New Life in France

I spent a year in Paris in 1999 and 2000 and loved it. I always wanted to return and when my husband suggested we move to France to be closer to his brother, I jumped at the chance. My husband's name is Ferbent and his brother, Nini, lives in Bourg-en-Bresse, near Lyon. We wanted to be close to Nini but didn't want to live in a small city so we went to Paris, my favourite city.

Paris is a very expensive city and as neither of us were working so we rented a tiny, tiny studio apartment, 20 sqm, for 800 euros per month. It's a lot of money when you're not working so we only rented it for 2 months to see if we could find work. My husband is Albanian but has a British passport so he doesn't need permission to work. He can work in France like any French person. I on the other hand, as an Australian, need permission to work and months later I still don't have it.

I speak French fairly well but Ferbent only understands a little. After 2 months in Paris we were both still out of work, mainly because of Ferbent not speaking the language. The bills were mounting so we decided to move to a cheaper city where we could take our time to improve our French and eventually get a job.

I don't really know why but we chose Montpellier in the south of France, not too far from Spain. We were lucking to find an apartment within a few days. We bought some basic furniture, moved in, and enrolled in French classes.

Ferbent didn't do too well in the classes and dropped out after a week. I wasn't too happy because he'll never get a job without French. The director of the school helped us out and set him up with a private tutor. This was much better for him and he slowly started learning. We were on our way to settling in to our new life in France.