Moving Date Set!

Leaving Sunny San Diego-

We, myself, my husband, and 2 boys, are moving to France in 27 days!!! We will fly from LAX on Oct.1 to London and then onto Basel/Mulhouse and arrive on Oct.2. We currently live in San Diego and will be moving to somewhere outside of Geneva, Switzerland on the French side of the border. I keep thinking we're moving from one paradise to another, lucky us! It all started when I encouraged Denis to look for jobs near Chicago. So after months of tedious job searching, we are moving to France!!! He got a job through Argonne National Lab working at CERN. The goal was to be closer to family, and since his family is over there, we will be. I am hoping to finally get to Chicago in 2, maybe 3 years tops. But, we are so excited about all of the opportunities we will soon have.

Leaving San Diego will be bittersweet. According to my journals (yes, I've kept a written journal since 1998) I have wanted to move for 3 years now. I think somewhere around the time my first son was born, I felt the need to have family closer. However, San Diego has been so good to us. We have met many wonderful people, and our boys were both born here at Scripps Memorial in La Jolla. The Scripps Research Institute has been a fabulous place for Denis to work, and did I mention the weather and the ocean and the beaches and year-round sunshine and being outside for hours every day of the year?.

I've always enjoyed writing and hope that this blog will be a place for me to keep friends updated and also free therapy for me (right Yen-Yen?). I'm sure I will have much to tell and a great need to exhale it onto the computer. I've already made my list of places I want to see in Europe. Denis and I met in Angers, France in 1999 and we've been back to France often, but mostly to Alsace where he is from. I would like to get back to Angers, to Ireland to see Aisling, to Florence, to Paris, to London, to Amsterdam, to Spain, but I have never been to Greece, Croatia, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, North Africa, Prague, Denmark (all very feasible from Geneva). Hmm we're going to need lots of vacation time and a huge travel fund.

Mostly I am excited, but here are the things that worry me for now. 1) Communicating with/seeing my family. I am currently used to talking to my mom every day, sending her pictures on my phone, and texting. Even though we will be farther from my family, we will not have to fly to see our French family, so this means we can spend lots of time in Chicago/ Bourbonnais (mom are you ready for us????). 2) Finding a job- I have been home for about 2 years now and I LOVE being a mom, but I'm ready to work again- the UN in Geneva would be awesome, but it would be fun to teach English as well. Although I am a French and English teacher here in the US, I'm thinking my English skills will be more desirable and marketable over there... who knows? But, I do know that being in a new place and isolated at home will drive me crazy. 3) Denis's work schedule- we have been so lucky/blessed here. He's usually home by 4:30 and can come home for dr's appointments or if I need him during the day. They mentioned him being on call sometimes, so I hope this is not very often.

All in all I think the above issues are minor, because as I've found in the past, the things you are normally stressed about turn out not as bad as you think they will be. I am so looking forward to all the Pays de Gex has to offer- Voltaire's house in Ferney- for one, Etienne going to free preschool (kids go to school for free at the age of 3 in France), the wonderful food and wine we'll have there, fondue savoyarde, gruyere, yummm.