Renting your house during the holidays in the south of France

You own a house in the south of France, in the beautiful Cote d’Azur, Aix en Provence, Avignon or Lubéron regions to name only a few, and you’re going to be away in July or August. How do you go about offering your home as a vacation rental during a few weeks?

Real estate agencies in France, especially in the South, are not really keen on taking care of this for you: too much work for too little pay in their (spoiled) view.

Luckily, I’ve found out concierge services are appearing in France, imported from the UK (and most likely the US), who offer to manage the rental for you in your absence, with a strong sense of service.

For a minimal fee (1 Euro/square meter of house size), they’ll welcome your renters, be there when they leave and have someone clean up the house.

One of these companies I happened to cross recently is Concierge and Co.

- > Concierge and Co: vacation rental management in the Aix en Provence- Marseille area.

A search on Concierge Services on the web or via the Tourism Offices will yield additional results.

Europipole: an (incredible) international school south of Aix in Cabriès

Amended December 21, 2009 – See below

Finding a good school for your children while moving about worldwide is not easy. Often, as an international parent, you’re looking for a school that’s open to other languages and cultures in its curriculum. You often think of looking for an ‘international’ or bilingual school.

The Aix region is blessed with a few of these schools at the Pre-K, and Primary levels. See my post here for a general look at bilingual or international school options and a map of these schools.

I have amended my post below, as I found the general level of instruction at Europipole to be disappointing, not because the school management is not truly passionate about education, but because of a lack of structure in the school’s management.

I discovered a great pre-K and Primary school with a German/ French and an English/French track: Europipole. The school calls itself a ‘ bilingual ‘ school as opposed to an international one because it stresses it seeks to give children perfect language litteracy in the two languages chosen. The goal, in my view, as someone who is both a native French and English speaker, deserves praise, given many international schools are in fact focused on English as the true common language of instruction. But is it realistic? In any case, in 2008, the level in English in the primary was a limited “beginner Plus”, notably because there were not enough native speakers.

The school is run by a passionate couple who both teach as well as run the school. The school is their second one in the region, after IRIS, a German-French pre-K center in Aix launched in 2000. IRIS is becoming a bilingual English-French pre-K center in september 2008 due to strong demand for this language as opposed to German.

There is a real family atmosphere at Europipole thanks to the couple’s passion for bilinguilism and thanks to the small size of the school. Maybe a little too informal and ‘playful’ for some parents, as recesses tend to drag on longer than they should. In 2008, it has a little under 100 children, with classes being very small – a maximum of 15 students. They use the facilities of a ‘ centre de loisirs ‘ a sort of municipal holiday and after school facility, with a beautiful natural courtyard surrounded by a beautiful forest and sports facilities including tennis courts. The children have access to these facilities during their sports activities.

The choice to use a municipal facility makes tuition at the school much more reasonable than what is usually expected of private ‘international’ schools. In fact tuition is about 3 000 euros a year. The school has the lunch box system.

English and German are taught by level (from beginner to proficient) by native speaking certified teachers.

- The preK levels have two full days in English or German, depending on their chosen track, and the other two days in French.

- The primary level kids have 1,5 hour in English or German and the remainder in French to follow the French curriculum.

– > Again, general post on international schools in Aix and Manosque (one hour north of Aix).

English speaking babysitters in Aix – Marseille area?

Where to find English speaking students who can be potential babysitters for your children, in the region?

You can post your search in a comment to this post, until we have our want ads service up.

There’s also an Intitut d’Etudes Françaises pour Etudiants Etrangers in a beautiful central building in Aix where about 1000 students from 60 countries, including the US, come to study French culture on a relatively light schedule.

- > iefee.com

Finding Quality Child Care in the US: an adventure

If you are coming with children to the US or if you’re thinking about having a child while you’re in this country, you may want to read this – first!

First of all, this introduction is misleading. I don’t mean it’s an adventure to give birth or even to raise a child, (although it is also).

I mean, it’s an adventure to have kids if you intend to continue working, going out, or buying those things you appreciate in the US! That’s because adequate, affordable childcare and schooling are not a given here.

