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alencon

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Everything posted by alencon

  1. There are definite highs and lows.  My daughter is 16 and in her first year a lycée and it's been a real shock after collège.  One would say that she speaks fluently has a good social circle etc.  However,missing out on the early years of a French education are really showing now.  She's a reasonably intelligent girl who I expect would have sat her 'A' levels etc but her she is disadvantaged because her knowledge and expertise in French Grammar is missing. The days are very long and the professeurs unsympathetic.  She ready to pack it in and take an easier option. I have to take responsibility when ends up on minimum wage because she can't complete her education. I have to say I'm impressed by the earlier poster who moved with 15 and 16 year olds who still managed to complete their bacs with flying colours....my daughter's struggling to get anywhere near a moyenne of 10 let alone the heady heights of 18 which would be her English equivalent. Any advice would be appreciated.
  2. I read the article too,dylan, made me want to throw up rather than laugh!  I seem to remember one too many references to parisien lawyer friends rather than first hand experiences.  Maybe I've seen too many blood stained aprons and slippers (and absolutely nothing wrong with that either!)to fall for the stereotypical 'French women' are ALL so sexy and sophisticated and English women are drunken slobs.  As big a load of old tosh as the the misconception that every English person has a full fry up every morning.
  3. The main criteria for making this decision should be money.  Everything else you can get over or find a solution/compromise and when I say everything else, I'm fairly confident that 99% of other problems/dilemas are 'do-able'.  However, without enough money to fund  your own lifestyle (ie 50 euros is a week's shopping budget to some but lunch out to others)it won't necessarily be a life improvement option. We've been here 18 months ish with kids but our income is still from the Uk and will be for the forseeable because there is no prospect of earning enough money in France to even scrape by on (well, that's the case for us at the moment). I don't have a problem with the education system  but maybe it's too early for me to make an informative judgement. Obviously,the children can speak French which has to be a bonus (might not get them a job in front of anyone else but it can't hurt) and the maths is far more taxing than anything they were given in the UK.  I don't want to go back to the UK and it's not because I hated it there, quite the contrary. In fact, if we'd had pots of money we may well have bought a second home here instead of moving out full time.  It was a case of making a choice and this is where we ended up. It's difficult to define the reasons for not wanting to return but I guess the things you think you are going to miss in the Uk before you leave become the things you don't want anymore after a while over here (even some family!).  I was pining for some beans on toast for about a year but when I finally had some (at great expense-2.16 euros!) my taste buds must have changed because I didn't like them at all anymore. On face value Tesco is better than Leclerc or Carrefour but I no longer have to wander aimlessly down the aisles wondering what to buy from the vast array of ready meals available at Tesco and ending up with the same old stuff week after week.  The French supermarkets force you to cook proper meals again and it makes life so much easier. I'd really miss the boulangeries and the cafés, the kisses and the handshakes, the late nights drinking and eating until dawn, pretending I can't speak French so I can listen to the man at Brico speak English with his sexy French accent (still not sick of that one!!).  I could give you a list of what I miss about UK too but I don't feel I'm missing out on anything but if we left here I really would feel like I was missing out
  4. [quote]In fact you could have cancelled your Sky contract whenever you wanted as the card retains the ability to get ITV/C4/C5 even when you stop paying Sky. However, indeed, as of today you could take th...[/quote] I'm paying £15 a month to Sky because I want to keep C4 and C5 ( not too bothered about Sky1). Are you sure the card will retain these channels if I cancel my subscription? I guess I kept paying because I thought I might upgrade at some stage but I don't think that is likely now....too many better things to do over here!
  5. I'm being given bags and bags of plums (green and purple) and we are never going to get through them all, it seems a shame to let them rot. Anyone have any ideas? Is jam a goer and is it difficult to get right for a novice? Any other suggestions welcome.
  6. It will be difficult getting into the regime of going to the doctors for the ailments you would normally self diagnose. The prescriptions over the phone are still happening at my surgery and I wondered about the economic viability on the doctor's part.
