Zero To Travel Podcast

Allison Grant Lounes 0:00
There's certain personality traits or like, ways of being that are sort of more closely aligned to what is sort of culturally normal in France, like being introverted and being like a private person. And like in France, there's like a really strong intellectual tradition of being philosophical and studying history and stuff and appreciating the arts and appreciating, you know, beauty and finer things and focusing on, you know, certain aspects of life. And the people that I think the Americans that I think tend to move to France are the ones who really have a strong affinity for a lot of those things as well. That

Jason Moore 0:42
was a clip from my interview today with Alison grant lunettes, who is a relocation expert that specializes in helping people move to France permanently or temporarily. Now, you could almost divide this conversation into two different buckets. Because we do get into the practical aspects of moving to France, we talk a bit about visas, and some of the areas to consider. But there is a much bigger overarching conversation going on here around moving abroad in general. So if you're somebody who is considering moving abroad, maybe lives abroad now and is considering some new places, a lot going on here, we talk about that idea that you just heard in the clip this this concept of your personality, traits, matching with another culture and what happens when you're not connecting to your own culture? And why do other places maybe feel more at home? This leads into a whole conversation about expat life. I've been living abroad for a long time, as many of you know, listening to the show, if you're new to the show I live in, in Norway. Alison, of course lives in France, and we get into some of the nuances of life abroad, talking about how things change over time, what that might mean to your everyday life. And this really leads to the bigger question of how can you live your best life abroad, no matter where that is in the world? And what can you do to set yourself up for that? Something else and and I discuss we also share the five main ways you can apply to legally live in another country, any country, some things to consider if you want to get a better understanding of how to avoid undesirable parts of a country where you may not feel welcomed as an immigrant. For some of the reasons you might want to consider moving abroad how a candy souvenir led to a life of living in Paris for Alison, she shares a concept I had not heard before and high context and low context cultures, you'll hear what that's all about. A power question you can ask yourself when you're abroad that might help you see a situation differently, no matter what culture you're in, how Allison turned her passion for France into a business, how she spent only 450 US dollars for a master's degree and so much more. It's all happening in this show. Plus, I'm going to share a bit about a big travel fail I've made this summer knowingly. I knowingly made this fail, but even still the reality of it. It can hit hard at times. And anyway, if you see me making this mistake again, you have my permission to I don't want to say smack me, but um, maybe give me a nudge and just say Hey, Jason, what Come on, dude, you said you're working to do this again. What are you doing? And you know, who knows what else is gonna come up in this episode? Let's go find out shall we? So buckle up. Strap in. Thanks for being here. And welcome to the zero to travel podcast, my friend.

ad 3:50
You're listening to the zero to travel Podcast where we explore exciting travel based work, lifestyle and business opportunities helping you to achieve your wildest travel dreams. Now your host World wonder and travel junkie, Jason Moore.

Jason Moore 4:08
Hey there, it's Jason with zero travel.com Welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out. Let me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms to fill your life with as much travel as you desire no matter what your situation or experience. So excited to have you here. And I have to say after spending six weeks back in my home country almost six weeks. Recently getting back from a road trip here to southern Norway, which I'll talk about later in the show. I am very pleased with where I live. Now. It's summer here. It's super nice. But it's just nice to come back to a place that's not your home country and feel like you've come home. And that's a big part of today's conversation. Where can you go where you can have that same feeling. And right off the bat, we get into the whole idea of the personality traits, the innate parts of you, of what makes you who you are. Does it help you live your best life abroad, if some of those naturally match up with the way a culture generally behaves are some of the core values of a culture, I should say. And this is very difficult to pick apart because cultures just like people contain multitudes. And sometimes, perhaps, I'm just speaking for myself, but it might be better if some of those aspects of a culture, don't line up with your personality, because maybe it's just that they're good for you. Right? Like, I'm from the East Coast, I grew up in the east coast of the US very kind of fast pace, you know, let's, let's go do things. Let's get it done. And so for me to slow down in a culture to go to a place like Costa Rica, or Norway here, where I live, where people tend to just be more relaxed. It's, it rubs off on you. Right? So these are some of the questions that I am thinking about. When I'm putting this episode together for you. Of course, we're focused on France specifically, I thought it'd be great to have Allison on. First of all, I never heard of a relocation expert, which is something that is a title that she does professionally, she helps people move to France with her website, your France formation.com, you can get all those links in the show notes. And she runs the Americans in France Facebook group with over 15,000 members. And she had a lot to say about not just moving to France, but living abroad. Now, if you go into the World Tourism rankings, you can see that France was the most visited country in the world. 89 million people set foot on French soil. So I figured there might be some listeners out there are at least some who are interested in moving to France specifically. But I also wanted to keep this broad enough where we could have a conversation around moving abroad living in another cultures, and what that might mean, that could apply to everybody and some of the overarching strategies and processes and things to think about. So I hope you enjoy this show. I love putting it together, it gave me a lot of chance to reflect on my own journey to life abroad. And where I'm at right now, on the other side of this interview, hope you stick around because I want to share some personal updates around my recent travels and the big fail that I've been making all summer

knowingly, but I don't think I want to do it again. So you hear what that's all about. I'll leave you with a nice quote from Bruce Lee as well, which I don't fully agree with. But I do kind of vibe with the spirits of it. So stick around for all that after the interview. Just a short quick reminder, if you haven't done so yet, sign up over at zero to travel.com got the free newsletter and stuff going on off the podcast. And if there's anything else I can make for you, guests you may have on the show anything at all, you can let me know. And of course, I have a voicemail box where you can leave me a message getting a couple of those lately and looking for more feedback and interaction with you. But listeners out there. So get in touch anytime Jason at zero to travel.com Sign up for the newsletter and we have a premium podcast feed. It's an ad free feed. And you can get bonus content bonus episodes each month, I have my how to quit your job and travel the world series. Now we have the International House sitting book and how to get the best house sitting gigs around the world a whole bunch of resources for you on this private feed. And you can also support the podcast if you go to zero to travel.com/premium. Try it for just $1 it's a great way to support this show, support me as an independent creator been going into the ninth year of this show. And it's really made possible by some of the sponsors we have on and also the support from the listeners. So go to zero to travel.com/premium if you want to support the show, get some exclusive content, all kinds of good stuff. Check it out over there. Thank you for taking the time to let me share that with you. Now let's get into the interview segment and I will see you on the other side

Alison grant loon s Welcome to this year to travel podcast. Where's your NAS last name from?

Allison Grant Lounes 9:47
So my husband is French but his parents are Algerian from the Eastern Region cabbie Lee. So they're from a village near a city called OTS yuzu. And they they're in his mother's in his in her 80s. Now, so they, you know, were in Algeria when it was a French colony and then moved to France during the time after the after World War Two, when France sort of imported, you know, encouraged a lot of immigration from the former colonies for like, work in the factories and, and all of that stuff. So his parents moved to eastern France back then. And that's where the name comes from.

Jason Moore 10:34
I'm gonna make an assumption here that you self identify as a Franco file. I do accurate.