As one coming from another culture, having a child was a no-brainer.

Hell, where I’m from, women take 2 to 4 months maternity leaves from work, employers are severely monitored to prevent laying off expectant women or new mothers, and quality child care centers and nannies are available- if not plentiful. Not so here. The situation may be particularly severe in California and the Bay area, where the economy was very strong and salaries skyrocketed, however, I have heard similar stories from residents of Washington, DC and New York.

What to know about child care in the US

- Let’s be frank: finding adequate, affordable childcare is a problem.

Unless you’ve signed up on the waiting list of the best centers in a given area the day after your child blessed the world, forget about getting into some preschools and day care centers.On the other hand, you may not even have wanted your child to attend them. As wonderful as they may be, they are extremely expensive ($800 to over $1000 a month for a 9 to 3 PM schedule, with a three-months summer break) and they require that parents give a large number of hours (20 to 25 hours per school year) to participate in the center’s activities. Should you not be able to participate, you will simply be billed a fee (between $10 and $20 per hour. Gives you a good feeling about the value of your time doesn’t it?) Should you also happen to be 5 minutes late when coming to pick up your little treasure, expect to pay! In the American childcare business, time definitely is money.

So you’re thinking: “Well, I’m not on these elite centers’ waiting lists, and I couldn’t afford them anyway. There must be alternatives”. Yes, there are.

- There are very limited state subsidized programs, for a lucky portion of those who are students at universities or who are living on welfare.

- For the others (ie, lower to middle-class, working parents) there is a myriad of alternatives, as is often the rule in this land of choice and freedom. They are very loosely regulated, unsubsidized, individually managed alternatives. You get the picture: the best rivals with, well – the not so great! (I think another paper is warranted on that very topic: the not so great centers.)

- So what do you do? Open the yellow pages to ‘Child care’ or ‘ pre-schools ‘ and go down the list, calling and visiting places? That’s the most painful and time-consuming approach, but one that newcomers often have to face. To be fair, there is a source of help: the NAEYC, a non-profit group that gives centers nationwide its discriminating seal of approval. But its limited resources do not permit it to visit and approve many centers.

- Then there’s the luck factor. Aside from the ‘elite centers’ and the centers you’d rather avoid, there are smaller, less formalized centers with dedicated staff and a love of their work. One can basically count on word-of-mouth or well-connected people to find them, but to ensure a spot for your little wonder, sign up ahead of time! One year to 6 months ahead is a suggested time frame.

So what if you move after turning in your $50 to $100 deposit for that perfect center of education for your loved one(s)? Tough luck, you’ll have to start over and lose that deposit.
I told you it was an adventure. I could write forever on this…

Parenting: The Most Important Job..?

Have you ever read or heard from others- usually working parents or mature adults- that, as a parent, and particularly a stay-at-home parent (and often a mom), you’re “doing the most important job” ? Well, I know that deciding as a couple to raise happy, self-confident, open-minded, and healthy children, is one the most beautiful and challenging job two can take on, and friends and acquaintances seem to think that way too, but strangely, the world doesn’t seem to function as if that were the case? Or maybe, holding the most important job translates into: ” You’re on your own, baby ” or, to use VIP speak: ” It’s lonely at the top ” ..

The only Job with no Vacation, Pay or Training:

This “most important job” implies that you as a parent devote a significant amount of your time and energy to raising your children, between 20 hours a week to all your free time.
Often times professionals who become parents in the US have to make a choice between what they think is best for them personally and financially and participating actively in their children’s upbringing.

It’s not rare that remaining in the position they were in before having children means seeing their children little more than an hour or two a day, and some find that’s less than what they wish when their children are very young.

What it doesn’t entail, in my view is that you, as the parent who ends up not working or who works less than you’d like to personally, are going to be doing this parenting job around the clock, exclusively of anything else!

It seems like that’s what parents, often times unknowingly, sign up for when they have children in the US. Given the lack of affordable quality childcare and education, all except a priviledged minority are to stop most of the sort of intellectual and social activity they had prior to having children, and turn solely to playgroups, birthing and parenting seminars and their kids’ activities to be able to have an adult conversation once again outside of their circle of friends and family.

