Starting Over... In the Countryside - One Family's Take on Belonging to 2 Different Places

It’s one thing to move to Paris and it’s another to build a life in the French countryside.

When Daniel sits down with Jason and Raina, they share the story behind their move to rural France, the reasons that led them there, and how they launched their YouTube channel, Baguette Bound.

From relocating with a daughter in middle school to navigating two cultures and doing whatever it takes to create a new life abroad, this episode is filled with honest insights, challenges, and plenty of laughs. It's a relatable conversation for anyone dreaming of making France their home or is simply curious about what French countryside living is like.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

I am joined here with Jason and Ray, but not yet now. Let's go back to your story. How did you pick to go there?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

So we had long dreamed, you know, when we were kind of working our careers in the US, that maybe we'd take a long summer in Europe. And we just do a summer, we take a couple months off. That dream kind of expanded over time, but maybe we'd spend a year. Post-COVID, we were working from home. Opportunities felt endless, and we thought, let's let's just do this thing right now. I was at a transition phase in my career, and instead of starting a new job, let's spend a year in France. And then after a few months, we decided to stay.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Up until then, it had always we'd always thought this would be a temporary thing.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

And our family's all waiting, our stuff is waiting in storage, you know. But Joanne was already in middle school. She was already learning French. She already had a little group of French friends, they're so cute. And it was the moment, like I think it was definitive that we were like, oh wow, our life goal now is to be where we're already at.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yes. Now I think that's the biggest myth in my inbox when it's a new client right to me. They're like, I'm coming out for one year. And I'm like, I'm sure you are. Well, let's let's chat in 12 months' time about the whole one year thing. Because once we get here, we see that's 120 and the Petershark left fresh every day. And when I used to live in Paris, there was three lotteries on my street. Like it was, you know, turn left, right, and center. You get to pick one. That my quality of life sort through the roof, that I was enjoying my life more. I found it life more interesting, more challenging, um, a better version of what I was living on in the US. I hate cars. Like, and I was and I couldn't see myself going back to it. But to your point, like, I before I got into the field, I assumed there's two ways to move to France. You marry a Frenchie, or you get one of those intercorporate transfers.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

And I thought as a lawyer, it's kind of hard because lawyers are jurisdictionally constrained and what have you. I didn't see how it was going to happen, but I knew at my heart that France had to be here. You know, I had to make this happen.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

And then I did a little bit more research online, and now I think it's more obvious than ever through your channels, you know, the channel, through my channel, like how how how doable it is.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

There's a path, yeah. If you want it, usually there is a path you can find.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Big time.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah. Um, and so then how don't you choose where to live in France? We initially targeted Bordeaux. Bordeaux was gonna be our landing spot. And as we started to look around, this really it kind of narrowed our field. It made it much easier to choose. Um we ended up in a small countryside village because that's where we could find the kind of house that we wanted to be in for a year.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Yeah, we're gonna get the train line out of Bordeaux, and we were like, oh look, there's a place in this town on the train line.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And that wasn't where we thought we would land when we started. Yeah, but it's where we were going. And then once we were there, we just didn't want to get out of it.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Yeah. Do you get a little bit of a different kind of thing?

SPEAKER_03 2:57

I think social life looks different, you know, outside of bigger cultural centers, but like I mean, in just in our village, we have a little cultural center where there are shows and movies and exhibitions happening.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, I think rural or the countryside in France looks so much different than like rural America. I don't know if local is the right word, but there's definitely a period of time that it doesn't period education.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

But I think you fall through the cracks list too when you're in a village. Um, just because, like, I mean, you already see those same, you know, 2,500 people. Like, we do, we never walk through town or go to the market without seeing somebody in there, right? I mean, at Juliana's first school, um, in the first village we were in, we've moved about half an hour away from it now. Like we were the American family, and we were like so quickly adopted by a couple of French families that they were like, oh, you're not gonna know what the cross is, which is like this three-mile run that all middle students do every year. And they were like, Oh, you won't know what that is. So they called us and made sure, do you know where to be? Do you know what's to happen? I mean, there was yeah, and so I think it's like it brought us more into a social sort of occur actually than maybe it would have been even if we were in a bigger place, which feels a little inversely uh uh uh instinctive.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