Allison Grant Lounes 10:43
From a very young age,

Jason Moore 10:46
I wanted to ask you about this. Yeah. Do you remember when you first became a Franco file?

Allison Grant Lounes 10:51
Yeah. So my aunt, my mom's sister was a graduate student when I was young. And she spent a year doing a postdoc in a lab. She's a scientist, and she did allow a postdoc in the lab in Paris. And so she was here for a year and she brought back like all of these fancy French things I very strongly remember like, she brought back the candied violets, which are from Toulouse. And I remember we would, I would go with my sister to her apartment to have sleepovers. And she had this, it looked so beautiful and fancy, like I had never seen candy, like quite like this before. And she had them on her bookshelf. And we were only allowed to have one and I thought it was so cool to like, eat a candied flower. And she taught me all of these words of French and my parents had come to visit, and they brought me back like Paris Barbie or something. And so that was sort of what started me becoming interested in France and learning French. And then I just started learning French, formally in middle school in the seventh grade. And just thinking like, the whole time, it was like a super fun game for me, like discovering how to say something with different words.

Jason Moore 12:16
It's always amazing to me the impact that an adult figure can have on a child you just never know, right? I mean, that could have been, Oh, I got this cool souvenir. Check this out. And then you eat it. And you don't think about it again. But in this case, this was a really a transformative thing for you for your life. Yeah,

Allison Grant Lounes 12:34
yeah. And I recently messaged my sister, because I have this like vivid memory of these violet, these violet candies. And I remember exactly where they sat on her bookshelf. And to me, they were so special, because like, you could only have one, right? It wasn't like you were eating a whole package of these candies. And I saw them. We went to Toulouse a couple of weeks ago, during the school vacation, and I messaged my sister to see if she remembered them. And she's three years younger than me, but she had zero recollection,

Jason Moore 13:03
didn't make an impact on her at

Allison Grant Lounes 13:04
all. It didn't make an impact of her doesn't remember like,

Jason Moore 13:07
and you live in Paris for over 10 years. Yeah. How's that work? I don't that well. I mean, it's hard with curiosity, right? I mean, you think about being curious about France, it was really you went down the rabbit hole of France, but so far down that, you know, you learned French and built your life around around France in many ways, which we'll talk about, is there something innate in us as individuals that attracts us to certain places? I always wonder that because I feel like certain places that I visit, when I'm there, it feels a different kind of right. I don't know. I don't know.

Allison Grant Lounes 13:45
Yeah, I understand what you're trying to say. And I. And I asked this, when, when I interview people who have moved to France, I asked them, you know, are there any ways in which like, you feel really French or you feel, you know, you feel at home in France. And for me, I think that, or my understanding is that there are certain personality traits or like, ways of being that are sort of more closely aligned to what is sort of culturally normal in France, like being introverted and being like a private person. And like in France, there's like a really strong intellectual tradition of being philosophical and studying history and stuff and appreciating the arts and appreciating, you know, beauty and finer things and focusing on you know, certain aspects of life. And the people that I think the Americans that I think tend to move to France are the ones who really have a strong affinity for a lot of those things as well. It's hard to it's a little bit harder to pin down in terms of personality traits, but I'm thinking in terms of, you know, there's a particular thing pinioned called high context and low context cultures where in the US, we're very low context, we sort of say what we mean. And we mean what we say. And like, it doesn't go a lot deeper than that sometimes. And in France, there are definitely like very defined levels of your an acquaintance, but not a friend and your friend, but you're not a family member. And they're different. You even invite them to different parties, when you're having a wedding, like you can have four parties on your wedding day, and everybody will be invited to the church ceremony and a drink afterwards, but then only a certain number will be invited to the cocktail hour, and then even fewer will be invited to the dinner. And so you have, you know, it's acceptable to have multiple stages where I think in the US, we sort of treat everybody as though they're our best friend. And we can very easily strike up a conversation in public or we can very easily, you know, start those relationships that seem, you know, very friendly, I guess, for lack of a better word, and then it doesn't always go deeper than that. Whereas in for in France, you sort of like always know, where you stand with somebody, and there's a definite progression to how the relationship deepens.

Jason Moore 16:13
That sounds like the, the attraction might be taking a look at some of the things you value and matching that with your with what a culture values, in this case, the cultural values of France may be a match for certain types of people, like you mentioned, personality traits, but not exactly that. Right? Yeah, not

Allison Grant Lounes 16:33
exactly that. Also, yeah, I think values is probably as good or another good indicator of where you where you feel like you belong, and where you feel like, you know, you're at home, because a lot of people as I mentioned the hat, you know, they appreciate the philosophical and very intellectual tradition of France, which is not valued similarly, in all parts of the US like it is. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Moore 16:58
I often wonder, as somebody who's living abroad, as well, if, in the end, some of these things that you value that that you may enjoy about being in a certain country. And there are other things, of course, that are not as enjoyable. I think we can't gloss over the challenges. In the end, maybe it's all just a wash? I don't know. I mean, because you know, some of the things you mentioned about the friendliness of Americans. And, you know, sometimes it doesn't go deeper than that. But sometimes it does. And I missed that friendliness. That's one thing I really miss a lot on the street. So I see that as right now in my life in this moment, as not a as something I really miss. And maybe I don't want to say a negative part about living where I do in Norway, but it's just a different part. That is a challenge for me.

Allison Grant Lounes 17:46
Yeah, yeah. And I have to say, I have to say, I do really appreciate when I go back to the US, like, I appreciate being able to strike up a conversation with everybody. But I remember that when I was a young adult and a teenager, like, that was one of the things that kind of felt really isolating to me is like, oh, everybody's treating me as their best friend. But, you know, I don't I didn't feel like I had some of those deeper. It wasn't genuine. Right? I felt like I felt like it was you know, and this was, you know, 90% teenage angst to write like, and 10% Or maybe a little more than that, like being an introvert and really valuing from a very young age, those sorts of quantity, quality over quantity, friendships. But yeah, I felt like I had a lot of people who were friendly acquaintances, but but not as many deep friendships. And here in France, it takes a very long time to develop those deep friendships. But once you've solidified the friendships, like you know that there, you're good for life.

Jason Moore 18:53
When you are outside of your home country, wherever you are, whether it's for an extended period of time or living abroad, I do feel like the appreciation for certain aspects of it skyrocket. But also, maybe that that stuff's easier to see than some of the other things that take a little bit of distance and a little bit of cultural detachment to start to realize, Oh, I see some things right rising to the surface, or maybe there's some patterns or upon reflection. Hey, it's pretty weird that this society I come from is this way or that way. I never really noticed that until I got out of it. And I'm wondering for you, have there been any revelations about your home country and your home culture that has kept you abroad for so long? Or maybe it's just more life circumstance? I'm not sure what it is for you.