Even though you may be holding ” the most important job ” and you may have expected some recognition for this choice, just as a VIP is treated with some deference, you have in fact become the sole person responsible for your little ones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week- so now,” you’re on your own, baby ” (or should I say, you and your baby!)!;-)

Try doing something else…

Try being a volunteer on the board of a non profit for instance. You have some time on your hands- supposedly anyway- and you’d like to use it wisely by helping a local non profit of your choice as a volunteer board member. Well, if you were that prestigious, Wall Street broker who has to travel from New York to San Francisco to attend the board meetings, you might just get reimbursement for your trip because travel is a deductible expense. But say you’re just a local parent who knows the issues, and has a genuine interest in helping out, and.. you need to get child care for those few hours? You pick up the tab baby! You’re doing the most important job, ain’t ya?

C’mon, I know being there for one’s children is important in this country, but is it important to be there 100% of the time? Couldn’t there be recognition that as parents, entrusted with our sacred task of producing the best citizens a country can have, we are allowed and hell, even encouraged to take a breather, either for ourselves or to be able to continue playing a role in our community outside of attending children’s ballet classes?

Say you wished to go one step further.. As a parent, you have a neat business idea that’d be compatible with your family life. You’d like to create an exercise studio cum coffee house where children can be cared for for a fee while parents enjoy flexing and stretching those sore back muscles for an hour or so…Don’t you have about a hundred people in mind already who’d kill for such a place? If you were that person starting a venture fund who needs to offer a good meal to a prospective client so as to help get those few millions you want to invest for her, you might well be able to write off that luncheon at Chez Panisse as a business expense.

But say you have to incurr child care expenses of $800 to $1,200 a month simply to research your market, make contacts with prospective clients and lenders and search for a location..? You pick up the tab, you most important job holder you! Yeah, it sure is lonely at the very top – especially among the few who do start a business under these circumstances!;-)

Now for the small (and lighter) stuff…

Mobility for VIPs and their trusted cargo:

Try taking a bus in the city by the bay…It saves on parking tickets and it’s less polluting, so given the option, why not? If you were so lucky as to be handicapped, obese or a senior, you’d get a royal treatment.. The bus would start making this beeping noise while the platform would descend to the street level while you royally mount the vehicule. But if you happen to be a ” most important job holder ” with one or more of your precious ones, well, you can :

• fold your stroller,
• carry ‘them kids up on the bus while holding the stroller with your third hand and those huge arm muscles you have as a VIP
• and hold on ’cause the bus is already moving and you haven’t paid and no one’s moving to give up their seat.. ”

Oh, and is Billy crying now ’cause you pulled on his arm? Please quiet him down.”

Next try going to Children’s Hospital in Oakland and parking where you can then roll your stroller out of the parking garage. Are you handicapped? Not officially. Are you a doctor here, a nurse? Nope, I’m holding the most important job, you see.. Well then you can’t park in those spaces that are on the street level, you have to go up and then find some way to get down those stairs (there’s no elevator you see) with a stroller and a three year old who doesn’t feel like walking…

It’s a tough job, the most important job they say, although if you were landing here from Mars, you may not know it..;-)

What would life be like in a society where raising happy, well adjusted, open-minded children was really considered the most important job?

First of all nannies and parents accompanied by children would be welcomed with a cheerful hello by bus drivers while every adult with the capacity to move would volunteer to get up to give up their seat at the front of the bus to let the little ones sit down…The bus driver would help the caregiver(s) fold the stroller and the babycarrier so he/she could watch the children and the survival bag with the snacks, the bottles, the diapers, the blanket and the Tylenol… ( We have had our child bag taken from us in a bus while attending to our children….). If little Will is still munching on a banana, the driver would kindly ask the child to put it away for now rather than telling him to get off the bus or throw the offending fruit OUT! (Real story number two).