One topic that I'm always passionate about is raising kids in a France, and um there's a lot of examples of people that are you know doing successfully. Um I think it's one of the greatest gifts that we can give to kids is to show them a new culture, a new setting, and that there's not really too old of an age, you know, maybe third, you know, younger than 13 is is better, you know, because that's still a very malleable age to kind of come in and absorb a new culture and pick things up. Um, how has it gone and how long did it take uh Juliana, your daughter, to get used to it? Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

So we when we arrived, she was going into her first year of middle school. Um and I mean we arrived weeks before school started, so there was no integration process. She was just right into school every day. Um the school she went to was all in French, it was a French public school. So she was thrown right in. And probably after six months, things started to get easier. You know, she had she had a group of friends, she made those very quickly. I'm grateful for that. Um and then after the first year, when we decided to stay, and she was going into her second year, she really kind of took off from that point. It's been incredible to see her like take pride in this was really hard. Um I didn't like this today, but I realized that I'm doing something hard, and I can so I kind of see the pride coming through her when um you know she's in like French grammar class and she's answering questions and she's like I answered two questions in French grammar class. You won't believe it. It's like I'm surprised. And she knows that, and that's incredible to see the pride that she's got now.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

I think it's confidence. It builds her confidence in a way that you can't do for anyone else. Like you can't do that for someone else. I think we underestimate how often um I mean we underestimate how resilient and how much kids will rise to the challenge. Yeah, you know, and then they're just more prepared for the next one, and that's a gift, I think.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah. Um, now I know at least um up in Paris they'd have like an integration school. Like if you're showing up in France and you don't have any language level of French, they'll have like a program for you to kind of ease into it. Do they not have that in the title is just here is French school, go to town?

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah, no, they did, they had a language integration. Okay. French for you know, French is a foreign language class.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

She was at least 50% in FLE and then 50% in her other classes, um, which could be challenging too because she's still taking tests in the math class that she's missed maybe half of the classes in. And um, but I have to say the teachers were really aware of that, yeah, and they would actually even modify her tests or let her do them in a slightly different way. Um I just like I I couldn't say enough. We actually we met with her math teacher at the first parent teacher conference where I spoke no French and I started crying because I was like just so grateful that they had just been so they were really thinking about her experience and her education and how to progress her. And I just felt like that's not owned to us. Like we just showed up here, yeah, and I was so grateful. And she looked at me like a crazy American woman, but I hope that she knew how much I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I would I would say it's uh worst kids scenario is an interesting um essay for her American college, you know, application. Uh and best kids scenario, it's yeah, this gift of you know becoming French and understanding France through French culture, through um like the displaying of the French kids as they're growing up, as it's going, you know, that she's wide riding this wave of what does it mean to be a high schooler teenager in France. Yeah, yeah. Now you were saying French schooling is hard.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Tell me that. So the days are longer. Uh that definitely took some adjustment. I think the teachers are generally more straightforward, more abrupt, um, okay, students.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

They're more direct with their feedback in ways I think American teachers would absolutely never give direct feedback.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

Um, and it's the Socratic method, right? I think, which is more like the teacher will lecture, you will debate something, you will write an essay, you will write the essay this way from now until forever. Um, you know, it is quite structured education. And then homework.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

She has a fair amount of homework too. In addition to that longer day, she usually comes home and she's got homework. It's it feels like more of a full-time job than what I remember from my middle school days.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Yeah, it's it is intense, but I think it's a good quality education in that the French are trying to make well-rounded, critically thinking, debating um people who have an education in both the humanities and math. Like, I think it's um, I mean, I I've been happy with the education that she's been getting here in France, even though also I think an important thing to think about um coming from the states where schools are state funded and then sometimes by property tax, and like there can be huge disparities between schools. There, I know that there are some here within you know France, like not every school is exactly equal, but because of the centralized curriculum, I definitely feel that there's less less variability comparing it to the US. So I feel like even though we live in a small, you know, in the in the countryside, I feel good about the education she's getting. She does have a long lunch break, so we will say today's long lunch break. But she does get anywhere from an hour to two hours, depending. And I asked her, like, what do you guys do? Like, you have to look at the table, like, you know, in the line, she's like, no, we take a break, we eat and we talk, and then maybe we play cards, and some kids go play basketball, and like they take a real break.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Was she always on board? Or was it was there days where she wanted a cookie, you wanted to stick it out? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

