up by learning a language and navigating a bureaucracy. I don't know how to navigate, so I'm not.

Aimee:

a really important point. Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's a really important point because we don't, you know, even if you're not continuing an existing business or starting a new business abroad, even if you're, you know, working remotely for a company that you are familiar with, the amount of energy and exhaustion with integration, particularly that first year. Cannot be underestimated. And the impact that that has in your ability to show up in other ways of your life also cannot be underestimated. It is. It's kind of like when you have a baby, you know, you know, becoming a parent's gonna be intense, you know that you're gonna have sleepless nights. You know that, you know, everybody says teething is a bitch and then you know, it happens and you're like, oh my God, because. There are experiences in the world which words cannot adequately convey, and this is one of those experiences.

Rebecca:

And every day for me feels like I ran a marathon and, and you didn't. And so you're like, why am I so tired? But in fact, every day is a mental marathon, and I've been doing that for a year now.

Aimee:

Has it gotten easier for you? Yet, kind of at this one year mark, if you think of where you were last March.

Rebecca:

I'm gonna have to go with yes and no. So I would say I had the peak of that feeling of it being easier at about nine months in going into Visa renewal has really reset a lot of the feelings of heavy lifting, and I didn't, I. I didn't realize that that was going to be a challenge. I really thought renewing the visa would be, you phone this in and you're done. So right now I'm feeling pretty frustrated, but then I have something like a forced torture of a French phone call, but I manage it and I feel really proud of that. So. Do, do I feel better? It's, it's hard to answer. All I can answer is I still have no regrets about doing this. I would, in retrospect, make some slightly different decisions, but I will go back to what we've always said in this podcast, which is, I really wouldn't, what I'm really trying to do is help other people have a slightly easier path. I wouldn't make different decisions because I am actually happy with what we've experienced and where we are and different decisions would've led to a different outcome. That I don't know.

Aimee:

Yeah. That makes total sense.

Rebecca:

But mean those, okay, so those are my big things, right? Uh, how would I have navigated the visa differently? Um, I'm really glad I'm not trying to set up a business in France. I would heavily caution people against that idea, unless, you know you're going to get set up here. I don't need me, I'm not gonna go into the details of it, but if you are thinking of that, stop and ask so many questions.

Aimee:

Sleep on it for a year.

Rebecca:

Exactly. Yeah. It, it is, one of the things about America is it seems to be truer in America. And when I say that, I mean the United States, um, truer in the United States than anywhere else on Earth that's starting a business and operating a business is easier in the United States of America than any place else I've encountered.

Aimee:

Yeah, I mean, that's. That seems to be the case here in Spain as well,

Rebecca:

Yeah.

Aimee:

and a lot cheaper in the us.

Rebecca:

Yes. Yeah. It's set up to promote enterprise, and you don't really recognize what that means until you're in a place where it's not. Um, okay, so highlights. The highlights are exactly what I expected them to be. The cheese is better than sex, which is a pretty high amount of praise, but the cheese is that good here, the wine. I still think Italy's is better, but it's free flowing and that's quite lovely. The dinners are relaxed, the pace of life is relaxed, the food ingredients are off the charts. Sitting at a cafe at Twilight is every bit is filled with Disney Magic as they promised. It is La Von Rose here. I did not expect to enjoy living in Paris as much as I do and I love it

Aimee:

Awesome.

Rebecca:

and bringing the cat was brilliant. Very glad I did that. Traveling with a cat is much, much trickier, and that's mostly because of lodgings, and in fact, getting lodgings in general is harder with a cat, so that's another thing for people to think about. To me, again, no regrets. A thousand percent worth it, but surprisingly hard.

Aimee:

Yeah. Yeah. Are there any lessons that you've had that you weren't expecting?

Rebecca:

It is sort of like, like what you're just saying about the baby

Aimee:

Mm-hmm.

Rebecca:

lessons. Weren't in, in and of themselves weren't surprising, but the amount at which it peels your soul raw and exposes it to the elements was surprising. I mean, we've had so many podcast episodes where we're talking about me overachieving, or trying to control and, and exploring how not to do those things. I didn't, I don't think I. Expected that it would be such an emotional bootcamp, but I am grateful for it because it's exactly what my personality needed. It's sort of like being forced to make that phone call today. I mean, I guess most of us humans don't seek out hardship, but hardship is how we learn and grow and become stronger. So I think if I'd known, like if you'd known what having a baby was really like, some days you'd un choose it. If I'd known how much it would test me to let go of control and outcome as much as I have to in order to do this thing I wanna do, I'm not sure I would had the courage to do it. So I'm glad I didn't know.

