100 days from today, we will board a plane for our move to France. This is the first time we’ve bought one-way tickets anywhere.

It’s been interesting to see the reactions when we tell people we are moving to France. People in France seem to think California is all Hollywood, warm weather, beaches and blue skies, and ask us why in the world would we want to leave that. 

For some reason, many people we’ve spoken to in California confuse France with Paris. They say, “Oh, you’re moving to Paris?! How exciting!” Um, no. We are moving to rural France. Peaceful and bucolic, certainly, but not terribly exciting.

Don’t get me wrong, we are thrilled about taking this massive step into a new lifestyle, and can’t wait to call this beautiful part of the world our home. But we’ll be miles from Paris (182, actually), and there are few similarities between living in the two places. It’s definitely France, with all that comes with it. We will struggle with learning the language, the metric system, their rather archaic ways of doing simple things (more on that later), the high gas and electric prices, and so, so much more. But we will enjoy getting to know the sweet and friendly people, revel in the fact that we are buying and renovating an amazing old house that was so reasonably priced we could practically put it on our credit card, and love exploring the network of charming small towns that each have something unique to offer. We will learn to cook with seasonally available products, and attend farmers markets to buy from proud local farmers. We might not understand the tradition of closing businesses at lunch time, even the large Home Depot-type stores, but we will embrace the French ways of doing things.

After all, it’s our choice to move, so we must accept the cultural differences, along with the happy routine of buying fresh bread every morning at the little boulangerie just a two-minute walk from our front door.