From the very beginning, when we first started talking about this in the US before we left, she was excited, she was on board. She's always been adventurous, she's had a passport since she was little, she loves to travel. So she was from conversation one, she was on board.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

She's gonna have spent half of her childhood, you know, in the US and half here in France. And I do think like she became more aware this year when she saw eighth-grade graduations of her friends, and now there'll be homecoming, and just it's she told me, Mom, I'm American, but there are American things that I will never experience. Yeah, and that's something that it is always gonna be hard. You're always gonna feel of two places now and love both for different things in different ways.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, I almost had a uh a counter op uh example of it. One of my close friends in Paris, they're older than I am, and they had a daughter born and raised here in France. And at age 16, she stopped fitting in so well into French high school. And so then at age 16, for the first time in her life, came to live in America to do the French, the American high school experience, and like being on palm pom-pom's and you know, interleaning it and all that. And it was it was maybe better suited to her um to her academic, you know, setting. And yeah, it's but like, yeah, the shoe doesn't get getting on the other foot because I do like the American high school experience. It is free, I'm like American college, wicked extensive, yeah. There's great school spirit, there's mascots, there's colors, there's songs. It's fun, actually. I mean, like the American high school experience is wonderful, and I do wish that if it's a free thing, so American high school is free. That is one thing I would love to see in the French high schools more is more school spirit, more of like you know, like the high school volleyball team. Like these kinds of things don't necessarily exist in French schooling. They can exist outside of it, right? So, like there might be the local running club or the local, you know, triathlon club, or you know, the kayaking club, and so then they can kind of just join those and have friends outside of school in that kind of manner. But yeah, it's it it won't be and it shouldn't be reproducing the exact same experience as the US educational experience.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Yeah, and I feel like in France they it's like our tax dollars are paying to educate children in academics, not to build football stadium, which we're from Texas, some of the high school football stadiums are like yeah, they're impressive. Um, but the other thing, it's funny, like what Juliana has noticed is she's like, Mom, I think because there is less of that, even though she misses theater, she loves theater, you know, there are things that she misses from the US schooling system, and at the same time, she said, I think it tends to like put people less in boxes because there isn't like so much of that the jocks and the band keeping all that because she's like we're basically all just kind of here trying to learn the same history facts. So I like this is the thing of like once you experience two cultures, you suddenly like you want all the best things in all of them.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah, and I think I think we're I think the three of us are uniquely positioned to be able to do that. So, like you both mentioned to me that you love bringing Thanksgiving to your little town, and I see that up um in in the Paris suborders where I live, that that's a cool and unique thing that the French will come to it not really understanding what Thanksgiving is, and that's been our chance to share it with them. Like the day of thankfulness. Um, I my first time I celebrated it was on Reunion Island in 2011, 2012. The French cookies of territories, that's where I taught English for a school year. And um, it wasn't Thanksgiving, it was Thanksgiving. Because we had the world's hardest time trying to find a turkey on Reunion Island.

SPEAKER_03 12:53

Oh, I believe it.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah, we we did. There was like one in like a random freezer in like you know, the capital city of Sandini. And then someone should have like a five-liter bottle of rum. I was like, this is not Thanksgiving tradition. This is like we're making up new conditions here. No way, we're shootboarding this, you know, Thanksgiving into this. But um, yeah, that's the reality is that uh maybe then it's on us to show or figure out how to make stuffing, and you know, you know, gravy and mashed potatoes and all the things that we associate with it.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

