International Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
I feel like I need a personal assistant to move...
I'm new around these parts, but please talk me down off the ledge. We're moving to Paris in January and now that "les vacances" are over, I have a serious to-do list to tackle. I have to call a billion pre-schools about enrollment, admissions, etc.; find a place to live in Paris; get all of our paperwork in order for our visas; do a billion home repairs here so we can rent our place in NY out while we're gone; make sure our homeowners' insurance & etc. are in order; finish 3 major freelance projects before December in case I can't get to work right away in Paris; and add at least five other things to my "to do" list that I probably haven't even thought of yet.
Everyone goes through this and survives, right?
Re: I feel like I need a personal assistant to move...
Just drink a lot.
Is your DH's company not giving you guys someone to help with your relo?
Also, don't plan on working right away when you move if you DH does. We had it nice because me and our relo lady did everything while my DH worked. You also might want to look into a sitter service ASAP, I wish I would have sooner. An IN really helped me out by watching my DS when I found out with 2 hrs notice that I had to switch apartments and my husband was in meetings with his CEO he couldn't exactly cancel LOL.
For me the harder stuff was back home because once we got here it was clean slate. I still had a ton to do, don't get me wrong, but everything was done in steps and we had decent temp housing.
We've been here 7 months and just did the final step, traded our D/L. And I'm ready to move on of course.
Kindergarten (maternelle) starts at 3 in France, do you know which area of Paris you'll be living?
If you do you need to call the "mairie annex" of your neighbourhood to get her enrolled. They usually tell you which school she will go to. Unless you want to go private, then you just have to call the school to enroll.
We decided to go private here and only pay about 2000 Euros a year including cantine. Here is a link to all the private schools in France: http://www.enseignement-prive.info/search
No advice about the other stuff though. You'll get though it all. Good luck.
We don't get a relo person through DH's job, just his soon-to-be-boss shooting us emails with lists of schools & brokers, etc. To make things a little harder, I speak French and DH doesn't (I know, I know, weird since we're moving for HIS job), so guess who has to make all the phone calls about schools & apartments?
Thanks for the private school link. I'll see if there's anything on there not on my radar yet. We're going the private school route because we'll only be there a year and also, the French school day seems so long compared to what DD is used to here. In addition, the private schools there cost so, so, so much less than private schools here. This is probably our one chance to enroll DD in a non-public school. We're both leaning toward Montessori school, but we'll see.
Azure- are you in Paris? We're considering the 5th & 6th arrondisements, but need to time the commutes to the schools we're looking at (most of them are in the 7th, 8th & 16th).
I'm in Cannes. I pretty much know nothing about living in Paris. Myblueangel is in Paris and may have tips about arrodisements.
Yes, school is long here! My son just started his first year of maternelle last week it's from 8:20 until 4pm, but they get time for lunch at school (which I suggest you do so you don't have to travel back and forth) - from other mothers at his school who took their kids home for lunch, it was such a pain in the butt and they switched their kids to cantine after 2 days. They also have nap time after lunch for an hour or so. My son had only been in pre-school two morning a week last year and he loves full day school now. There is no school on Wednesdays and they get a ton of holidays in the year.
It's great that you speak French!
Despite going through it all (and still some)... I still feel like I have very little left to offer... and agree you should have someone (thought about starting my own company related to it)
All I can say is if it is only a year.. take as little as possible. You can buy here cheaper than shipping anything and your style will change a bit with the new city.