Aimee:

Yeah. When you think about your relationship with work and where you were a year ago, where you were effectively in Paris, but locked in your apartment, working on a program that you were launching and not getting out right, and really pushing that hustle. And then I'm thinking of May or, and our trip to, and you were, you were gonna do a call with your initial cohort on that trip. So if you put yourself back in those shoes and you see where you are now, the changes that you've made with your. Identify your self identification, your self worth around work and performance.

Rebecca:

That's a really interesting question. It hasn't, it hasn't changed. I, I don't know if it's me or my Puritan upbringing or the US work ethic or what it is. I. I identify deeply with my work, but I think it's part because I love my work, right? So it's hard for me to detangle that. It's, what's been interesting is actually much more the practical side of it, part of why it's taking me longer to build what I'm trying to build. I, I built those courses. I've got two very big programs that I both built and recorded and teach live. And I'm not gonna go into the. Gymnastics of that. But the point of that is the point, I have to experiment more to figure out the answers because I thought that a more passive income system by teaching classes would work better. So I could have classes that I could. Teach passively and I could schedule out a class and say, I'm gonna teach this class in the spring and fall. I'm gonna teach this one in the summer and winter. I'll plan my traveling around that and whatever. I was like, this sounds on paper, this, this definitely works. It's not working the way I wanted one, because the world is very saturated with self-study courses and everybody is realizing that nobody ever finishes them.

Aimee:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

So the recorded courses are actually harder for me to sell because I'm not convinced people will spend the money and then do the course and then that just doesn't serve anybody. And then the timed courses like, okay, I'll, I'll do this one in April. Because of the lifestyle I've chosen and because of the husband part of this, you know, his school changes quarter to quarter and I don't know what the quarter will look like. Until about a week before the quarter starts,

Aimee:

Right.

Rebecca:

then my dear husband decided to, you know, rip his shoulder apart. So now he's got a six month break where he's gonna be having the post-surgery. So he would be sitting around for six weeks and any wife out there knows what that can be like in terms of distraction. So I thought scheduling classes and having passive classes was going to be this great solution. Currently it is not. So here I am again having to rejigger how do I deliver my services? How do I make it easy to buy from me, given the limitations, from time differences, from needing access to wifi, from all of it. I will not pretend to have figured out this puzzle yet. But the takeaway I would give out there is if you are running a business, or even like you said, working for a company remotely, it's not going to be as simple as, oh, I'll just get on Zoom and show up. It's, it should be, but it's not.

Aimee:

Yeah, anybody who works with international teams. Or it already has the lived experience of like having to get up at 2:00 AM or 4:00 AM for, you know, a meeting that is in India or Europe or, or what have you, and you just have to show up, right? Like it's, it's amazing how much we as Americans are willing to do for work that is not typical, most other places. Uh, do you feel that your, I mean, I hear the work ethic is still there, the logistics are changing. Do you still feel that your pattern is the same as it was when you were in the States with regards to the hours and the pressure that you put on yourself? Because I know one of the things that you wanted to do with moving to Paris was to kind of have more life and less hustle.

Rebecca:

I really want to answer that. I've gotten better in that regard, if I'm being honest with you, I don't think I have. Mm-hmm. Um, and it, and it's in part because there's been such a dramatic shift. You know, I was running a five person firm bringing in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, and I became a one person firm offering completely different services, and, and I have to figure out how to sell and deliver them. So the, the income just isn't. I'll put it this way, the income doesn't align with the bills yet, and so it just adds this level of pressure, like I want this lifestyle, but until I get the machine going to the place where it needs to get to, and I know I will, but typically with my skillset, that machine would be going by now. But because I'm doing it in France, it's not where it would be if I hadn't. Moved.

Aimee:

Right, right.

Rebecca:

I think we were in America, if we were in the United States and I was answering this, I would be like, yeah, this is actually really great because everything's in motion and now when I'm off I don't have to think about work. But the thing about starting a businesses, when you are in the early days, you can, there isn't really the luxury of an off switch.

Aimee:

Yeah. Yeah. You can't really clock out because your brain is always. There.

