I am originally from St. Louis, Missouri. In St. Louis, our favorite question is "Where did you go to high school?" So for you St. Louisans, I graduated from Parkway South, for what it's worth. That was where I had my first real job (other than babysitting), as a painter! My friend Amanda & I painted the classrooms, the goal posts, the trashcans, the fence around the baseball field, and just about anything else that didn't move fast enough. 

I then graduated from Harding University with a B.A. in French. Out of those four years, I spent one in Montpellier, France, through the College of William & Mary's Junior Year Abroad program. You can read a little bit about those fun adventures here.

I've been living in France off and on since 1996. I started out with a summer in Marseille in 1996, living with missionaries I'd known since I was little, then did the junior year thing in Montpellier in 1997-1998, and after I married my French husband in 2000, I began living in St Denis, a northern suburb of Paris.

I finally got authorization to work here after an exhausting year of fighting with the prefecture. I promptly signed up with a local temp agency, and spent two months working for Siemens and two more for Bergerat Monnoyeur (a Caterpillar dealer), each time as a bilingual secretary. I did some translating for Bergerat, learning such useful words in French as "hydraulic lift." After that, my temp agency took too long finding me another mission, so I started beating the pavement myself in search of something else. I ended up working as a bilingual legal secretary for finance lawyers in an international law firm located near the Eiffel Tower for about 2 1/2 years. 

Just before I started my job at the law firm in 2002, we moved out of our low-income housing and bought a condo in Villiers le Bel, a little further north of Paris than St Denis.

I quit in October 2004 for bigger and better (and more fun) things like web design. I have the added bonus of working with friends, AND working from home. This turned out to be the perfect opportunity to allow me to stay home and still have some income when we had our first baby, Benjamin Pierre, in December 2005. 

After a week skiing in 2004, we started to think about the possiblity of buying our own condo in the Alps. We bought one in early 2005, and enjoy having a place to get away to once or twice a year. During the summer & winter seasons, we rent it out to vacationers, and we really like to go ourselves in the off-season, when the resort is empty. 

Our first child, Benjamin, was born in December 2005.

In 2006, we decided we couldn't put up with our neighbors anymore - they were much less respectful than those in our low-income housing apartment in St Denis and we were tired of it. So we started house-hunting, and ended up buying a house in a very small village called Puiseux en Retz, in the Aisne department, in July 2006. We hope to stay here until retirement.  Moving to the Aisne department means that we now live "in the provinces," no longer in the Parisian region at all. And that is a wonderful thing! No more pollution, no more stress, no more crowds!

Frederic doesn't spend any more time commuting to work than he did from Villiers le Bel, since although we're further away, it's all highway instead of city driving. As it turns out, we were very fortunate to have sold our condo when we did, since there were riots in Villiers le Bel in November 2007. 

Our second child, Noah, was born in March 2008.

About Me

I am originally from St. Louis, Missouri. In St. Louis, our favorite question is "Where did you go to high school?" So for you St. Louisans, I graduated from Parkway South, for what it's worth. That was where I had my first real job (other than babysitting), as a painter! My friend Amanda & I painted the classrooms, the goal posts, the trashcans, the fence around the baseball field, and just about anything else that didn't move fast enough. 

I then graduated from Harding University with a B.A. in French. Out of those four years, I spent one in Montpellier, France, through the College of William & Mary's Junior Year Abroad program. You can read a little bit about those fun adventures here.

I've been living in France off and on since 1996. I started out with a summer in Marseille in 1996, living with missionaries I'd known since I was little, then did the junior year thing in Montpellier in 1997-1998, and after I married my French husband in 2000, I began living in St Denis, a northern suburb of Paris.

I finally got authorization to work here after an exhausting year of fighting with the prefecture. I promptly signed up with a local temp agency, and spent two months working for Siemens and two more for Bergerat Monnoyeur (a Caterpillar dealer), each time as a bilingual secretary. I did some translating for Bergerat, learning such useful words in French as "hydraulic lift." After that, my temp agency took too long finding me another mission, so I started beating the pavement myself in search of something else. I ended up working as a bilingual legal secretary for finance lawyers in an international law firm located near the Eiffel Tower for about 2 1/2 years. 

Just before I started my job at the law firm in 2002, we moved out of our low-income housing and bought a condo in Villiers le Bel, a little further north of Paris than St Denis.

I quit in October 2004 for bigger and better (and more fun) things like web design. I have the added bonus of working with friends, AND working from home. This turned out to be the perfect opportunity to allow me to stay home and still have some income when we had our first baby, Benjamin Pierre, in December 2005. 

After a week skiing in 2004, we started to think about the possiblity of buying our own condo in the Alps. We bought one in early 2005, and enjoy having a place to get away to once or twice a year. During the summer & winter seasons, we rent it out to vacationers, and we really like to go ourselves in the off-season, when the resort is empty. 

Our first child, Benjamin, was born in December 2005.

In 2006, we decided we couldn't put up with our neighbors anymore - they were much less respectful than those in our low-income housing apartment in St Denis and we were tired of it. So we started house-hunting, and ended up buying a house in a very small village called Puiseux en Retz, in the Aisne department, in July 2006. We hope to stay here until retirement.  Moving to the Aisne department means that we now live "in the provinces," no longer in the Parisian region at all. And that is a wonderful thing! No more pollution, no more stress, no more crowds!

Frederic doesn't spend any more time commuting to work than he did from Villiers le Bel, since although we're further away, it's all highway instead of city driving. As it turns out, we were very fortunate to have sold our condo when we did, since there were riots in Villiers le Bel in November 2007. 

Our second child, Noah, was born in March 2008.