So I had never, you know, because you can't find canned, like canned would be pumpkin here. So I had never cooked an actual pumpkin to make pumpkin pie. I was like, oh, I guess this is where they come from.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah, but you do, you you get engineered up and you figure it out. And so tell me about Baget Bound. Where did the idea come for you to make more videos about your holy and great experience? How did you get started?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

When we moved here, we found lots of information on retirees or British retirees. British retirees a lot of that happened coming to France and how they did it. And so we what we couldn't find was Americans sharing information on this experience and American families with kids. And it went pretty quickly from just a few video ideas that we wrote down on a piece of paper and let's make a few videos and put them out there. Now we've been, we've got we were making a video a week for a couple years now, and we it it just grew so fast, you know, and we didn't.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

I think that's like when you put something out in the world and um it's needed, then sometimes it quickly finds momentum.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

And just the feedback we got from people watching it, they would leave comments in the videos and want more information, or they'd send us emails, um, and it turned into a whole new just like opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

But I think the coolest thing is like to see people who they have this dream, yeah, and they don't they're not exactly sure how to connect the dots and make it happen, which is part of your role too, in his lives. And to see them like when we get emails now, because now we've been doing this for almost three years or two and something like that, and like people watch some of the first videos and like helped it helped them like along the stage and playing it now. They're like here, and the dream's been realized and they're living their life, like that's like it's just so cool. And I I mean I'm sure you've experienced that probably even a larger degree than we have. Like, to see to like have some small part in someone going for something that's hard and but that they really want to do and achieving it is like a that's super cool.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

You're never gonna get all no, but I feel like the doctor in the delivery room when it's when a person becomes naturalized, I get so enthusiastic. Or if they get one of the harder ones, like talent pass for international renown or like artists, I'm like, yeah, baby, we got this in the office. Like, are you new here? Like, this is the first visa you've filed here. But um I I just get so proud when a person gets to become naturalized because that's that's winning the board game. That means that means that you have mastered all the rules, that you've become one of them, and that they see you as it is.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

It's so much fun to share this journey with people, with people that were either viewers on our station or that we're working with as clients, because you get to work with them for a number of months through these processes, and yeah, you see them like jump over these hurdles. Um, sometimes it's jumping over with our help, and that feels good. And then you see them start to do things on their own, and they send us feedback like, hey, I did this.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Well, I was just thinking about this, talking about the idea that you come from one place, and right, and it's like you're grateful that for that place, and you know, it's still a deep part of you, and also feeling that maybe there's somewhere that you belong, but it feels like there's things that feel like they fit here in a way for me that maybe didn't always in the US, like I was always trying to like shoehorn something. Yes, and I I be forever grateful for that, like to be in a place where you can the natural rhythm of the place feels like it matches your own.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

One of the ways that I think about it is what is my nationality? So for years, of course, I'm American, and I was very, very American for a long time. Um, and then for several number of years before I became French, I felt like my nationality has shifted, not yet becoming French, but my nationality had become American in France. Like, and that was like kind of the terminology for what I was, even though I wasn't, you know, French or French. And then of course now I am having French, I've got the passport and the national ID card, my son is born French, and so I am, you know, by all definitions, uh, legally and otherwise, Franco-American, although I'm probably more American than Franco, that's outside my control. But that transitional nationality in American and France made it feel such that I would go back to the States and I could not relate anymore. I was the champagne cork outside of the bottle. You could never force me back into that champagne bottle because I no longer fit.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Yeah, you change as a person.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah, I've changed, I've let myself be changed, and now and now I can only really truly be my this this new version of myself here in France because I'm thriving as an expat or as an as an immigrant.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah, it's strange kind of in that you know, through this process when you feel like you've kind of got roots in two places. Yeah. Um and you know, though maybe the roots are more full-grown in the US and they're just still growing here in France. And it's been a strange experience. You know, we've only been here three years. Um, but just to think back about what it felt like in the first year when we were somewhere outside of France and we heard French being spoken, it still felt like a foreign language, right? Um and now when we go on trips and I hear French being spoken um, you know, in Europe or wherever we are outside of France, it it's like, oh, that's home, right? That's like the sound of home that I'm hearing. And that's a strange transition over just a couple years. And when we do go back to the US, um I like the US, I like going back to the US. There's lots of great things. Um but it doesn't feel like home anymore in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