Rebecca:

a bike isn't gonna move forward if you don't pedal it.

Aimee:

Mm-hmm.

Rebecca:

Now, once you're going there is momentum, you can coast, you know? Yeah, you might have to puddle up this hill, but then you can skate down that hill. That's just simply not the part of business that I'm in yet, and I knew I was taking that on. I didn't know I was taking it on for the length of time I was going to be taking it on for. Because while I used to stretch myself too thin by taking on too many work things at one time, now I've actually, and I should give myself credit for this, I have reigned in the number of things I'm trying to do. I'm very focused with my work now, but I'm still stretched thin because so much energy has to go into the language and the lifestyle and bureaucracy. So I think it. If we can take those two things apart, yes, I have grown and I am able to compartmentalize and say things are working. It's fine. But when things aren't going as fast as you want them to go, and that affects the bills you need to pay and the retirement you need to save for, and instead you're living on savings longer than you may have planned for, it causes a new level of stress. So it's sort, it's like stress replacement therapy.

Aimee:

Objectively, like from the outside, you appear less unilaterally focused on your career. You seem to have. Other things going on more often than I believe you two have had when you were in the States.

Rebecca:

I

Aimee:

I also, from my perspective, you also seem to be more relaxed about all of it.

Rebecca:

I'm really glad to hear that I do get that feedback. Um. When I get on Zoom with my mom or just with anybody, they almost always say, wow, you look great. And it's not like a style thing. They're they, they're saying, you look healthy, you look not so haggard, you, you look less pale. So I definitely know that this is a healthier lifestyle for me, um, which was one of the big things I wanted. I just dunno if I can give myself credit for that or if it's just literally. Better food, better, better lifestyle. It it's like, I don't know if every day you eat a sandwich full of arsenic, and then the only change you make is you eat a sandwich not filled with arsenic, you're still just eating a sandwich. And yet you're healthier. That's more how this feels to me. It's like I allowed myself to go into a healthier environment and so even without being great at improving my other habits, I am in a healthier, better place. Does that make sense?

Aimee:

It does make sense, but for those who are on the other side of the pond and don't know exactly what. It means beyond sort of like a vague conceptual fantasy of Europe.

Rebecca:

Okay, here's a specific example. I don't tend to eat at my desk anymore.

Aimee:

Okay. That's freaking huge. I still eat at my desk.

Rebecca:

I don't tend to, I still do sometimes, but meals in France are not eaten, walking around, and they're not eaten mindlessly. You sit and you appreciate, I. The thing that's getting shoveled into your face. So that's a huge change because I'm eating more mindfully, which does slow you down, which means I'm digesting better, which means my entire body is working better. Um, and I do see the results of that in how I feel. So I guess it, it feels like a cheat code sort of to move. But you know what's interesting about this, the thing that I keep thinking in the last couple minutes is about the book I wrote. It's called Happy Starts at Home. It's on design psychology, and it was sparked by getting divorced and living in a house that had all the memories and ghosts of my past marriage. And I was miserable. And so I took charge of that. I said, I'm not gonna live like this. I'm not gonna live surrounded by things like this. And I changed it and changing my environment, changed my wellbeing, and I wrote an entire book about it. And I guess I feel like maybe this is just 2.0 of that. I knew I needed a different lifestyle in order to. Be be the kind of healthy I wanted to be. And you and I have talked about this, Aimee, you went back to Alaska and you weren't walking everywhere, for example. It's hard to live a healthy lifestyle in the United States, and so. The reason I was excited to do this was not just to support my husband. He was the excuse I wanted to change my environment this drastically because I hoped that changing my environment would change my health, and it has done that. I.

Aimee:

Yeah. Yeah. So. Instead of just grabbing something, sitting at your desk and eating it while you're working, you are taking a 5, 10, 15, 20 minute break. You're sitting at a table, you're eating that meal mindfully. Instead of getting in your car to go get groceries or run errands, you are now doing that on foot it.

Rebecca:

Yes, absolutely.

Aimee:

Mm-hmm. Because

Rebecca:

much walking. I mean, every day is at minimum a three mile walk, and that doesn't count. The shopping time, that's at minimum.

Aimee:

Yep. And so the three, three miles is, is roughly what? Seven 8,000 steps? Yeah.

Rebecca:

I believe you. I don't have a step counter, but I'm also getting fresh air and vitamin D at the same time. This was something I was getting very little of in Seattle,

Aimee:

Yep.