Allison Grant Lounes 19:41
Well, it's partly life circumstance. And it's partly I love going back to visit my family in the US I have a very difficult time imagining going back to live there. It's a lot of different things like for, for example, I'm sure you feel this way too. I cannot fathom I don't understand any of the language that is like in surance premium and copay and deductible. The concept of you know, I paid $7,000 to go and deliver my, you know, baby in a hospital like, I don't I can't even fathom how to navigate health insurance, right? Like, it makes zero sense to me. And I mean, the gun, the gun thing, you know comes up a lot too is that it's just not a thing here, it's very hard to understand. You know, it was already hard to hard to understand when I lived there, because I come from Massachusetts, like, which has very, has very strong gun laws and all of that. But the things that I already had difficulty understanding when I was living at home, like becomes even more difficult now that I'm more removed from them.

Jason Moore 20:51
Yeah, I was pretty amazed because we recently got a used car and I had to get insurance. And I was on the phone for about two minutes. And it was like, alright, well have everything I need. I was like, Don't you need more information? For me, it was just all sort of so easy. And I think part of that might be because Norway is a nation of around five and a half million people. So it's a lot of the systems are integrated. And it's, it's maybe a lot more easier to manage. That being said, I do feel like that can also be used as an excuse as to why there are some, let's, let's be kind and call them inefficiencies in the US. Or maybe a systemic breakdowns or systemic fails, which, you know, to be fair, every society has their share of them. So we can't we again, we'll get into some of the positives and negatives of living in France. But I just think this, this is a part of the conversation I was I was intrigued to kind of dive into because the the perspective of a home country can't help itself. But to change. I think when you're out of it for so long.

Allison Grant Lounes 22:02
Yeah. Yeah, the longer I'm here, and I'm still having new experiences in France, right? Like, I have a son who is seven, and he started first grade this year. And so he moved up from he was in, it's called a metro now, which is three to three to five year olds, and sort of like a preschool and pre K and kindergarten, school. And he moved up to first grade, which is real Elementary School. And there are so many differences in the school system that, you know, drive me crazy. And I know about them because my husband's a teacher and I worked as a teaching assistant in a French elementary school back when I first came to France, and I have other friends who are teachers, and none of it is a shock for me, but it's different experiencing it all firsthand as a mother, rather than being a little bit more removed from it. And so there are still these new experiences that shocked me, and that make me uncomfortable. And I don't always know, am I reacting to this as an American and from the American perspective, or is this really not a normal? Okay, thing?

Jason Moore 23:11
Yeah. Well, I think what you just said, is a really great power question to ask yourself in the moment, whether you're traveling through or living somewhere, right? If you're, if you're feeling if you're experiencing a certain situation, that's a great sort of pause and reflect kind of question. I mean, insert, you know, whatever country you're from, into that into that question. But, you know, in some ways, it's those surprises that keep things interesting for living abroad. Because at a certain point, when you live abroad, I think there's, it's like dating, right? In a way there's a there's like a romance period, and you're just like, everything's cool, and everything's new. And then you kind of go through a couple years of experiencing these traditions a couple of times, and it's super charming. And then if you if you stay open, you keep that sort of travelers mindset, I feel like yeah, like, just like, at home, you keep enjoying those traditions. But it's not, it's never the same as like the first time

Allison Grant Lounes 24:05
you did exactly right. Yeah, like, there are certain things that you know, you get used to and you love and you know, things like having the multicourse meal, and, you know, certain

Jason Moore 24:18
spending hours eating lunch and drinking wine, which is what we imagined you guys all do over there. Well,

Allison Grant Lounes 24:23
I mean, it kind of is what everybody does over here. And things like you know, the, you know, going to different food tastings and trying different like regional specialties, and, and things like that, that, yeah, you get used to and then people ask me, like, oh, you know, how's living in France? And is it wonderful? And I'm like, Well, it's kind of like living anywhere. You know, you just kind of get used to it. And there's this baseline of like, yeah, I go out and get my baguette every day and occasionally I'll get a cup but you know, when I'm walking in the street, I'll get a Nutella crap for a snack at You know, now's a good day at 430 in the afternoon, and, you know, things like that, that that just kind of seemed normal.

Jason Moore 25:07
Yeah. It's that baseline that you're looking at. Right? You mentioned that the baseline is, well, it's Oh, yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, living your normal life. And this is the baseline for me. But when the baseline is a lot of things that you enjoy about life, then that's maybe a reason to relocate to a place, right?

Allison Grant Lounes 25:26
Yeah, I mean, when I, when I first moved here, I lived, my very first year here, I lived on Avenue wt, which is over on the left bank, it's right by Abilene. And I could walk to like a rotary or a traffic circle, about maybe 100 meters away from my apartment, and look directly at the Eiffel Tower. And so I would go out at night, sometimes ever, you know, because every hour on the hour, it sparkles for a couple of minutes. And I would go out sometimes at night just to see it. And it was like the coolest thing. And now, you know, I very rarely get over, I live on the other side of Paris, a little bit outside the city. So I very rarely get all the way over there. But, you know, it's, it's beautiful. But it's lost its newness, and if I'm going over there, like, I'm much more likely to be annoyed at tourists and to be annoyed. The other other side of it, right? Right. There's tourists, there's like the people who are they're called, like, vondre Allah. So that were they're, they're selling like the little Eiffel Tower keychains. And they're, you know, usually undocumented, and not legal sellers of anything. And so they're kind of a little bit sketchy. Sometimes, you know, they've now built a wall, like you used to be able to just walk right under the Eiffel Tower. And now they've sort of built a wall around it, so that you need a ticket to get into that walled part. And you have to get your bag checked. And it's a whole thing. That it wasn't eight or 10 years ago.

Jason Moore 27:04
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the newness wearing off is, of course, a part of just settling down somewhere, right. But I do think that a lot of that comes with a mindset, right, I'm sure there are some days if you walk by something, and maybe you've seen it 1000 times, but you just renew your appreciation for it randomly, for whatever reason. And that happens to me, you know, around here, when I'm, you know, having like a bad day, generally, I might, I might not see those things. But even just this morning, I dropped my kids off at daycare, and I was walking back and there's a forest right up front of my house. And I was thinking, that is one beautiful forest there, the fog was settling in there. And it just was a good gratitude. Check sometimes, which I think when you live abroad for an extended period of time, there are always gonna be things you missed by your home country, but I feel like you have the gratitude for where you are, and appreciating those things and trying to enjoy them. Because we never know how long we're going to you never know where life is gonna take you. Right? I think that's good, for at least for me, for my soul to just kind of keep the gratitude flowing. And even when it gets tough, like, a long winter in Norway, you find you keep finding the things to appreciate.

Allison Grant Lounes 28:20
Yeah, yeah. And I do that, and I talk to, I run the Americans and friends Facebook group, which has 15,000 people in it. And so, you know, when I, whenever I talk to somebody from that group, I asked them, like, what do you really love about living here, and I get reminded, you know, like, it is really beautiful. If you go to a nice neighborhood in Paris, and you just walk down any random street, you're gonna see gorgeous architecture, like, and, you know, art in public spaces, and you can go to some of the best museums in the world. And we actually just went a couple of weeks ago, back to the loop for the first time, since before COVID. And I think for me, it had probably been about four or five years since I gone. I remember taking family members when my son was a baby, but it's hard to bring a three year old or a two year old. Tell me Yeah, so you kind of like don't do though.

