Making Ourselves at Home Again

Color-filled side street in a visit to the old city of Montpellier Our move to Montpellier, France was not a decision I was immediately enthralled with. It has been almost 20 years since Randy and I first left Miami where we grew up. There is a popular expression that Miami is not Florida. Aside from …

Awkward and Adrift in Sud de France

Charming side street in Montferrier-sur-Lez We drive around the Occitane region of France, alongside the acres of vineyards that line the landscape with the mountain of Pic Saint-Loup serving as its backdrop. Montpellier and its surrounding areas is situated in the Herault Department within the greater Occitane. Here viticulture is part of its heritage -- …

FROM SCRATCH

Daily fresh bread from scratch is part of France's cultural hallmark Patience. Flexibility. Understanding. Melatonin. This is what I have discovered will get me through a time of compounded uncertainty circled in quiet anxiety. Our current instability means no car, no home, no school and no schedule of any sort.  Add France’s famed bureaucratic process …

In Pursuit of Joie de Vivre

OFF WE GO LEAVING MIAMI ON AIR FRANCE WITH 25 PASSENGERS ON BOARD, November 3, 2020 (Election Day) How to really push yourself out of your comfort zone in your middle age when life is supposed to be a steady rhythm of predictable expectations? Move to another country. With your whole family. Not understanding the …