Living the French Dream: Week 19 Highlights

Week 19 in France 12/8-12/14/2025

Welcome to the 47th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. We are officially into our fifth month of full time living in France.

The weather forecast for this week includes high temperatures in the upper 50s F. Lows in the low 40s with some rain in our part of the Charente department of France.

We have a long list of to-do’s. This week will fly!

Things on the agenda this week:

We are in for another busy week:

• Follow up on document translations
• Complete the information required for our driver’s license exchange
• Get our official ANTS compatible ID pictures. There are kiosks for this at the supermarket. ANTS is another acronym, and I don’t have a clue what it stands for.
• Complete the information for our Carte Vitale application
• Fingers crossed we get the heat issue sorted out
• Get internet and WiFi set up
• Follow up on the doctor appointments
• Chabanais has a Christmas market
• Send Certificate de Controle Medical to French Connections HCB

The weather forecast for Chabanais this week is looking pretty good with highs in the upper 50s most days and lows in the 40s and only a couple of days with a slight chance of rain. I know it is kinda crazy for me to be saying 50s and 40s in the same sentence as, “weather is looking pretty good”. We are getting used to it.

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are “Baby Boomers” that have moved from beautiful Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We publish a brief update of our adventures every Sunday to share our experiences, tips and mistakes.

For starters, we have decided that the French countryside is where we will make our home. Although we enjoyed our visit to Paris, our life is not in Paris. We like the peace and calm of village life that includes amenities of course. We will explain over the course of our blog posts.

If this is your first visit to our blog, WELCOME!

To all of our regulars, thanks for being here. It means a lot.

If you are thinking about a move to France? We are happy to share our thoughts and answer questions. Just drop a question in the comment section below and we will get back to you.

If you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move check out some of our earlier posts. Again, if you have questions about our adventure, drop your questions in the comment section below.

We are learning a lot about the French culture and lifestyle as we make our life here and each week, we include some thoughts on what we learn.

This Week in General

We woke up to another beautiful Monday with a blue sky, puffy clouds, and temps in the 50s..

EB was feeling a little better Monday morning. I went to the pharmacy and the LIDL market in Confolens and picked up some meds for EB and a baguette and a couple of croissants.

We got good news from Teddy, our real estate agent. She found a technician who will come to the house and get our gas boiler up and running on Thursday. Hopefully he will speak some English.

Also, we got information about the trash pick-up schedule. We can go to the town hall and pick up trash bins, and I think a new compost bin.

And the translations of our documents for the driver’s licenses and Carte Vitale are scheduled to be in our hands by Friday.

I went to the house just to check on things and get some gas in the car. I wanted to check the compost bin and make sure the solar panels were good. It will take me some time to feel confident about the system. I took the below picture from the garden at the Chabanais house. We really are living in a little village with church bells that ring in each hour during the day. Those tile roofs look a little rough compared to the neat and tidy tile roofs in Venice, Florida. Probably been there for 50 years or more.

On the way back to the gite I stopped to get a picture along the road to Chabanais.

It is so nice to check things off of our list. Pretty soon we will be able to chill out and not worry about this stuff. Our list can be for fun things!!

Speaking of Lists

We have a long list of things that we need for the house. We checked a few things off of the list on Tuesday. We went shopping in Poitiers and found several items for the house. I got a couple of tools too.

There were a couple of specific stores that EB wanted to go to on Tuesday (Conforama, BUT, and Leroy Merlin). I thought that we were going to Limoges, but EB surprised me with the directions heading for Poitiers instead of Limoges. It turns out that she was surprised too. We will be laughing about this for months to come.

I stressed us out a little because I hadn’t been able to get gas on Monday so along the way to Poitiers we started running low. Luckily, the GPS was working so we looked for gas near us and there was a place located pretty close. Unluckily, the road was closed so we went around in a circle trying to get around the road closure. No joy, so we tried the gas station near me thing again and found a station even closer and filled up. I got to practice a little French since, of course, I pulled up to the only pump. It was out of order. I went into the office to speak with the attendants, and they figured out what I was saying and got me straightened out. We filled up and were on our way again.

We made it to Poitiers and did find some good buys and added to our furniture buys at Conforama and Leroy Merlin and loaded up the car. It’s surprising how much we can stuff into that little car.

