As I mentionned previously, we
are about to leave France and settle down in the US, this time permanently. We
will live in a university town in a State on the East Coast.
Today we have up to 300 days to
spend in France before my husband starts to work there in August 2017 7th and
our children start school there again (I don’t know the exact time of
back-to-school in our futur hometown but I know it’s around the beginning of
August).
I have decided to write regularly
on this blog about different issues dealing with this « big
departure », which will obviously confront us with differences and
similarities between France and the US. Today is our D-300.
Today’s issues
Today’s issues are about housing
in our future hometown and here in Lille before we leave. We presently rent a
house in Lille (since we came back in Lille in 2015). When my husband had his
last interviews in March, his future employer set up an appointment with a
realtor who discussed with him the housing market there. We contacted the
realtor a few days ago by Skype and talked about different possibilities.
It turns out that the renting
market is pretty small there and our best choice would be to buy a house.
He opened an « account » for us on his website to let us look at
different houses now available on the market, even if we won’t buy before a few
months.
We showed the realtor
« portal » to our children who were pretty much excited by the
houses, which is good because we want them to be excited and participate to the
process. My oldest son (11) decided to compare these houses (even if we
explained them clearly that the houses we saw won’t be on the market when we
will decide to buy) and started an Excel worksheet with several columns to
compare them… I must say that my husband and I are pretty glad he started it
because it will help us to grasp different possibilities on the market. One
difficult point is that I have never been in that town (we didn’t have
neither enough time nor enough money to « waste » to make a family
travel there before he accepted the job offer). And we don’t know which
neighborhoods are best for us. In fact my husband has already asked several
questions to his future colleagues and we asked questions to the realtor. But
it turns out there are different quality neighborhoods and the best one would
really depend on our personal and subjective criterias.
The 2nd question for
us is about our moving and the best time to move. After more than 15
years living together and several movings we have accumulated a lot of
furniture and stuff we appreciate. We will have to make a choice and sell or
donate some of them that don’t work for us anymore but we will take a great
part of them with us. Moving between France and the US will be a big issue and will
be probably quite exhausting. And we know that moving our furniture by sea will
take at least 3 months.
The big question is: should we
send our furnitures 3 months ahead our travel and live meanwhile in a furnished
appartment (or any other solution) or should we pack our stuff right before our
travel and live in the US in a temporary solution for 3 months? We need to
clarify this as soon as possible because it will determine the date of our
moving and the date before when a lot of chores should be done.
Our state of mind today
Our state of mind is good. Our
kids don’t really think about departure yet (even if they know we’ll move) but
my husband and I think about it several times a week. I feel quite excited :
). We planned for this departure and it actually will happen ! I’m just a
little bit stressed out today as I realized we had « only » 300 days
left before we start a new life there in our future hometown !
Libellés : English