On a higher plane, newspapers and radios would include in their regular news, the way sports results are blasted out to our ears every fifteen minutes, information that’d be relevant to parents, such as school and day care rankings, missing children info, parents having found a great way to manage their work and family life, etc… I suggest The great San Francisco newspaper The Chronicle call this daily or weekend section Family Matters (duh), where they would cover the challenges and the joys of raising children so as to inspire us all- and when I say all, I mean parents acting as such, as well as parents as business and political leaders. Parenting magazines can still get into the nitty gritty of potty-training but why are the issues around raising kids, which are so important to a society and are dealt with by what, 70% of the population, not central to the media? How does pro football impact me in my daily life, huh?

Parents with a career prior to having children who decide to stay at home, not because they have too much cash lying around or are just plain old lazy, but because they think it’s best for their children for a while would get some sort of tax break, recognizing their contribution to society as ones whose children, on average, will have less agressive behaviour, less drugs and alcohol use, and, on a more positive note, will be more open-minded, generous and confident contributors to tomorrow’s economy and society.

Getting a few hours of child care a week would be recommended, if not mandatory, after expert studies (that Frenchparents co-founder Valerie and moi could perform for a fraction of the fee my pediatrician Dr. Steven Rosenbaum would charge by the way!) would have shown that an adult with a normal IQ cannot keep a sane and fresh mind if he or she spends eight hours a day attending to very young- or even older- children. Even teachers don’t spend that much time in their classrooms- and they have people who can talk- even talk back, I know- in front of them!

Participating in an activity, whether it be a part time job, a cause of some sort, or even a sports or arts activity, would then not be prohibitive financially for many, making society a place where parents would still be visible, active contributors rather than shadows behind their children with no public voice- not to mention pains in restaurants! And where more men would be tempted by the stay-at-home option? Now that’d signal a change…;-)

When they’d eventually decide to get back to work, these parents would be recognized not as drop outs or slackers but as those having taken time off to become more mature, accomplished individual with a richer approach to life – and a knack with handling bratty colleagues!

In order to help measure their contributions and efforts, with no PowerPoint presentations to show, here are the data that could be used to assess the usefulness of their work:

• Number of shouting matches a week between them and their kids would appear on their resume so as to be compared to the nationally broadcast working parent averages, as well as:
• Index of resistance to food items ( especially anything naturally green or yellow)
• (Related to the above) Number of sandwiches and pizzas vs hot meals eaten a week by child. ( Studies would have shown that intaking too much peperoni pizza as a child makes you more likely to vote for Arnold Schwartzenegger in gubernatorial elections).
• Average time required to go to bed at night.
• Number of bribes ( with an index going from popsicles up to high end dolls or trucks ) required to accomplish: a/ a family outing b/ a chore.
• Number of fits a week in public places

and a few others to be determined would also be yardsticks to measure these individual’s accomplishments vs working parents’ averages.Then having the Most Important Job would finally deserve its name…

Can Yahoo Answers help international parents manage their family lives

I just posted a question on educational products for kids in Yahoo Answers. Pretty neat, I must say! I’m jealous of course as the one behind the Frenchparents site, because my first goal in creating this platform was to enable parents ( like me) to easily find answers to questions they had on raising and caring for their children, from birth to adolescence. This is the member-only Recommendations area of the site.

I had a particular angle as well: the aim was to offer a place to help connect those parents with an interest in the French culture.

The reason I’m jealous is Yahoo Answers provides a super easy and accessible way to attain this goal. You log in, enter your question and can get an anwer very quickly! Yahoo has a points system that encourages good behaviour, ie, quality answers.

That brings me to one of the limitations I would see to such a seductive system of Q and A:

- Who will respond to my question? Will it be someone I’m close to in terms of background and personality, and even geographically? I mean if my neighbour answered my questions on raising kids, I probably wouldn’t want her advice, because we have so little in common. If someone in the UK answered, whereas i’m in San Francisco, it wouldn’t help me too much either…

The idea behind a closed community like Frenchparents was that:

- It would first of all provide a safe place to ask all sorts of questions, even personal ones

- It would bring together those who took the effort to sign up to the site by filling out a loooong form and to pay a huuuge membership fee ( $20 to $35 a year)!