Jason Moore 29:20
No, no, no. knock over those dollars now.

Allison Grant Lounes 29:28
Yeah, so yes. So I spent a lot of, you know, a lot of time in the past couple years not doing a lot of those famous things. But when I was a student, like I had, you know, the student ID that got me into any museum for free and I would just go sometimes for the afternoon and sit in the Musee d'Orsay. Like, there's the sculpture garden or there's one in the Louvre, two with the Greek and Roman statues, and just sitting there and like, surrounded by art, and so cool Right. And that was one of the things that really, I felt like it nurtured me when I first got here. And I was kind of lonely. And I didn't have a lot of friends. And I just really tried to seek out. And it was probably one of the things that made me feel really good when I was first living here was being able to seek out those very beautiful places and just be in them. And at the time to for free. Now I'm old and have to pay.

Jason Moore 30:32
Well, you mentioned making friends, I mean, that's something I do want to talk about it in that I'm sure that can be some general advice in there for all travelers spending an extended, I mean, a lot of people listening I know, you know, might not move abroad for years, but may spend months at a time or even weeks at a time in a place. So we're trying to get some some other practical tips mixed in here for you. But also keep some things specific to France. And I do want to get into a bit of a how to section now because I want to see if I'm missing anything here because there's a broader question that can cover the different ways in which one can move to another country, we're going to use France as the specific example and talk about some of the visas and things like that. But these are strategies that I think you can apply to other countries just getting like the broad view. Now I've listed three. But I'm sure there are more. So the three ways that I kind of listed on my brainstorm is you can study in another country, right? You can get a job in another country, or you can start a business in another country. Now, there's a lot within there. But as far as like the main ways to kind of stick around a place, am I missing anything they're volunteering, maybe

Allison Grant Lounes 31:42
while volunteering is more, you know, you can volunteer as a tourist. But there's also just retirement. There are some really good, you know, in France, it's called a visitor visa in Spain, it's called like a non lucra. Tivo visa, there's one for Portugal as well, where basically, you know, you promise that you're not going to work. And you can just you have to have you have to have enough money to be able to not work.

Jason Moore 32:05
Oh, I was just gonna say, because I could do that. Hey, good, because I'm coming. I promise not to work.

Allison Grant Lounes 32:11
Yeah. Yeah, the employers have to actually check you know, your visa before they hire you and make sure that they can. And same thing, if you try to register a business here, it's not going to work if you have a visitor visa. And then the two other ways that are a little bit more particular is if you marry a French person, or marry your or your this

Jason Moore 32:34
was an incomplete list. I just wasn't sure. I did marriage. How did I miss that one?

Allison Grant Lounes 32:38
Yeah, me too.

Jason Moore 32:41
I did marriage.

Allison Grant Lounes 32:44
Still doing it? I think. Yeah, so you can marry a French person or, or marry an EU citizen. So the procedures are a little bit different based on if you're married to a French person, like France follows French law, and you have to apply for a visa beforehand. And there are certain you have to register your marriage with France and there, there's bureaucracy involved. And then, for Europeans, it's actually even a little bit easier. If you have a European passport, you can just show up. So I have clients or I have members in my group who are Americans by by birth, or you know, they've lived there, but they also have heritage that allows them to get a European passport. So some Irish and Italian descendants who can get passports that way. And then, yeah, being the spouse or getting married to a European citizen allows the couple to live and work in France as well.

Jason Moore 33:48
Yeah. Well, I guess I didn't include that one. Because I was looking more at the thing. Yeah, well can control right? Um, yeah,

Allison Grant Lounes 33:53
that's kind of hard to control. Although you can seek out like, I mean, you can seek out French people to date or European people to date.

Jason Moore 34:04
You could do that if you want. That's true. All right. So I mean, you've written four books on this topic of living settling down, either permanently or temporarily in France. So I was just wondering, you know, for France, specifically, what are a few of the sort of easiest ways for somebody to come and spend some good quality time in France.

Allison Grant Lounes 34:28
So if somebody is under 35, and doesn't necessarily want to come permanently, there are a lot of great temporary work programs. For many nationalities. There's the Franco American Chamber of Commerce program or a work Holiday visa, not for Americans, but for other nationalities that allow you to come and live and work in France for up to a year and a half. There's also temporary programs like Topeak, which are which you Is the Teaching Assistant Program in France, I did that for two years, you teach in a French, elementary, middle or high school, teach English teachers, perhaps a strong word for what it actually is, but but it's a good it's a good foot in the door for a short period of time, and especially something like to peace. You know, you're not necessarily in Paris or in a big city, you're really going out and experiencing France among French people, because it's a lot of small towns, it's not, you know, you're not with other Americans, etc. There's also, you know, studying for two years in France and earning a degree from a French university. There are more and more degree programs that are being offered in English. It's a very small number still, but it's growing. And if you've

Jason Moore 35:50
got a degree in some way, sorry, didn't represent sorry.

Allison Grant Lounes 35:53
No, it's not. It's not as expensive as a US university. Tuition fees have gone up. But when I first arrived in France, I enrolled in a master's program where the Euro with a year of health insurance for 450 euros. Whoa. Yeah. And my degree was in fairy tales. So, you know, not a degree I wanted to spend 45,000.

Jason Moore 36:19
Once upon a time, you paid $450 for a master's degree? That's,

Allison Grant Lounes 36:24
that's, yeah. Yeah, it was quite awesome.

Jason Moore 36:28
So where would somebody get more information on that, maybe we can leave some links or get some resources here. Yeah.

Allison Grant Lounes 36:35
So I mean, I obviously talk about the study option in my book foolproof French thesis. But a great place to start is campus France, which is the French government website for students, international students who want to come and live and study in France. And they have a catalogue of programs where you can search and you can find programs that are in English, and you can find programs in your field of study. And there's an application process that has to be done through them. Now we're in March, it's too late for fall 2022. But you could start looking at different programs for applications in fall 2022, for the following fall of 2023. I want to point out too, that if you study for two years in a French university, and get a degree, you can be eligible for a visa called Hello chefs don't for three years don't don't trapeze, job seeking and creating a business. So basically, it's an extra year after you finish your studies to either find a job or start a business. And that enables you to stay in France much more easily and to switch your visa status into something else. So if you want to stay long term, like studying is a really good way to to get your foot in the door. And you just want to make sure that you know you're studying in a field where you're going to be hired relatively easily. Afterwards, like fairy tales might not in comparative literature might not be the best option for that, for example. Because you do have to get a job or start a business sort of related to your field. But it makes it really easy for an employer to hire you afterwards without having to sponsor you or prove that they tried to hire a French person, or European.

