The All Important OFII Meeting (OFFICE FRANCAIS DE L’IMMIGRATION ET DE L’INTEGRATION)

Week 18 in France 11/31-12/7/2025

Welcome to the 46th 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!

Every time we go over to work at the house, we feel that buying was a good decision, but it is a small house. Before we moved to France we thought about downsizing to a “Tiny House” in some place safe and where we could retire and live comfortably in the states. Our intent was to reduce our footprint and minimize expenses. That would leave us some money for travel. We realized those tiny houses we see on the YouTube channels are way too small for us older folks. As I mentioned in a previous post, our new place is a quirky little place, but just right for us and bigger than a tiny house. Anyway, this week we will be spending time working on the place to get it up to speed.

The number one priority this week is the OFII meeting which I will get into more detail below.

Before all of that we took Rosie for a walk on the Chemin du Barrage along the L’Issoire River.

Can you believe it is already December? November went by so quickly.

Things on the agenda this week:

We are in for a busy week:

• Purchase items for the guest bedroom and bathroom and buy some basic tools on Monday
• OFII (French Office of Immigration and Integration) appointment in Potiers on Tuesday.
• Follow up appointment for Cable and phone service at Orange on Wednesday
• Be at house for clothes dryer and TV delivery on Thursday
• Follow up on Carte Vital paperwork (we had to have some documents translated to French by a certified French translator)
• Follow up translations
• Driver’s License follow up
• Follow up Utilities. Fingers crossed they are activated by Friday

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are a couple of “Baby Boomers” that have moved from 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

Monday was beautiful with a blue sky, wispy clouds, a little chill in the air.

It was a great day for shopping. We went to the BUT store and bought a vacuum cleaner, a tea pot and a coat rack for the entry. BUT is similar to IKEA, where you can buy furniture kits to assemble at home.

Next, we headed over to Mr.Bricologe, this store is like a small version of Home Depot. We bought some basic tools and a step ladder and a light for the dining room. I have a couple of projects to do now.

We dropped off our goodies at the house and rushed back to the gite as we had left Rosie by herself. Poor Rosie had locked herself in the bedroom. Boy, was she upset when got back.

EB gathered up all of the paperwork and documents needed for our OFII meeting. It was a pretty productive day.

The OFII Meeting and a Crazy Surprise

On Tuesday morning we woke up to rain. Not too bad though. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee and then drove to Potiers for our appointment. We arrived about 45 minutes early despite the rain and waited in the car as the temperature had dropped and wind picked up, so walk that we thought we would take was not an option. Our appointment was scheduled for 1:30. We watched a lot of people going into the building and hoped that we weren’t going to have a long wait. At about 1:15 we went in.

There was another American couple in line just ahead of us. It turns out that they are from Colorado and what is really crazy; they recently bought a house in Chabanais of all places. Their house is just a couple of blocks from our place. We got split up when we were called into our meeting, but EB did get phone numbers. What are the odds that we would meet new neighbors at the OFII office? Ron and Michelle are our new neighbors. Life is good.

Our appointment went smoothly. This appointment is a basic health screening. We each filled out a form that asked if we were mentally stable about 15 different ways. Then we went into see the nurse separately. She took our weight, checked our eyesight and wanted to know if we had any serious illnesses. She filled out some forms and then we waited for our turn to meet with the doctor. The doctor had us meet with him together and took our pulse, blood pressure and listened to our lungs. He wanted some details about our vaccinations and prescriptions. He advised us to get a family doctor as soon as possible so we would continue our medications uninterrupted. Then he explained that the certificates that he had filled out for us were to be used when we apply for our visa renewal. No blood test, urine test or chest x-ray were required. There is conflicting information about the process online. Things change so our experience might have been different from others.

Here is a tip that will make your appointment a little less stressful. Before you leave the states have your doctor give you a copy of your medical records and prescriptions and immunizations including dates of immunization. EB had made sure we did this. We took all with us and we sailed through the appointment with the doctor. Our dear friend and Florida neighbor, Pam who works at the Publix pharmacy had all of our prescription records and recent immunizations printed out for us.

We are certified healthy! We got the very important “Certificate de Controle Medical”. This is the last step in the long stay visitor visa process. By the way, this is one of the most common visas and is typically valid for 1 year. There are several other types of visas that will have requirements in addition to those outlined.

You probably know this, but as of this post, United States citizens do not need a visa to visit France for up to 90 days. I mention this because the first time that I travelled to France for my job a visa was required and was stamped in my passport. (this was late 70s early 80s).

What you might not know is that if you travel to the EU starting in October 2025 you go through the Entry/Exit System (EES) where your fingerprints and facial recognition are documented. This is a prelude to the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS). This system is set to go into effect during the last quarter of 2026 and will be required for non-EU residents traveling to EU countries. There are some exceptions, of course. The ETIAS is linked to your Passport and is for short term visits up to 90 days. Thus, you don’t need a visa perse, but you must apply for the ETIAS online in order to travel to the EU once the system is in place. Google ETIAS to be linked to the official website for up-to-date information. By the way, those holding a long stay visa are not required to sign on to the ETIAS system.