It feels it still feels comfortable and familiar, but it's it's just different now that we've had three years here. We often define home as where we're not, and it's hard for us to start defining home by where we are. And yeah, there's like a flipping point. You know, for you was thinking you were describing the aha moment for where you're like, actually, no, let's actually make France our home. But then there's a different moment to say, like, and now France is home, you know. Um, and for me, it was the moment where I really felt ingrained finally in France, like this, then you can't pull me out, is having a kid be born here in France. Oh, the whole process of like all like the because I feel like we really well followed during the course of our you know medical business and you know, prepping up to the birthing, and then the birthing, and they were so kind and gracious and excellent service in the hospital for the birth, and then post-birth, or they come to your house for 12 days to the sage fan. And like I felt like it was such um, such a coh like a integrated service around us that from him on forward, my son on forward, he will be French, and he will be born here. And maybe the first generation never were maybe we're never truly French, but he will be truly French. And for Juliana, she's going to be a very strong French product, you know, like she'll be able to compare America to France, but she's gonna come out as an 18-year-old, probably a little bit more French than American because it's formative years here in France.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

Yeah, already like her some of her mannerisms or the way she says things, I can see it.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Does she do the Oh yes?

SPEAKER_03 19:59

Yes! Yeah, totally. Yeah, and the funny thing is I'll pick up little phrases from her in French, and then she's like, Mom, don't say that. I know, yeah, yeah. Like I told I I told the architect the other day by accident, and I should have known because I mean at this point I should know, but I basically said, like, he asked me what kind of toilet we wanted, and um, I meant like I don't really have a strong opinion, right? That's what I was trying to say, no, I told him I don't give an F.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

And I was like, So what's funny is actually the same architect, he often corrects my French. Yeah, and I think it's almost become a joke, but that was really like he was like, I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant to tell me. I was like, Yeah, yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I I'm okay with that one, because um, I had learned that like there's like jamon fish, germant fou, which is what you're referring to. Yeah, a semantic, like there's very sacred gradations of like what is like like I'm indifferent to that. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Um, I'm different for like a mild, oh it's it's okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

And I heard that it's equivalent of like I don't give an F to say that, but then I like when I was living uh I don't know you know, 13 years ago, I heard um in France I heard a young girl say that like Jumon Fu, and I was like, okay, so it's not really true. Lines from lines like Jamont Fu is does not equal I don't give an F. Like it's just a very strong listing of I don't really care. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Is France here forever home? I don't know. I wouldn't say anything's forever. Um, you know, we've still got family back in the US, but France definitely feels like home. I mean, we've we've bought a house, we're you know, we're making not just our house here, but our home is here, our family is here, um, we feel very comfortable here, we're building a business.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

The longer we're here, the harder it is for me to imagine what my life would be like in the US. Like I struggle to even picture it. Yeah, I can't see that. And I think really it just comes down to the fact that we have loved ones there. And that's probably like, you know, there could we can imagine a situation that we need to be there with them. But short of that, it's just hard to imagine otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, I mean, and the beautiful thing about us not having to renounce US citizenship in order to become fresh is that we don't have to give that up. So if I need to go back to the states from More than many days to take care of an elderly parrot or what have you, I don't have to go out and get a visa. So, like, of course, the US allows to do with nationality, so does France. So it allows for us to have that duality, to have that sense of belonging in two different locations. Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

And even if you wanted to renounce, you have to pay for that.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

So yeah, and and I don't believe in the too, because you know, US raised me, US taught me, US gave me softbox and firefighters. And yeah, I like in any event, you don't see Americans living in France renouncing US citizenship for French citizenship because we pay more taxes slightly in France than on the US side. So you'd be losing out.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Other than like a financial reason, there's not too many strong reasons to renounce US citizenship.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

So I'm very proud to be American now. I'm so glad that that's where I was I spent my formative years. I'm glad to be here now. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

All things can be true.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Well, thank you so much for the attending for my production.