Jason Moore 38:24
But I like anything like that, where you have the opportunity to just as a general strategy here for any country, right? It's like if you go and study a certain thing, if that's something you want to do, you're getting a degree, you're getting an experience, you're getting permission to stay somewhere, you're also getting a chance to see if you like it, and with something like that in France, if you decide you do like it, it's nice to know that there's a path to continue your life there. Yeah,

Allison Grant Lounes 38:51
exactly. Exactly. And, you know, you can always go home and not finish your degree program or switch your field of study. Sure, whatever.

Jason Moore 39:03
I mean, what's worse that happens, you lose your 450 Euro deposit on your Yeah, basically,

Allison Grant Lounes 39:07
basically, you don't renew your visa and you leave. It's a really good option and the student visa even gives you the right to if you're enrolled in a degree program. You can do an internship you can work part time up to 964 hours per year.

Jason Moore 39:24
But it's not age specific. This university

Allison Grant Lounes 39:26
student visa is not age, age specific. You can be a student at any age. The one thing I would caution though, is obviously once you get the sort of the older you get, the more they're going to scrutinize okay, why is this person deciding to enroll in another degree program at this time? Is this something that's really necessary for their career? You know, what are their moat? Yeah, what are their motivations and then of course, there's the challenge of you still once you have to fit once you finish your degree program if you want to stay and convert your visa to some Everything else, you still need to find a job or start a business or something. So if you're in your 50s, or later, you know, there's still ageism in hiring, they're still retirement age in France is between 62 and 65, sort of depending on, you know, depending on the industry. So, it's a lot harder to get hired at places when you're that far advanced in your career, especially if you're switching into a new field, and you would be doing something more entry level,

Jason Moore 40:33
what if you don't want to study, you just want to make something happen, you're like, I'm going to get there. And I'm going to spend some good quality time in France, what's the what's the easiest path right now.

Allison Grant Lounes 40:41
So for me, the easiest path, and the one that I help my clients with the most is starting a business. And there are four different visa options for that, depending on how involved or even five really, depending on how involved you want your business to be. It can be as simple as you know, you're self employed, and you're a podcaster, and podcast editor and virtual assistant, and you work for yourself. And you want to do that in France, and you have some French friends or potential French clients or potential European clients. And you're going to earn 1600 euros per month, and you can show

Jason Moore 41:24
that you have opportunity of a digital nomad visa, in some ways,

Allison Grant Lounes 41:27
kind of Yeah, and except, I mean, you do have to register a business or a business activity in France, there's not really such a thing as a digital nomad visa for France. And I do want to mention, at some point that you should not show up and try to work remotely in France on a visitor visa. Um, but the self employment route is fairly straightforward. It's a little bit of work to prepare the visa application, probably more than most of the other ones. But it gives you a one year visa, you can come you can work for yourself, it doesn't matter where your clients are, if you lose one client, you get another client, it doesn't matter. You know, your visa isn't tied to any particular client in the same way that it would be tied to an employer that hired you and sponsored you to come here. And so it's really just up to you to sort of surpass that basic level of financial sustainability in order to renew your visa. And then after you have one year, you can get up to four years when you renew. And then you can get up to 10 years and get a long term resident card. And at some point, you know, you can apply for naturalization, and then you can apply for normal jobs, and you get a lot more a lot more freedom and flexibility. So it's a good long term. It's a good long term path.

Jason Moore 42:53
Okay, so you got the four mentioned five potential options to do that. And of course, this is what you do. I mean, you're a relocation consultant.

Allison Grant Lounes 43:04
Yes. And I suppose the

Jason Moore 43:07
job for yourself called relocation, I think that's cool. Relocation consultants.

Allison Grant Lounes 43:11
Yeah. And actually, when I started doing it, I didn't know that it was a real job, and that other people did it. I thought I was inventing it.

Jason Moore 43:17
But I feel like it's probably businesses booming for you right now. It

Allison Grant Lounes 43:21
is. And I think, you know, the relocation consultant field, part of the reason I didn't really know about it, aside from being 22, and not having, you know, money to pay for professional advice for this sort of thing, but a lot of people used to just move through companies. And so there are relocation agencies that cater to big businesses, but there is not a whole lot that cater to individuals in a way that sort of prioritizes the individual's goals and dreams and aspirations about what they want their move to be and what they want their life to be in, when they're moving abroad. And so you have, you know, immigration lawyers who will file paperwork, which you don't have to hire an attorney to do immigration stuff in France, unless, you know, unless you get a letter saying you're getting kicked out of the country, or you know, your visa is denied, and you want to appeal it like then yes, you need a lawyer. But for most applications, it's really just administrative. And you need to know what they're looking for and how to properly fill out the forms. But it's not. It's not legal, per se. So there are these companies that will cater to, you know, people moving for their jobs and like big relocation packages. And then there are people that refer to themselves as hand holders, which are more like, hey, I need help filling out my health insurance application. And it's like, sort of one off small level, you know, personal services of helping with minor administrative tasks. And what I've sort of tried to do with my company is start from the idea of Okay, in an ideal world, if you could do anything that you wanted, and live anywhere you wanted, assuming that it's France, because that's sort of the prerequisite. Where do you want to live? What do you want to be doing? What type of how do you want to spend your days? How do you want to make money if they're not retired? And from that we sort of narrow down into, okay, Are there jobs that are available here, if you want to spend, if you want to be in a career, I don't help so much with that, because searching for jobs and trying to get sponsored, is quite difficult. And you need like more recruiters and job coaches and stuff. So a lot of what I do with people is turning their ideas, whether they've already been self employed, or whether they've had employer is turning that into a self employment project, that will that will financially sustain them in France, and then supporting them with all of the administrative and visa stuff that goes along with that.

Jason Moore 46:03
That's interesting. So it's almost like a hybrid role. You're you're helping them as a sort of career business coach, but also getting them to the place where they want to go. Yeah, it's

Allison Grant Lounes 46:15
part yeah, it's definitely part sort of life and business coaching. Although I've never done any sort of, you know, I don't have any coach certifications. And then, yeah, and then and then laying out the administrative groundwork in France for them to be able to do that specific thing.

Jason Moore 46:33
So just to kind of wrap up the visa thing. And I know, I think everybody after that, especially as a much better understanding about what you do. So if you need help with this, certainly reach out to Allison. But as far as finding some of those visas that you mentioned, what where where would somebody start if they just wanted to read about it, do some research on their own.