On Tuesday morning we woke up to rain. Minor detail and that didn’t stop us from a busy day. We took our purchases to the house and unloaded the car and did some work. Rosie is slowly getting used to the new place. We decided to drop Rosie at the gite and take a quick run to Limoges for more shopping. OMG traffic was horrific. I guess we hit Limoges at rush hour. We found a desk, TV stand and small bureau that matched the dimensions EB had figured out. Loaded up the car again and headed home. Thankfully by the time we started for the gite the traffic had died down. We left everything in the car and tucked in for the night.

Wednesday was another nice cool sunny day, we bundled Rosie up and headed for the house. One of the Tuesday buys was a small electric heater. We set the heater up in the dining room and set Rosie’s bed up close to the heater. Meanwhile I got started on furniture assembly in the living room. EB drove over to St. Junien to purchase some fabric for drapes and found a couple of chairs that she liked. Before she left, EB moved Rosie’s bed and the heater into the living room with me. Rosie was upset that EB had left her, but she finally settled down and was satisfied to watch me assemble furniture while she curled up in her bed near the heater. The furniture is basically IKEA so not real fancy, but adequate to get us started and it is easy to assemble.

EB had ordered new cookware that was delivered to the gite in St Germain. We took it over to the Chabanais house and she got it all set up. Very nice set. I’m sure she told me the brand name, but I have forgotten it.

Thursday felt like a 3-ring circus on a foreign planet. We were assembling furniture while the techs from Orange were setting up the WIFI/internet, and the heater guy was getting the boiler running all in the same room. The solar power inverter was beeping like crazy in the laundry room. Everybody speaking French and me and EB speaking some version of Franglish. It was hilarious.

We got heat and WiFi on the same day. What a relief!

For some reason the Wi-Fi didn’t want to connect, and I started to think we were gonna have a big bill to complete the set up. The technicians were talking in French, and it didn’t sound good. Maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t understand all that they were saying, but eventually they got it working and the TV looks great. NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!

By the way, the TV is a Phillips 55″ with some fancy looking back lights. It looks and sounds great. We set the TV up in our living room on the new TV stand and once the furniture is delivered the room will be nice and cozy and in pretty good shape. We need to hang some pictures and make it ours, but it is coming together.

Last week I mentioned that the customer service in France so far has been great and I was worried about how the heater service contractor would compare. It turns out he arrived on time and figured our problem out and had the system up and running in less than an hour. There was an issue with the gas service coming into the house. I was like, what??? He eventually got it going and we now have gas to the stove and the boiler for the heating radiators is working well and we have hot water at the taps. We have heat!! LIFE IS GOOD. The service call was 99 euros. Customer Service? EXCELLENT and that is despite the fact that the tech didn’t speak English much.

Next issue is the solar power system. Right now, I am bypassing the system because I keep getting alarms on the inverter. I have tried shutting the system down and restarting from scratch without any luck. I bypassed the solar system, so we are currently using power from the grid in the rooms that the system was designed specifically to service. It is not the end of the world, but I really want the solar panels to furnish power to those rooms. I tried contacting the Belgium manufacturer of the system on Friday but didn’t have any luck. I will try a local contractor next week. Oh, and the previous owner is long gone to Madagascar. Really.

Now that we have hot water, EB was able to wash her new cookware and the silverware on Friday. I got back on the furniture assembly duty, and we got a lot of work crossed off of our list. We set the TV on the new TV stand and watched it a little while we had a cup of tea. We are drinking a LOT of hot tea now! Then back to work. We assembled a little console for the guest bedroom and a couple of chairs.

Elizabeth is still coughing and sniffling, but is feeling much better and soldering on as we continue to get the house in shape to move in. We are shooting to be moved in by Christmas. We won’t have all of the furniture, but we will work around that little detail. No Christmas decorations yet.

By the way EB just finished her crocheting project. NICE. It will be a warm throw for over the couch. I love this picture. Beautiful right? The throw is not bad either.

Carte Vitale

Made progress this week. We gathered up the necessary documents for our Carte Vitale and sent all to Annabelle at French Connections HCB. She will review everything and if everything is good, she will submit our application. This is huge as it is an important step that we must take to get our French health insurance card.

It turns out that we didn’t request our driver’s licenses translated. This sets our French drivers license application back a bit, but it is no biggy. We have several months until it is actually needed. We just need to follow up on that and I’m guessing that will be done next week or the following week. We need to get it done before our 1-year anniversary of being in the country. If we don’t get it done, we have to take a driver test. It is in French so not good to wait.