Rebecca:

so that's, that's huge. Um, meals themselves, the actual meals tend to be long and social. That's huge for our wellbeing. I don't even like humans and I still know it's good for me.

Aimee:

Who are you dining with, now that you like, how, how often are you dining with others now versus in the states?

Rebecca:

Well, it's very different kinds of dinings in the states. We used to host a lot of parties at the house and people would come to us and we'd have potlucks, Friendsgiving, and all kinds of like movie nights. And I.

Aimee:

Like once a month or something.

Rebecca:

Yeah, I really, really miss that. That's not something that I can do here in my lifestyle, but it's been replaced with, literally going to restaurants with Damien's school friends and, you know, having an actual meal bistro. having his school friends over to practice cooking, which is a very specific lifestyle moment because, you know, he is been in school. And then also my own personal networking of, Hey, I'm trying to make friends. You tend to go do that meeting up at a random cafe. So it's very different from the socializing that we did in the United States, but it fills the same social need,

Aimee:

Right, right.

Rebecca:

it feel the same costume need. Really think France is lacking in the costume party department.

Aimee:

Well, so is your closet space, I mean the, the, that's a huge limitation that you have to work around.

Rebecca:

Although that's another thing that I would love to share, is I love living this lightly. Forcing ourselves to move three to every three to six months has encouraged us to, I. Keep getting rid of things and I love that. So it's, everything's two sides of a coin. And you are going to sacrifice some things. You're gonna sacrifice, in our case, convenience, that's gone. There's none of that. Um, that kind of socializing that where I bring people in and have a big party in my own space, that's something that currently I have sacrificed. So it's all about the. The trade off, what do you get in return? And for me Right. now, this is worth it. But Damien and I talk all the time about, will we wonder where this is leading? You know, will we own a property again? Probably just given who we are? Where will it be? But when we do, we know that we want it to be located in a place where people can get to it because it needs to be social, and we need it to be set up in a way where we aren't afraid to use it that way. So we've learned a lot about ourselves and our, I guess it's like lifestyle again, lifestyle needs that can sound kind of silly, like. Um, I need a dining room with something I didn't really know before. Moving here and living for a year without a dining room. It's not that I need a dining room. There's different ways to solve for this, but I need a space where I can gather eight to 20 people, not be worried about pissing off the neighbors and be able to. Um, and for Damien to be able to cook for those people, like these are things we're discovering are important. Basically values, we're really talking about family values.

Aimee:

Yeah. Yeah. And that, yeah, I think that is one thing that, that we do end up learning, doing this is it really highlights like some of the things that are really important that you didn't realize were important because they were always there and now they're not, or they're harder. And other things that you didn't realize maybe you could have in your life because it was never presented to you. And here in Europe, it's just a given. It's just a given that if you stumble, if you fall. If your child stumbles and falls, if something happens that people are going to rush toward you to help you not stand back, whip out their phones and videotape your agony, um, gosh, I sound super bitter when I say

Rebecca:

Well, but it's, but that's coming from so many layers. Just one for example, because it's not like Americans are just bad people. Right.

Aimee:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

We're all, we are all the same when we're born, so we're obviously taught something. For example, in the United States, you can be sued for anything, and so getting involved assumes a level of risk that you really have to. Contemplate in the split second when you're faced with a moment of decision. It's just one thing influencing the fact that everybody's standing around with their phones, which is atrocious. I'm not saying that's okay,

Aimee:

But that's how we got

Rebecca:

comes to be is a lot of history.

Aimee:

Yeah. Yeah. That's how we got there was, you know, 30, 30 to 50 years of heavy, well, probably just 30.'cause when I was a kid, we weren't that scared of other people. So sometime in the last 30 years. Is where the litigious nature really kicked its heels up, and now we just look at everybody as a risk.

Rebecca:

And that's really sad,

Aimee:

It's tragic

Rebecca:

but

Aimee:

and it's destroying the country.

Rebecca:

It is, but this is what travel does for us, is it exposes us to the idea that there are alternatives when, when you only ever see one thing, it's a, it's a big stretch to ask the human imagination to come up with something that you've never seen or experienced,

Aimee:

Yeah, and there's also just so much for those of us of a certain age, so much that we have forgotten, you know, Shane and I were having a conversation about this, a couple. Weeks ago and then someone brought it up just yest. Oh, I was talking with a client just yesterday, uh, who brought up just how much we have, how much the pandemic has changed us, and our behaviors and our brains in a way that we've not yet been able to recover from and that we may not recover from. We may not re-remember how to. Exist in the world in a way that we did before lockdown.