Allison Grant Lounes 46:53
So there is a visa wizard on the France visas website, it's France, Dash visas.fr, I think. But what I do is, or one of the books that I've written is full pre French pieces. And this sort of gives you a whole overview of 27 visa types, and the process that you would go through to apply for each one. And it goes through like, Okay, how do you choose what visa is the right? Is the right visa type for you? How do you weigh one visa type against another? What are your long term options? If you choose this visa, if you have this visa, can you change to another visa type? What are the tax implications of having this visa? How do you have to register. And it goes way beyond sort of the very basic document lists that are on the official sites. Now the other thing that I'll say about the official sites is I'll say two things. One is their documents list is very basic. And it doesn't necessarily give you the full understanding of what you actually need to provide in order to be accepted. So for example, if you are applying for one of these business visa types that I discussed, they'll have a document list and on that document list, it says you know, any document related to the viability of your project. And you know how you'll do it in France. Now what they actually mean is you need to give them a business plan. And it needs to include a certain number of things in order for them to understand your project and why you're doing it in France and what makes it a good fit. But they don't come out and say that and as far as I know, I'm the only person on the internet who is actually giving people a form, giving people a formula for how to do that, and how to and how to put together that project. So you know, you have to you have to take the official list with a little bit of a grain of salt that providing the bare minimum of what they suggest on the list is not necessarily going to get your visa approved. Now the other thing is now in the US and Canada, all French visa applications have been outsourced to a company called VFS. Global. And in the UK, they're outsourced to a company called TLS. Contact. And VFS is in many other countries as well. I think they're in India and a few others. And so these private companies, their only mandate from the French government is to schedule the appointments and take the application. They don't know what documents you need. They can answer questions about whether this document is sufficient or not. Sometimes they tell people to give them documents that actually hurt their visa application and should not be included in the application. And it has been a very difficult transition from when the French Consulate used to accept applications directly So there are not a good source of information on visas basically.

Jason Moore 50:08
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I mean, it sounds like there's a lot more nuance to this than it appears on the surface. I do want to ask about your process, because I'm looking for some advice here on you mentioned kind of, alright, well, let's look at your daily life and what you might like to do and kind of translating that to maybe some different places in France. Yeah, I mean, that's obviously a consideration, right? Like, alright, well, yeah, I'm gonna move to France. That's great. But where am I going to go? You know, what am I going to do what I want my days to look like? And I feel like this is where we can really kind of bring it, bring it to life. Right. So I really, I think that the question here is about how do you live your best life abroad? And in this case, in France? And what are some of the questions people should ask themselves, then I want to get into some of the spaces or the iceage just say, the destinations in France?

Allison Grant Lounes 51:08
Sure. I mean, Paris is sort of the obvious choice for a lot of people when they're starting out. And then a lot of people will spend a couple of years in Paris and then go elsewhere. I mean, Paris is expensive, it's big. It's not everybody's cup of tea. Especially now, with everybody having been in lockdown for multiple weeks, over the past few years. A lot of people are now looking for that, you know, somewhere to live, where they have outdoor space and, you know, a different environment. In terms of you know, how to make that decision? I mean, it kind of depends, do you want to be in a in a city? Do you want to be in a town? Do you want to have other English speakers around you? Or nearby? Do you want an international school for your children, like there are bilingual and international schools, all over France, there's a an association called aw II, American Association of Women in Europe, and they have published a book about all of the different options for bilingual education. So families that want their children to have a French and English option at school. And yeah, I mean, do you want to be do you want to be in the country like France has, France has, you know, any type of geography you can imagine, you know, you can be near the ocean, you can be near a lake, you can be in the mountains, you can be in the middle of nowhere on a farm. You can be in a city. So it really depends on what kind of place you want to live. And then you want to think about things too, like accessibility to public transportation, you know, are you on the TGV? Are you near an airport, because if you want to go home and visit your family, like, for me, I can, I'm 15 minutes from Charlotte de Gaulle, I can want that when I go home, it's 15 minute drive to the airport, and then a seven hour flight. So it's not quite as bad, as you know, spending a whole day to travel to Paris and then going from Paris to and having multiple stopovers to get to a smaller city in the US. And then it also depends a little bit on your profession, like we can talk a little bit about if you're in the tech industry, or you're in any kind of I worked with a couple clients who are in like digital marketing, and they and they work providing, you know, startup companies and tech companies with marketing or some kind of support in English, you want to probably be near a city like Grenoble, where, you know, it's sort of the Silicon Valley of France, and they have a lot of tech startups and things down there. You know, each area sort of has their you know, their industries that are that are a little bit different. You know, if you're, if you're really into medieval history, and you like love being in you want to be a tour guide, well, then you probably want to go and be in like the Loire Valley or in Normandy or in Brittany, where there's a lot of those historical places and where a lot of tourists will go on. You know, their their trips.

Jason Moore 54:34
Yeah, thanks for that breakdown. I have a friend I was messaging who's a French teacher, and she's another Franco file and studied abroad in France Of course, many years ago. And, you know, she she mentioned I said, Well, what do you think I should ask Alison, her name's Alison to you know, do you have any other sort of perspectives on this? Because, you know, I I have some ideas of what I want to talk about. But it's nice to get that outside perspective, especially from from a French teacher who's a fellow Francophile and have spent time there. And she had said, when she lived in France, she experienced racism because she's Jewish. And so she thought was a big deal to kind of know which areas have a large population of this isn't a political podcast. But you know, I guess there's a certain political party there that that is pretty anti immigrant. And she was wanting advice on on, maybe you could share with people how to help people navigate that, because you don't want to move to a town and not feel welcome.

Allison Grant Lounes 55:36
Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's an issue. Yeah, for for Jewish people, unfortunately, for, for Muslims, and even just in places where there's some xenophobia. You know, I know of places where they're British people who have had problems, you know, from being British and a small town in the countryside. So I do think that, you know, there's probably, there's neighborhoods in different cities where you'll probably feel more at ease, like, obviously, cities tend to have a lot more diversity and be more welcoming, although that's not universally true, either. Unfortunately, the South of France like, nice, not nice, specifically, but like, the province region of southern France, where all the beautiful lavender is, is sort of known for being more politically conservative, and you can read into that what you want, what I would look at, like we have, we have a presidential election coming up in France, that's in less than a month. So honestly, what I would look at if you're considering if you're considering where where you might want to go, and if xenophobia or racism or anti semitism or Islamophobia, etcetera, etcetera. Or something that would affect you, I would look at which presidential candidates get voted for or which, or which representatives, which deputies and senators are being elected in which regions and what their positions are and what party they belong to, you know, obviously, it's not a perfect system, and you can have racism and anti semitism coming from all angles. But like in the US, there are certain candidates that are more widely known for holding certain positions.

Jason Moore 57:30
Yeah, okay. Thanks for that language. For me, it was a huge game changer to learn Norwegian, even in the beginning stages, starting to have the ability to decipher a little bit about what was going on around me. Getting out of my own head, and instead of it being background noise, I was able to tune in and start having conversations with relatives and things like that. And, you know, it just got better and better. So it made a huge difference in terms of quality of life for me, what should be the expectation around language for people moving to France? Do they have to just embrace the fact that they're going to have to learn some French, if you just don't want to do that? Is it even worth coming? Just share your thoughts here.

