WHERE AND HOW do I belong in France: the main factors
THE MAIN FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN DECIDING WHERE TO LIVE IN FRANCE?
Before we begin the assessment, we’d like to give you an overview of what we will need to ask about.
- THE MAIN FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN DECIDING WHERE TO LIVE IN FRANCE?
- Climate
- Transportation
- Healthcare
- Welcome
- Costs
- Other Stuff
- Special features of note
- Your unique must-haves and deal-breakers
- Intangibles: you don’t know it until you find it, but it makes all the difference
- Timing: full-time? Forever? Part-time? Figure it out as you go?
- Intangibles: you don’t know it until you find it, but it makes all the difference
THE MAIN FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN DECIDING IF THIS IS RIGHT FOR YOU?
How do you take the steps in your personal preparations that make it likely that you will feel like you belong in France?
The slightly uncomfortable truth is that most of us are not naturally born expats. In fact, transplanting yourself in another country, especially as an adult, is not just difficult. For 99% of us, it requires that we work on ourselves and commit ourselves to strengthening our interpersonal and organizational skills. Make no mistake, success in making this move will require that you commit to working hard to strengthen your inner resources. Some of those include:
- Language/Cultural adaptability factors
- Health constraints and special situations
- Social needs and preferences
- Change/resilience skills for moving to a new country
- Tolerating ambiguity
- Managing change
- Project management
- Crisis management
- Creating and retaining a support system
This section is designed to give you just the basic overview of the issues that come up when considering where to live in France. To learn more, go to these three sites.
- Weatherspark is particularly good for weather.
- Villedereve.fr has the best data on a range of factors, including weather. Both have great comparison tools, where you can delve into the details of your favorite towns.
- findyourfrenchtown.com is our own site and offers good overview data on 50 of the most recommended towns.
Our prime goal, using these factors and these website tools, is to help you narrow down your list to just a few. Once you do that, you’ll be likely to take that small handful of towns and carefully compare them on the other two sites. To learn how to use any of these sites in more detail, view these three videos (part of our series from our Facebook/Zoom group. )