Étranger Things: Why I Started This Little Corner of the Internet

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My Journey: Between Two Apartments, Two Countries… and Thirty Half-Written Posts

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If you’ve been wondering « mais où sont-ils passés ? » or thinking your RSS feed broke—no, it’s not you. It’s me. Or more precisely: it’s us, thirty draft posts, one moving truck, and a boat to America.

Let me explain.

The Case of the 30 Half-Written Posts

At last count, I have about thirty blog posts sitting in drafts.
Not three.
Not thirteen.
Thirty.

Each one is about 70–80% finished. Like a baguette you’ve sliced, buttered, and then somehow… left on the counter while you go fill out a French form in triplicate.

There’s more posts about finding and renting apartments, one about the tu/vous panic with the tres sympa taxi driver, one about the quietness of Parc Jourdan and the vibrancy of Cours Mirabeau, one about the art at the Louvre being way too hot when Paris is freezing… they’re all there, waving at me from the Blogger dashboard like:

« Coucou, on existe toujours ! »

So if the blog has been oddly quiet, it’s not because life stopped. It’s because life got very loud.

From Parc Jourdan Calm… to Centre-Ville Buzz

When we first moved to Aix, we were in a rush. We needed an address for our French long-stay visa with residency application, and the priority was:

“Just get something. Anything. With a lease and four walls.”

Our long-standing philosophy was sensible enough:

Rent first, then find the place you actually want to live.

At the time, we thought we wanted to be away from the bustle of centre-ville. Somewhere with trees and birds and fewer people to overhear our A2-level French.

Enter: our current place near Parc Jourdan.

It’s on a clos—a little dead-end lane—with almost no foot traffic. It’s quiet. Very quiet. The kind of quiet where you can hear your own thoughts arguing about whether croissant is masculine or feminine.

We have lovely neighbours who invited us over, and we’ve felt very lucky on that front. The only problem is: outside of them, there is… nothing. No café on the corner, no quick stroll past a gallery window, no spontaneous “Oh look, a choir in the square, let’s listen for five minutes.”

Just us. And the occasional pigeon with opinions.

And here’s the revelation I didn’t see coming:

It turns out, we don’t actually want to be “away from it all.”
We want to be in the middle of it, with the option to close the windows.

The New Apartment: Centre-Ville or Bust

So we kept our eyes open, very casually at first. And then one day, bam:

We walked into an apartment in centre-ville Aix-en-Provence that felt instantly like home.

Was this a good time to move?
Absolutely not:

  • It’s the holidays.

  • We are mid-admin everything.

  • Our suitcases have still not recovered from the Paris–Manchester–Aix triangle.

But the apartment…

  • Central air conditioning.

  • An elevator.

  • In the heart of town, without being on top of a nightclub.

  • The kind of place where you can imagine yourselves growing old without the world zooming away from you.

I mean honestly—where else in centre-ville are you going to find both central air and an elevator?

The only “but”: there isn’t a second bedroom.
No fancy guest room, no office with perfect Zoom lighting.

And yet, everything in us said:

“This. This is the one.”

So we signed.  We pick up the keys today!

Moving Logistics, aka: My New French Vocabulary

Right now we’re in the glamorous phase of moving where we’re comparing two moving quotes and trying to understand every line like responsible adults, not tired expats who just want to lie down.

New vocab unlocked:

  • un devis — an estimate

  • un déménageur — a mover

  • un carton — a box (not just cardboard in the abstract sense, but the box, the box)

We still have to choose between two bids for the furniture move and lock in a date. All of this while I am packing, sorting, and gently apologising to every object we own for asking it to go up another set of stairs in yet another country.

The sweetest part?

Once we’re settled, we’ll finally be able to invite our Parc Jourdan neighbours over to our place. They welcomed us at the beginning; now we get to return the favor—with calissons and an intimidatingly large assortment of cheeses we pretend to know everything about.

Paris, Manchester, and a Thanksgiving in Disguise

In the middle of flat-hunting and paperwork, we also had a long-planned trip:

  • A weekend in Paris, including museum marathons and freezing streets with toasty-warm galleries.

  • A visit to dear friends near Manchester in England.