Rebecca:

I mean that makes sense. Our experiences change us individually and culturally.

Aimee:

Yeah. But it was only, you know, in the worst areas of the US it was a year and a half, two years.

Rebecca:

Yeah, but I would never argue that the length of time that something lasts equals the intensity of impact it can have on you. This could be very different things. It was a huge turning point in so many ways. It, for, for example, allows me to work remotely in a way that I never would've gotten to,

Aimee:

Right.

Rebecca:

but. It also allowed us to isolate in a way that was surprisingly comfortable for a lot of us. It's nice to not get out of your pajamas. It's nice to not go have to put up with the annoying habits of other humans. It's not healthy though, so it allowed us to isolate ourselves and then develop a habit of isolation, but that is just reinforcing. The fear that we have of each other because we're always afraid of things that we're not around. You know, Damien and I were just in Barcelona and we ended up staying in a neighborhood where there's. I don't know if this is all of Barcelona, but I'm pretty sure this was a very specific neighborhood where there was a very large Muslim population in traditional Muslim dress. Everything from um, normal street western clothes all the way to burkas and everything in between men and women. There were mostly men out. And I imagine that's'cause in traditional society, the women were doing their jobs at home with the kids and stuff. But it was really interesting'cause I'm not sure I've ever walked around a neighborhood that had that much of a, a density of population of Muslim people in Muslim garb. Without a lot of other people around as well, and it was, I will not admit to being comfortable. I was like, I am hyper aware of being very white Right. now, especially as a female. My head uncovered, you know, and it was uncomfortable. Was it unsafe? I did not feel unsafe. But your head sorts through all the pieces of information that's been fed from everywhere, mostly media of course, and you're trying to parse out what's true, what's not true. How do I behave in this moment? You're trying to layer on actual proper cultural behavior. Should I make eye contact with that man who is clearly of a different culture than me? How do I engage? So it's everything we've been experiencing in France,'cause they don't respond to my smile here as we know, but leveled up from all of the fear that comes from A, the propaganda, and B, the fact that this is not a situation I have been in before.

Aimee:

Right, the lack of familiarity.

Rebecca:

Yeah, we cannot allow ourselves to be isolated if we have any hope of being a community at any level. But it's uncomfortable. It's not fun to put yourself in uncomfortable positions. So what that tells me is I need to go to Morocco and I am gonna plan a trip.

Aimee:

There we go. Awesome. Is there anything else that you haven't mentioned that you feel is a big realization or lesson or takeaway from the past year in Paris? I.

Rebecca:

I don't think so. There's so many micro moments, and a lot of them would be things like. They're almost should'ves like you'll get further if you sign up for French classes so that you have to go to those every week, or you'll get further if this, that, or the other. But the reality is this is an experience that you have to let unfold one pedal at a time. There is no other way to do it. That's the take. There's no takeaway. Just, just do it though. If, if this is in your heart, it will be hard and it will make you a better person. I don't know what version of that that's gonna mean for you.

Aimee:

Right.

Rebecca:

It'll be hard and it will make you a better person. And whether you say after, like after nine months in the Peace Corps, I realized it was not for me. I was unhappy, I was unhealthy, I was 35 pounds heavier, and I. went home and that was the Right. decision. And there's, there's no regrets. So. Try, try not to be attached to the ending. Attach yourself to the journey only, and it'll go pretty well.

Aimee:

Beautiful. I can't think of anything to add to that.

Rebecca:

Well, I will ask our listeners to give us some feedback if you've made it all the way to the end of this podcast. Today, Aimee and I have been talking about the length of our podcasts. We keep saying we're gonna limit them to 20 to 30 minutes, and we keep going to 45 minutes to an hour. If you have an opinion about the length of our podcast, please reach out to us and tell us I am on Instagram at be seriously happy and you can find Aimee at.

Aimee:

Vibrant nutrition.

Rebecca:

We love to hear from you guys. Tell us your dreams, tell us your hopes, tell us your fears. We are happy to answer your questions. Until next time folks.

Speaker 2:

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Banla. If you did, the best thing you can do is share it with another person, brave enough to move abroad. See you next time.