2010-01-24: So you want to live in France?
(First published 2010-01-24 on "LaMaryKen's Laverie," now discontinued.) While I worked as the director of a private American school in a reasonably large French city, I received a fair number of unsolicited CVs. The cover letters would nearly always include some variant on the line, "I've always dreamed of living and working in France." — To which I would mentally reply, "Good luck to that." (I was never quite so brusque with my actual replies.) However, the thought has finally occurred that I somehow managed to end up living and working in France. How did this California girl end up becoming a French citizen? My path was convoluted — more convoluted than most, I assert — but now that my certificat de naturalisation is safely in hand, I think it's time to point out the goods, the bads, the uglies, and some of the practical and procedural steps that, had I known them ahead of time, would have made my life easier. And less expensive. This bl...