  7. I wanted (actually needed because I was in severe pain) some Omeprazole 20mg over the counter at the pharmacy but a small packet would have cost me 28.50 euros.  The pharmacist suggested I ask my doctor for a prescription so I could offset the cost on my Carte Vitale.  Of course, this was good advice and on reflection I should have made sure I had a supply of the tablets in the house instead of waiting for the pain.  However, there was a queue in the doctor's and I couldn't wait because the only other option to not taking the tablets at the onset of the pain (crippling gastric) is to be physically sick so I had to get home sharpish. I can't remember how much the tablets cost in England (over the counter) but it was only a few pounds.  How is the 28.50 euro charge justified over here and does it mean I have to stock my medecine cabinet with a host of prescription drugs for fear of not being able to afford them in a genuine emergency. Now I understand why the doctor was fielding so many calls for prescriptions and writing them out as she spoke on the telephone and why she offerred me a prescription for paracetemol which I would normally have bought for about 20p in the UK.
  8. I expect there must be more to this than meets the eye, it would be difficult to imagine a teenager resident in France for 18 months and having no knowledge of French. My 15 year old has elected to to do a further year in troisième to improve her chances of success at lycée.  She is fully conversant after a year at collège but wanted a full year in troisième where she was able to complete all the work at a good level and achieve good results at the end of the year. There is no way I would have been happy sending her straight to lycée with no French.  Why not suggest she attends a collège for a year if it's possible?
  9. http://forums.livingfrance.com/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=279&MessageID=219771 Is this posting helpful? Also, when I was poking about on www.impots.gouv.fr yesterday and attempting to calculate impots on the calculating tool, I think it said you can either take a standard 10% for expenses or if they exceed  10% you can list your 'real' expenses that you can prove (receipts etc). There must be a list of allowable expenses somewhere on the impots site if you look hard enough. Must add, that I have zero expertize on the subject!
  10. Like your style Andy, simple works for my fragile brain at the moment and now I understand Thanks for the advice TU,the cheque's in the post
  11. Fair enough, my lacsidasical response deserved the So who fills out the the French returns: resident, non resident or both? Does husband declare his UK taxed income and me declare nil income. Or, as suggested earlier, just me fill out the French return and include his income as my 'worldwide'? I used to think I was quite bright, now I'm having serious doubts....where's a wall for me to bang my head upon?
  12. We've been here for a over a year, registered for health insurance and paying cotisations to URSSF etc but we haven't filed a French tax return nor have we been asked to do so yet. It would be easier if I'd had a Rev fiscal figure when I affiliated instead of submitting Uk tax return in sterling etc. I wonder if I should ask for a French tax form-too late for this year but for next February or will they eventually send me one now that I have a social sec number and I'm in the system!  
  13. How about if one partner is still resident in UK working and paying Uk tax (spending way less than 180 days a year in France) but is supporting family resident in France. Does either or both still need to complete French tax return?
  14. Teaching English to foreign students, whether you speak their native tongue or not is a skill generally acquired through training, not just "I fancy being a teacher, so I'll just wing it". There are some (very rare) personalities who may have the natural skills to be succesful but the lady in the program was not such an individual.  If I were a parent at this fee paying school,I would be furious that the school was allowing her to teach my child.  I'd be interested to know whether she was still at the school after the programme had finished filming.  The BBC should be ashamed for promoting such unrealistic 'dreams'.
  15. She was completely useless as a teacher and the school must have had to have their arm twisted severely by the BBC to employ her.........She was very arrogant and disrespective of the students needs to think she could just walk into a classroom and teach with no skills or French WHATSOEVER.
  16. Petty, I know, but 'discreet' versus 'discrete' had me puzzled so I checked my dictionary. discreet= capable of maintaining a prudent silence discrete=individually distinct So, I think she was correct in context! Naive to post though desparate times are no excuse. You pay high tax and social security payments (in part) to fund and assist when you've been left high and dry by your partner and you have children to look after. If times are difficult you should go to the CAF for assistance until your cicumstances improve, not try and fiddle the system.
  17. When completing CMU forms and all our income is sterling,how should we complete the forms ,in euros or sterling? Have last year's tax return to accompany application but I'm wary about completing the form........should I convert the figures myself and if so what rate should I use or should I leave the boxes blank? Also,anyone know whether to deduct income tax and NI contributions (husband still living mostly in UK)? Any advice appreciated.
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