Shopping in Saint Junien

We went to St. Junien on Saturday for groceries, dishes and glass ware at E.Leclerc and then stopped into Mr. Bricolage where I bought a set of combo open-end/ box end wrenches and some 3 in 1 oil. The locks on the house shutters are exposed to the elements and are a little stiff. I’m sure the oil will loosen them up. We like E.Leclerc in St. Junien. They have just about everything.

Just in case you are wondering, I will need the wrench set for a shutter improvement project that EB needs done.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Brand Names of Products

In the grocery store you don’t find all of the familiar name brands that we have in the states. We did find Pringles. There is another brand of chips that is much the same. We have tried them both. I really don’t taste any difference. Of course, Coke and Pepsi are here. I haven’t seen Heinz, but the ketchup is good here.

When it comes to appliances, we see Whirlpool and LG. I haven’t seen GE though. A very popular brand of clothes washers and dryers here is Candy. The small electric applicance names are unfamiliar to me.

I don’t pay much attention to clothing, but I did see Levi jeans for sale. Wholly moley they are expensive.

Next week starts Christmas Market in Chabanais. They already have the little square decorated. Pictures to follow. This is a big tradition all over Europe. Hopefully we will get over to one of the bigger towns to see a big Christmas market.

The French Language

I have mentioned our difficulty with the French language. It is true that communication is tricky for us. The language is not the easiest to learn. It is very interesting though that there are many words in the French language that are similar to English. For instance, French for “meeting” is “reunion”, “hospital” is “hopital”, “interesting” is “interessante”, “round” is “rond”, “important” is “importante”, “information” is “informations”, “toilet” is “toilettes”. There are a bunch of these words. I find it fascinating that there is so much in common. Don’t get me wrong the verb conjugations and gender relationships are plenty complicated. We haven’t looked for a language tutor yet. Once settled in Chabanais we will sign up for lessons with a human. We still practice with Duolingo every day, but I’m pretty sure that actual lessons with the right French teacher will be really helpful.

Did you know that the USA doesn’t have an official language?

I read somewhere that at one time the United States was going to pick an official language and believe it or not, German and French were in the running. Have you heard anything like that? English seems like the obvious choice, right? Well, the crazy thing is that the United States of America does not have an official language. I mean a language legislated as the official language. English is the most common language in the USA so by default you can say English is the main language, but crazy as it seems, it is not the official language. I remember someone saying that the US congress was going to make a law to make French the official language of the USA. I thought that was pretty funny. My feeling was they can declare any language they want but English is still going to be the most commonly spoken language in the states. I wasn’t worried about having to learn a new language.

France does have an official language, and you guessed it, it is French. Somewhere back in the day the French government made French the official language of France. So now I am learning a new language, after all. Life loves to throw twists at you and sometimes you just throw your own twist in there. C’est la vie (That’s life).

Safety

EB was saying today that she noticed that it seems like safety is a really big thing here.

For instance, the law requires that every new car includes safety accessories like a bright yellow reflective safety vest to be worn by anyone standing outside of the car near the roadway if you experience an issue with the car or in an accident. There are also included reflective triangles to be put out on the road if you must stop. Another example: the clothing that technicians wear is obviously mandated safety gear. We see examples of this all over, even in small villages.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

CHRISTMAS MARKETS!!

Of course good ole Sarasota, Florida has UTC mall with all of the lights and such, but it is a totally different vibe.

We have a few things to do next week:

• The work desk needs to be assembled.
• Hang light fixture in master bedroom
• Meet our GP doctor and get prescriptions
• Some furniture (dining table and chairs and bed for the master bedroom) is to be delivered on Tuesday. It will be nice to have that set up.
• Once the dining room table is in place I will hang the light fixture, so it is oriented just right.
• Get back on track with the pellet stove research. With the heater working very well we don’t need a pellet stove in the living room, but the dining room definitely needs the benefit of a pellet stove (poele a granules).

Weather forecast for next week

Weather for the week looks to be pretty nice. Highs in the 50s and lows in the 40s partly cloudy most of the week. No rain in the forecast until Friday’s 50% chance.

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family. Don’t let the Christmas shopping drive you crazy.

If you are getting ready to travel for the holiday. Safe travels. (Bon voyage)

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Your kind and encouraging words remind us that we can do this.

Wishing you a good week (Bonne Semaine)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com