Hi Di, Thought I might tell you of my experience as I've been on both sides, as a teenager taken to France and as a parent who has thought of moving to France with children. As a fifteen year old, I moved to France with my Mother and brother and two sisters in 1974 for three years. We moved to Angers and the boys were sent to the local boys school and the girls to the local girls school. Because of our lack of French, we were moved down a year, and what with being tall for our age (over 6ft) we really stood out and found it difficult to make real friends at school. I was lucky in that my French teacher took an interest in me and gave me extra french lessons after school as well as extra homework, which I hated at the time. After 18 months, I moved to the local university which ran French courses as a foreign language for foreign students. Now I was the baby of the class, and looking back I had a pretty wicked time for the next 18 months, and learnt some more French along the way as well.. However my brother, who was thirteen at the time of the move, spent three years at the school and never really mastered the language. At the time of our departure, his only friend was an elderly gardener who worked nearby and kept bees, my brother spent a lot of time with him and his bees. We used to tease him and ask how they commuicated and whether the old man spoke English. One sister had a similar experience to me at school while the other, who was 10 when we moved was fluent in six months, and was always taken to be French. Looking back over 30 years now, that three years was the best years for our family, we had no television and we spent a lot of time together. My older sister and I often wonder what if....on our return to Scotland, either of us were able to get back into education, perhaps we just use France as an excuse? My younger sister went on to get a degree in languages from Edinburgh Univercity, Spanish and Russian as well as French. My brother never went back to school and is now a wealthy property developper and still keeps bees!! The moral of the story is that we are all different, one child may love the experience while the other hates it. Personnally, I'm really pleased to have got the opportunity to experience living in a different culture and feel that I benefitted from it greatly. Whether I felt that way at the time is a different matter, I do seem to remember it as one long adventure. As a parent, I have often considered moving to France with the children, however I would only do it if they were under 10 years old. Having missed that window I am now waiting until they have completed school. Then much to my wife pleasure, we will make the full time move!