We’d had the Manchester trip in the calendar for ages, and it was exactly the breather we needed: cozy pubs, countryside drives, and the kind of conversation where you can pick up after two years as if it’s been two days.

And because the UK understands winter, there were festive Christmas menus everywhere—which turned out to be a surprisingly perfect backdrop for spending Thanksgiving there.

Turkey? ✅
Stuffing? ✅
Twinkling lights? ✅
Mild confusion about what holiday we were actually celebrating? Also ✅

I kept thinking:

“Okay, I’ll write a quick post from the hotel tonight.”

But then the bed was warm, my French homework was glaring at me from the suitcase, and… you know the rest.

And Then: A Boat to America

As if moving flats and hopping countries weren’t enough, there’s one more piece to this puzzle:

On December 15, I’m heading to the States by boat.

Yes, by boat. Proper crossing, lots of time zones, the works.

The plan (and I say this with the full optimism of a person who has not yet seen the dessert buffet) is to use that week at sea to catch up on November and December posts.

Picture it:

  • Me, in a lounge chair, laptop open.

  • A stack of half-finished posts about French admin, Aix markets, and that time I said « je suis plein » instead of « j’ai bien mangé ».

  • The Atlantic rolling by, while I desperately try not to buy yet another internet package just to upload pictures of baguettes.

Will I really manage to finish all thirty drafts?
Probably not.

But I’m hoping to at least get a good chunk of them polished enough to share—so when January rolls around, Étranger Things won’t feel quite so… ghosted.

Meanwhile, Poor Todd

All of this, of course, happens right as Christmas approaches.

The timing worked out so that I’ll be sailing off, and Todd will be holding down the fort in Aix—again—over the holidays.

To be clear:

  • I feel guilty.

  • He is gracious.

  • We are both leaning heavily on the “we’ll make it special later” philosophy of adult life.

If you see a handsome, french-looking, slightly bemused man in centre-ville Aix over Christmas, probably near a pâtisserie display, that might well be him. Say bonjour.  

You won't be alone. The French love him and can't resist talking to him!  He asks for directions to the platform at the Lille Europe train station and the man literally walks him halfway to the platform entrance.  I trail quietly from 2 metres behind.

For My Fellow French Learners

Because this is still, at heart, a space for all of us learning French (and life in France) together, here are a few tiny language nuggets from this season of chaos:

A1–A2 level

  • Nous déménageons. — We’re moving house.

  • Nous allons habiter en centre-ville. — We’re going to live in the city centre.

  • L’appartement a un ascenseur. — The apartment has an elevator.

Try these in a sentence about your own life, even if it’s imaginary for now.

B1 level

  • On pensait vouloir être au calme, mais en fait on a besoin d’animation.
    We thought we wanted peace and quiet, but actually we need some buzz around us.

  • On a trouvé un appartement qui nous va presque parfaitement.
    We found a flat that suits us almost perfectly.

B2 and up

  • Au début, on voulait s’éloigner de l’agitation du centre, mais on s’est rendu compte qu’on avait surtout peur de ne pas être à la hauteur en français.
    At first, we wanted to get away from the hustle of the centre, but we realised we were mostly afraid of not being “good enough” in French.

  • Finalement, on préfère entendre vivre la ville et fermer la fenêtre, plutôt que de n’entendre personne et se sentir un peu isolés.
    In the end, we’d rather hear the city living and shut the window than hear no one and feel a bit isolated.

Advanced folks: how would you describe that feeling of “It’s too quiet, I can hear my own thoughts conjugating verbs”? Drop your versions in the comments.

Your Turn — à vous !

I’ve been talking about our journey for 1,000+ words, but what about you?

  • Have you ever moved somewhere that turned out to be too quiet… or too noisy?

  • If you’re in Aix (or another French town), did you choose centre-ville or the outskirts, and why?

  • What’s one French sentence you can say now about your housing situation that you couldn’t have said when you arrived?

👉 Share in the comments: in French if you can, in English if you need, or a joyful mix of both. A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, super-advanced-secret-French-native—everyone’s welcome.

This blog may have been quiet on the surface… but I promise, under the water, the little Étranger Things legs have been paddling like mad. 🦆

À très vite — and merci d’être là, même quand the posts are fashionably late.

Location: Aix-en-Provence, France

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