Allison Grant Lounes 58:17
If you don't want to learn French, you want to be in either Paris or like nice, you know, one of the one of the really big cities where there's a lot of English speakers. But that being said, you're going to miss out on a lot. I mean, France has really improved their English language skills, but you still miss out on you know, you miss out on so much culture you miss out on even things like people are just not going to be as helpful to you in stores and things like that. And I don't think it's necessarily always xenophobia. I think partly it is just, you know, they don't know how to communicate and be as helpful to you in a foreign language, in the same way that you don't know how to ask the right questions. And, you know, and sort of gently manipulate them into helping you to do what you need to do if you don't speak the language. Now. I came to France already being pretty fluent in French. I studied it from middle school. I majored in French and University. I went to Middlebury College, and within their French language school during the summers, where I was required to speak French 24 hours a day for seven weeks with everybody else who was there. So I came to France speaking French. That being said, it's still really hard to talk about everyday life things because when you learn French in school, you're learning things like I like to go surfing at the beach and it is going to rain outside. Do you want to buy a baguette at the grocery store? Um, you know, like the really basic, like school French. And I could write about, like, lip symbolism and allusion in different literary works and how that related to French history at the time. But I didn't know how to say things like, Where can I buy a charger from my telephone? Or, like, how do I cancel my contract for my internet service. So, you know, no matter how much preparation you have, and I'll never forget my first experience using French, sort of in the wild, we took a school trip to Quebec, when I was in the 10th grade, and I was so proud of myself, I did the whole transaction, I bought some souvenir type thing in France. And I was so proud of myself until, at the end of the transaction, the woman asked me if I wanted my receipt in the bag. And I was just not prepared for that question. I had no idea what she was saying. Until she said it in English. And it's just that kind of thing where, you know, if you sort of know what the conversation is, what the script is going to be, then you can do a really good job. But once you get into one of those sort of unexpected situations where you don't, you can't predict what's going to happen next. You know, you end up being left out or feeling embarrassed or, you know, yeah,

Jason Moore 1:01:29
but it's also why we go abroad, right? We don't want to predict what's going to happen next all the time.

Allison Grant Lounes 1:01:34
Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So

Jason Moore 1:01:37
that's part of the Yes, but I appreciate that because language things, obviously a big question for people. Personally, I think it's good to take the effort to learn the language, even if you know, you might only be there for a short period of time, maybe can learn a little bit at least helps to open up conversations. But appreciate your thoughts on that. I'm curious, because we're kind of getting to the end here. Because you run the Americans in France Facebook group and I'm a part of the Americans in Norway Facebook group seems like these Facebook groups exist probably in every country. And, you know, a lot of posts with American food halls, right? Call them, right, like somebody goes back to the States and they just post a picture of their suitcase full of like Lucky Charms, and you know, whatever. Like for me, it's Trader Joe's chocolate or cheese. For me, it's

Allison Grant Lounes 1:02:30
Trader Joe's lemon pepper.

Jason Moore 1:02:32
Okay, there you go. I'm just wondering as good as French food is, do you find that people do the same thing over they're like, Yay, for my, you know, crappy junk food thing that I missed?

Allison Grant Lounes 1:02:44
Yeah. And I mean, I live in Paris. So there are actually a couple of stores that sort of cater to that. And you can go and get treats like you can, you can go and get a box of Lucky Charms. It'll cost you 12 euros.

Jason Moore 1:02:55
Oh, yeah, cost, like 20 bucks here.

Allison Grant Lounes 1:02:57
It's crazy. If you really want one, you could go and get it. And I mean, I think people sort of tend to bring more of that stuff at the beginning. And I know that for me, I bought less than less as time goes by. But yeah, I mean, I still. And part of that, too, is now you can get certain things that here that you couldn't get, you know, I can go to my local grocery store and buy a bag of marshmallows, which is not the case wasn't the case 10 years ago, and, you know, things like that, that I used to bake. Yeah, I mean, there's always you know, I would say probably once a month or maybe once or twice every two months or something. We get some kind of posts like Oh, I'm going back you know, either what should I bring for a gift? Or what should I bring back with me for my French friends and it's always things like it used to be a lot of maple syrup and peanut butter. Now those have become more widespread, more widely available. But yeah, I always say a lot of times it's Mexican ingredients because there's not a lot of good Mexican or spicy food here. I have the misfortune of having that I don't like cilantro. It tastes like soap Jean so Mexican is not a cuisine that I often partake in. But it's a recommendation that I see a lot I asked my my mom's coming to visit in the spring and I asked her to bring me a jar of banana peppers.

Jason Moore 1:04:30
Yeah, it's always some random thing because my mom comes over and then I'm just like, can you bring this this and this and she's like why okay yeah sure I'll bring you a can of pumpkin and

Allison Grant Lounes 1:04:39
yeah, we really like the the mini Baby Ruth candy bars and the the Hershey's cookies and cream so she she usually brings those or we get those when we go back. But yeah, for me, usually it's like the Trader Joe's lemon pepper or any Trader Joe's spice mixes. I have a bunch of them in my cabinet. Hmm,

Jason Moore 1:05:01
let's not just start out there. If anybody shows up at my house to visit, and they're coming from the States, please bring me some peanut butter cups from the Reese's peanut butter cups here. But you know, there's the take five, or there's like the Trader Joe's

Allison Grant Lounes 1:05:15
Peanut. Peanut Butter Cups are so good anyway,

Jason Moore 1:05:18
we don't we're not doing a food podcast. So, you know, it's funny, as much as you know, the French pastries are so good, right? I mean, we have a French bakery where I used to live in Oslo. And it just makes the best bread and croissants and everything, I'm just like, really, they just nail it. So yet still, when you live abroad, sometimes you're gonna reach for that bag of marshmallows over the freshly cooked.

Allison Grant Lounes 1:05:42
And like as much as I love, you know, you go, you go to the bakery, and you'll get like these light and fluffy, you know, tough to lead with strawberries or whatever. But you know, sometimes I just want a cupcake. You know, with the American buttercream frosting and I bake, so I make all that stuff myself, but then I have to eat it all. Because you know, when you bake cupcakes, you end up with 25 of them. So

Jason Moore 1:06:09
yeah, I just want to offer a key lime pie, you know, what am I supposed to get my key lime pie, I can't get any way we could go on and on. I do want to finish up by asking you about your passion for this work you're doing, you know, you could have started a lot of different types of businesses, you didn't have to also help people relocate France the same way you have. Why do you why do you do this?

Allison Grant Lounes 1:06:33
Well, honestly, it goes back to. I mean, when I started the business, it was I was so excited to have done my degree in a French university for 450 euros, I had studied abroad with an American program as an undergraduate, and spent American tuition and gotten that American student loan and all of that stuff. And when I studied here independently, for 450 euros, I was doing all the same classes, because the American program put me in classes at the French university that they weren't paying for. So, you know, I kind of felt are started feeling like I, you know, it wasn't worth it to enroll in one of the expensive programs just to be in Paris. And so I started writing about, okay, well, how could somebody? How could somebody do this if they wanted to study independently, and avoid those big programs, you know, obviously, the disadvantages, you have to navigate your own visa, you have to find your own housing, you have to do your own enrollment, you have to get your own health insurance, like all of those things that are not taken care of by the program. So that was sort of where it started. And I started writing about how to do it. And it was back in the day of the heyday of blogging was just sort of coming to an end, it just sort of, you know, there were there were all these, like professional bloggers, who had been writing about how to blog and then threw up some Google ads on their site. And we're like, raking in the cash from Google ads. And I sort of thought that was going to work. But it was really, I think the heyday of that was like 2004. And I was starting in 2011 1011. So it wasn't really a strategy anymore. And I sort of started thinking about, okay, how do I turn this into services. And so for a while I was helping students. And then I started getting more and more questions about how do you start a business? How do you get a visa for that, etc. And I think for me, what really drew me to the work is I'm somebody with a lot of ideas, and I'm very intellectually curious. And I love working on developing a lot of different projects. So the thing that I really enjoy, when I'm helping a lot of different clients start a lot of different businesses is I can have like my fingers and all these different pies. But then I don't have to actually run the business, like they go off and do that.

