Quote:
Originally Posted by sabfrance
Go go go - you will never regret it.
I travel to France frequently and love the south - particularly Languedoc.
The French are not arrogant. In the big cities people are as they are in any large city in the world. But once you leave the cities you will find that the people are friendly and make you feel welcome at every chance.
You will need some basic French to get along but its amazing how quickly you'll pick it up. Once your child has been in a French school for a month he/she will be giving you lessons at home.
You will not be alone and miserable I assure you. There are Poms and Yanks scattered aroung the south so if you wanted to hop in to an expat group I'm sure that would not be a problem.
A final thought - if you don't have trouble making friends at home now, you probably won't have any trouble making them once in your new home.
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I have to address this before I respond to the OP. Visiting a place frequently is NOT the same as living there. By just visiting, you never have to deal with all the beauracracy associated with the Carte de Sejour, opening a bank account, registering kids for school, etc, etc. You can "put yourself out there" more and take more risks with making friends because you don't have to worry as much about offending someone and having them passively-aggressively hold it against you for the rest of the time you are here.
And I'm yet to find a child who arrived here speaking no French who was speaking it after a month. My children's school rule of thumb is a year for the child to speak it. Often they will comprehend it earlier, but to truly speak it takes a while. All 3 of my children are learning it at different paces. And contrary to the beliefs of those who've never placed a child in a school - my youngest is acquiring the language much slower than my oldest. (So, it's not always the younger they are the faster they pick it up)
And making friends easiliy in the US does not equate to making friends easily with the French. In the US, my neighborhood was my social network. We shared tools, held cookouts together and even blocked off the street for a big party twice a year. After 7 months here, I am *finally* on a "Bonjour" basis with all my neighbors. And I have conversation with exactly one of them. (Who I will say is extremely nice and baked a cake for my daughter's birthday, but wasn't friendly until we'd been here 6 months.) As someone else said, it's not always easy to make friends with the French. And I think part of this delay is that it took me about 6 months to get up to a (kinda crappy) conversational level of French.
*now to address the OP*
The upside is that you will have children in school. That is where I've made all my contacts/friends. So I'm far from alone and have a group that I meet for coffee at a local cafe on Tuesdays after school drop off. IT is a great experience, and I'm glad overall that we decided to come here for four years. My children are learning another language, they're getting to experience another culture, try new things, and we have grand plans to travel Europe (budget permitting!). It is frustrating at times (okay, bunches of times) and can get stressful, so make sure you and your spouse have a strong relationship before you come over here LOL!
As for children returning - we enrolled our children in a French public school with an Anglophone section so they can keep their English skills up to speed. While we've found the Anglophone section to be below grade level of their peers back in the US, at least they're still practicing reading and writing in English. Maybe you can find something like that in the area you're going to move to.
Good luck with the decision!