I was doing a bit of online research yesterday on French bureaucracy and found myself on this website created by an American girl living in France. In addition to pages of useful information (French bureaucracy included), she keeps a blog about her life. Curious, I read a few posts and as I continued to poke around her site, I found a list of links to blogs written by other (American) expatriates living in France. I clicked on the first, then the second, the third, the fourth... it was a very long list. As I clicked and read, clicked and read, I became bewildered, baffled.
Who were all these Americans in France?
This list of blogs really threw me for a loop. I kept getting up from the table, going into the kitchen to make exclamatory remarks, wide eyed, arms flailing, to M. who was attempting to read quietly.
I couldn't explain clearly what I was thinking. There were all these people! Americans! Living in France! And blogging about it! Like me!
It was a mixture of wonder, that there were all these people living similar experiences, and shock, that so many of us felt compelled to blog about it. I realized that the list obviously was just a sampling, and that there were probably many more.
It's normal, I suppose, that foreigners living in France would want to write about their new life, to share their experiences. All the bloggers seem to write with such excitement, even when the subject is quite banal. Posts, even from bloggers who have clearly lived for years now in France, read like breathless accounts of amazing derring-do. Exclamation points litter the page. Proof, perhaps, that even ordinary life in elsewhere is an adventure.
Discovering these blogs was humbling in revealing the insignificance of my one voice amid the clamor of so many others, but also the altogether banality of the pains and difficulties of constructing my new life. I think it would do me well to remember how ordinary my move to Guadeloupe is. If I do that, I think the mountains will seem less imposing.
If you're curious, here is a alphabetized but non-exhaustive list:
10, Rue de la Charme
A double-double or un petit café?
A Kiwi in France
a little bit chaunoise
A View from Ivry
An American in Bourgogne
An American in Provence
An Aussi Lass, A Frenchman and a Burmese
Angela in Europe
Another American in France
Au Soleil Levant
Chitlins & Camembert
Crystal Goes to Europe
Destination Europe
Dispatches from France
Emily’s French Life
Emmygration
French for a While
French Kiss - Provence Style
French Windows
French Word-a-Day
Frenchless in France
Here, There, Elsewhere… and more
Home in France
Jennie en France
Kate’s French (Mis)Adventures
Katia & Kyliemac
L’Etrangère Americaine
La Belle Saison
La Fille en Rose
La France Profonde
La Vie en Foussais
Life with a Seaview
Living in a Second Language
Maladroite
Marie in Lille
Milk Jam
My So-Called Life in France
News from France
Notre Vie Juteuse
Notre Vie…
Nouvelle Vie en France
Paradis Imparfaits
Pardon My French
Pardon My Franglais
Polly-Vous Français?
Poppy Fields
Practical French
Put Your Flare On
Soupe du Jour
Soyez la Bienvenue Chez Moi
Susan in France
The Adventures of an American Blonde in France
The Duchess of Earl in France
The Edge of the Forest
Joy in France
The Video Diary of an American in France
This French Life
Toutes Directions
Wicked French Kiss
Long as it is, the list has been edited: I removed blogs that had not posted in the past month, which numbered a dozen or so, at least.
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people, Americans especially, LOVE France and all things french. Have you ever wondered HOW many books can be published every year, for instance, on American women living in France? American women traveling to France? or wanting to become French? It's mind-boggling. So here's the thing I was saying to you in the Time Warner Center: you should WRITE A BOOK :) Your experience is similar (married to a frenchman, steeped in French-ness : ), yet sufficiently different from such accounts, and therefore especially fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThe strange thing is, I am actually one of those American women who live in France, travel to France (métropolitaine), and want to become French (for the papers), and I myself consume that sort of writing. As if living it wasn't enough. France makes people sick.
ReplyDeleteI think I would have to have many more blog readers before the publishing houses come a-knockin'. You find it fascinating because you're my friend.