Hello!


This represents my first post on my first blog! I've decided to create one for a couple of reasons but not necessarily because I have anything particularly insightful to tell the world! Primarily, this is a chance for friends and family to keep tabs on us and an opportunity to communicate and share through this relatively new medium. The other event that has prompted this is that our family is beginning to fulfill a lifelong dream of building our own home. I wanted a relatively easy and straightforward way to document this process. Therefore, this is as a sort of living diary of the trials and tribulations of building a new home and not just in any place...but in France which as the title suggests, is not my native country. Yes, I believe I'm a glutton for punishment!

Let me start with a little background:

Helene and I moved to France from Canada (Montreal) about 6 months ago as I accepted a job transfer with Motorola, my company. We were not originally from Canada either, having also been transferred there from the United States a little over 5 years ago. We tend to move around a lot but France and Europe have always been a draw for me as my family is originally from Belgium and Holland. These are small countries and growing up in New York and saying I was from Belgium, well, I might as well have been from Zimbabwe as most people had no clue where Belgium was! I still have many relatives there including my Grandmother who just turned 92 this year. Helene, my wife of close to 10 years is from France originally as well so you can begin to understand why this move was important for us. Helene has quite an extensive family that lives in Brittany where in her Grandparents generation, having 6, 7, 9 kids was not uncommon! One could say that was religion or perhaps boredom but whatever the reason, my wife has more cousins than most families in Alabama! I know that she patiently longed to be closer to home. Unfortunately, my parents still live in the United States (California) so whereas Montreal represented a certain amount of middle ground literally and figuratively, France is now a long distance away. One cannot have everything I guess and I'm fortunate that they're both very healthy and mobile!

I should also mention that we have two wonderful boys ages 7 and 3. They're the light of our lives and on ocassion, the cause of our premature grey but they have thoroughly enjoyed this new adventure of moving to a new country. Perhaps I will expand upon on this a bit more in a future post but they will likely color the text of this blog many, many times!

As mentioned, we have recently decided that we will be building our own home. This is an exciting event for us and we're literally at the very beginning of what will be at least a 15 month process. You would think we were building a skyscraper but 12 months for a new house in France is the norm and often, it takes longer. Of course, when the whole country takes most of July and all of August off...you start to understand! Just kidding of course...I don't want any angry posts from the French out there! That being said, I think it would be interesting to point out the differences between our cultures. At a time when the US-French relations are strained it still doesn't hurt to poke a little fun at ourselves and the French!

Well, I think this hopefully is a good start. I will update when possible and although I can't imagine why anyone outside of our circle of family or friends would want to comment or post, if the fancy strikes you, go for it!