Jason Moore 1:08:55
Great idea, go off and sell like, I liked helping

Allison Grant Lounes 1:08:59
talk through the idea and develop it and what are the services gonna be and it's a lot of fun. And it's a lot of brainstorming, and it's a lot of creativity. And it's really like helping to figure out how to get them supported when, you know, during their move. And it's helping somebody to follow a dream to, you know, it's for most of my clients, most of my clients are not, you know, we have the fortune and the extreme privilege of moving to a country just because we want to, right, I mean, and this is something that's been weighing on my mind with, you know, Ukraine and with all of the other different situations where people are moving because they don't have opportunities at home because they're fleeing something. And that's not the case for anybody that I work with, you know, we make jokes about fleeing a certain administration, or, you know, not wanting to be involved, you know, wanting to leave because of certain political things, but it's not a question of safety. It's really, it's really following a passion and following Yeah, yeah, and I had one client tell me, you know, this is a dream that I've had for 30 years that is coming true. You know, there, there's something that I've, that I've tried to be more and more appreciative of recently is that, you know, not only am I helping people to people are entrusting me with helping them to make a dream happen. And that's, that's really a gift. And I think, too, you know, when you have when you're working with somebody who is excited about your project, and who believes in your project, no matter what it is, you know, this could apply to any area of your life. But a lot of times, if you talk about your your friends and your family around you about some big dream that you have, they're going to be like, okay, yeah, that's nice. But for somebody to really get excited along with you, and go, Okay, how can we make that happen? You know, I want to I want to help you see how we can make this work. And that's really a lot of fun. And it's an it's an it's nice to see how people can get excited about realizing that their dreams are actually possible.

Jason Moore 1:11:07
Yeah. It is very rewarding to be able to help make a dream come true. For sure. Right. Thanks for that. And your website, your France formation.com. Very clever. By the way, if a podcast and a free assessment, and there's all the stuff and the books and everything, is there anything else I'm missing? I feel like that's the hub for you. So

Allison Grant Lounes 1:11:29
people should just yeah, that's kind of the hub. Yeah, that's kind of the hub. And I mean, if you are thinking of moving to France, like the the place to start is the foolproof French piece of book because that sort of lays out all your options, and gives you an idea of how long it will take to apply and what you should start thinking of in terms of how much money do you have to have in the bank and all of the nitty gritty about the move.

Jason Moore 1:11:54
Cool. Well, thanks, Alison. And I really appreciate your time. It's fun chatting with you. Let's stay in touch.

Allison Grant Lounes 1:12:01
Yeah, great. Thank you for having me.

Jason Moore 1:12:03
That was a lot of fun. Alright, take care. There you have it. Hope you enjoyed my chat with Allison want to say thanks once again to her for sharing her advice on how to move to France. And some of the big questions around living abroad. In general, are you living abroad right now? Where are you at? Are you considering it? Where are you going? Perhaps you want to just spend some quality time in a place would love to hear what you're up to leave me a voicemail, drop me an email, let me know. And let me know what I can create, or record, or REITs are built to help you live your best life abroad are out there on the road. That's what this is all about. And that two way communication certainly is key to bringing what it is that you want, as we all dive into the second half of this year at the time of recording. And I'm considering a lot of projects, I don't know where you're at. I'm just considering a lot of things per the usual. And I wanted to share with you some of the recent travels and the big travel fail I made this summer now I knew going into this summer that I was making this mistake consciously. And I'm wondering what this means for the future. Because as our lives change, we end up in different seasons of life different stages. And right now with two small kids restricted with certain parts of travel, right? I mean, they got the summer off. And the summers when all this stuff happens. I typically like to travel on off season or shoulder season. But what I did what we did as a family we had a crazy theme park run at Disney World. There was three days and just spent two days in the deer park in. In Christiane Sund which is in southern Norway. First we stopped by Risa, where my bandmate lives. I play in a rock band here in Norway called laundry house. And we played a gig in this town and outdoor festival was so cool, just to be outside, see my kids, their play set was awesome. And then we stayed in this really nice historic little hotel. It was just wonderful. Of course the town was packed, but small town manageable. Then we went down to the theme park now we'd only done three days at Disney just a few weeks ago. And here we were back at a theme park at the peak of theme park season with the kids. And my wife and I looked at each other we're like, oh my gosh, we're never doing this again. Like we need to go in the fall when things are chill or whatever the case is, whatever theme park you're going to. Of course we had a great time I'm being a little dramatic here but it was packed. And I swear I'm like I'm never going to a theme park again. And during peak season, I'm just not doing it. But I know I'm in that season in life when it might just be the summers are the times when you can do certain things as a family. I don't know. That's why I didn't want to say, you know, if you see me making this travel fail again, just smack me. Because you know, I might have to knowingly willingly make it again, just because of circumstance. But at all costs, if you can avoid going to a theme park, during the peak season, please do yourself a favor and avoid it. Because those theme parks can get pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. All right. Thanks. Thanks for being here in the community. Thanks. Thanks for being a listener. Thanks for being you. I'm gonna leave you with a quote today. From Bruce Lee. I mentioned it quickly at the top, I don't necessarily fully agree with this quote, but I get the spirit of it, the quote is, the more we value things, the less we value ourselves now, as sort of a minimalist at at heart, but not necessarily in practice right now. Because again, certain seasons in life, there are a lot of toys and things that keep accumulating around here. And thankfully, the grandparents, like the treat the kids and all that stuff, but I'm not used to having this much stuff around. But I look over here in my office at, you know, my guitars or a picture that my dad Drew, that I have framed up in my office, or my Colorado license plate from back home, some of the things I have around my office here, my my little recording studio, and I value those things, but some of those things, they don't necessarily make me feel tied down. They're tools like the guitar is a tool for creativity.

Perhaps some of the more meaningful things I have arounds are also a tool for creativity or inspiration or just a reminder that I'm loved or a reminder of a place that I love. But I get what Bruce Lee said here, the more we value things, the less we value ourselves. And there is a line between you know, enjoying these things and also putting too much value into them. And I thought that was an interesting quote because it had a lot of different parts to it in some ways. So I'm gonna leave you with that you can chew on that one as you go about your day and get in touch. Let me know the thought of this show. Let me know what you want to hear in a future show. Smile. Have a wonderful day. Let me know if you move to France. And thanks for your time. I'll see you next week. Peace and Love cheers.

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