A summary and review of the steps for your Long Stay Visa:

• Prepare an application for the Vls-Ts visa (Long stay visitor visa) which includes proof of identity, proof of financial means (that is an income of at least equal to French minimum wage, about 18000 euros/year), proof of an address in France, and valid health insurance good for a year.
• Submit your application and paperwork to a third party, licensed by the French government, for review. At this meeting they take your picture and fingerprints. For us living in Florida this office was in Miami, Florida.
• All of these documents and your passport are sent to the French embassy in Washington DC.
• If you meet the requirements, the embassy returns your passport by mail (we specified UPS to speed up the process). The visa is permanently attached to your passport. All of this happens in your home country. If for some reason your application is denied by the French embassy, your passport is returned to you with an explanation of why you were denied. It is rare, but it happens. At any rate, you know the results in about 2 weeks. EB got hers in about a week.
• Then finally you can go to France, but…
• Within 90 days of your arrival in France, you must validate your visa. This can be done online.
• Once your visa is validated the French government will contact you and alert you of your scheduled medical review. They will send you to an OFII office within the French department that you have stated that you reside in.
• Once you complete the health checkup you are finally done. You are now ready to apply to renew your visa around 90 days prior to your 1-year anniversary.

If you have been following our blogs from the beginning, you know that we worked with French Connections HCB (FCHCB) to help us with the visa process. Many people say that you can do it on your own and I’m sure that is true, but EB and I like our “t’s” crossed and “i’s” dotted and minimized chance for errors. The whole thing is stressful enough, and there is plenty of opportunity to struggle and make mistakes, so we opted to get help all along the way. There are plenty of “Hand Holder” companies that will help you and new folks are getting into the business. We just liked the HCB team and what they offered.

Cell Phones, Internet and WiFi set up with Orange

There are other cell phone carriers in France, but Orange is the oldest and the biggest in France. At this writing, Orange is known to be the most reliable of the 4 main carriers. I’m thinking this is a good decision. We drove over to Saint Junien to the HyperU where the nearest Orange boutique is located. We met with a very nice English-speaking representative. I think his name is Greg. Anyway, he got us hooked up with new phone numbers, internet and WiFi. We had our new eSim cards installed on Friday and the router and internet hook up is scheduled for 23 December. This hook up will cost about 109 euros.

So now we have new official French cell phone numbers.

Whoohoo! Our new TV and clothes dryer arrived on Thursday. Another rainy day, but we made progress. The team from Darty arrived and installed the dryer in no time. The TV was a little bit more complicated as we don’t have internet yet. Adding to the complication is my lack of French language skills. However, the TV is in place and fires right up. The guys sold me a heavy-duty surge protector and HDMI cable and a water filter for the washing machine all for 110 euros.

The Orange package includes a security system. We took it as it is free. When/if that changes, we will just drop it.

We spent some time rearranging furniture in the “summer kitchen”, assembled our new coat tree and noted the need for some light fixtures in the bedrooms.

I decided that the heating system needs a professional to recommission it. It is a gas boiler that furnishes hot water to the house and also to the heating radiators throughout the house. I have the manuals, but they are in French and I spent a lot of time translating, but I’m not comfortable. If I had Marshall from across the street he probably could have come over and figured it out, but he lives in Venice, Florida. I tried to find a local expert without any luck, so EB sent our real estate agent a text asking for a Heating Service company recommendation. I tried emailing another company. Still waiting for a reply. You are probably thinking why email, why not just call. Weeell, I can read French better than speak it and honestly that is not saying much. We find email is a better communication method for now. We can take the time to translate an email. I have never needed to deal with a boiler to heat a house.

Saturday we were at the house putting stuff away. I walked over to the boulangerie and picked up a couple of Chocolatine pastries. We heated water in our new tea kettle and enjoyed our chocolatine pastries and first cup of tea in our new place. Then back to work. Our heater is still not working so we decided to get back to the gite and warm up.

Sunday EB spent time in bed. She caught a cold and coughed off and on through Saturday night. Pharmacies are closed on Sunday so first thing Monday morning I will need to go for some meds. Since she is under the weather I will publish this week’s blog without the benefit of Elizabeth’s review. Just a heads up; there may be some poor grammar and punctuation errors, poor spelling and dangling participles, whatever they are, in this post. My apologize in advance.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Customer Service Update

As I mentioned last week, we often hear that French customer service is slow and frustrating. I have to say customer service from the utility company is excellent so far. Luckily, we have a place to stay while all of these things get activated.

• Electricity is turned on
• Gas is turned on
• Water is turned on

The true test will be the heating contractor

As I mentioned we need to have the heating system set up and that will involve an independent contractor. This is where we hear the horror stories. Hopefully I will be able to report that the heating contractor is on par with the utility companies.

Utilities in Chabanais

Well, the utilities are turned on and that is the good thing. The gas fired hot water boiler needs to be recommissioned and we are struggling to get in contact with a contractor. We are lucky that we can stay in the gite until everything is sorted out.

We set up accounts on the Doctolib app and were able to make our first doctor appointment with a GP. This is really a cool app. We had the option to do the appointment over the phone or in person. We opted for the in-person visit on December 18 in Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure. We need to get this done so our prescriptions are updated. We aren’t on the French health care system yet so I will be able to report how medical appointments work without the Carte Vitale.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

We have a few things to do next 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

The weather forecast for Chabanais next 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.

We talked about going to Angouleme for their Christmas market next week. We shall see. Chabanais has a Christmas market too. Just a little smaller.

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.

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.

A bientot (see you soon)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com