- It would bring together parents in a given geographical area, with similar references and constraints- like the excessive amount of sunshine and fresh air one gest living San Francisco…

- The other cautionary note to Yahoo Answers is the following. This is another giant mega tera database of us being held by a giant, woldwide company. From the categories we ask our questions in, Yahoo can infer our areas of interest and know yet a little more about us than where we live and our name, which they knew already. It just feels weird to me to have all this personal information held by a large corporate entity thats more powerful than any country governement…

Now with Frenchparents, members know some of the personal information they may provide is stored by a teeny, tiny entity with no power whatsoever!

The web sure isn’t boring these days…

More OECD countries focusing on early childhood as key to education success

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/img/common/dot.gif – 19/09/2006 – A new OECD report on early childhood policy, shows that more countries are making early childhood education and care a priority, with greater attention paid to service quality. Increasingly, it shows, the early years are viewed as the first step in lifelong learning and a key to successful social, family and education policies.

Attitudes to education are deeply embedded in country contexts, values and beliefs, and the 20 countries reviewed( Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) all have diverse strategies in this field. Their variations reflect differing attitudes and cultural and social beliefs about young children, the roles of families and government and the purposes of early childhood education and care.

href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/startingstrong : Starting Strong provides a comparative analysis of policy developments and issues, highlighting innovative approaches and proposing policy options that can be adapted to different national contexts.
Among other things, it notes:

• a growing consensus, based on research from a wide range of countries covering demographics, social change and cost-benefit analyses, shows that governments must invest in and regulate early childhood education and care;
• a trend towards integrating early childhood policy and administration under one ministry, often education moves towards greater contact between early childhood centres and schools, and growing use of national curricular frameworks in the early childhood sector;
• the provision of at least two years of kindergarten before children enter compulsory schooling growing, but still insufficient, government investment in services
• more participatory approaches to quality improvement, based on wide consultation of stakeholders and the engagement of professional staff in documentation and research
• clearer ideas at government level of the qualifications needed by staff to engage with rapidly changing social and family conditions
  an increase in university chairs in early childhood education and care policy
• and a recognition of the need for more country research and data collection in the field.

Finally, if the legislators can direct their glance not only towards higher education but towards those not-so-glamourous early years of education, that would be a great help to us parents who believe early experiences are the crucial stepping stones on which a child will build and develop – and who appreciate every help they can get to provide the best experience for their kids. And that state investment in those years is among the best investment they can make for the country.
Thanks to the OECD for pushing this thought too!

Fun yet Educational Kids’ Sites

Seems finding fun yet educational kids’ sites is not so easy, with the many click-click sites that abound, which merely invite the visitor to click madly to pursue some objective like crossing a shark-infected river, implying no real learning experience.

Some of these ‘dumb fun’ sites, like the Nickelodeon site in the US, have the added disadvantage of being filled with ads for food products like high sugar cereal. Not really where I’d like my child to spend her time.
Here are some sites where you can send your child knowing he or she will be playing – and learning too.

• PBS Kids Online:

The US public television network well known worldwide for its Sesame Street series also has a nice offering of games online. These are accessible for free and require no sign up. There’s no risk of any encounters, and children find games involving the popular characters they know, from Caillou to Clifford to Dragon Tales.

Contrary to what is witnessed on a lot of TV networks’ sites, the site is not used as a way to advertise the TV series and make the children passive spectators, putting them yet again in front of another TV set.

• PBS Kids Play:

PBS just launched in 2009 its PBS Play online offering.  This site is unfortunately only accessible to visitors in the US for some reason.

• TVO Kids.com

The canadians seem to have followed suit with a nice fun, interactive yet educational offering for children at TVO Kids.   Again, its the public TV people, from the province of Ontario this time, who are the ones to succeed at making fun yet smart content online.  The broadcaster can be found at TVO.org.

Moving hell in the South of France

They were envious, all of them. Whether Parisians or Californians, they said:
« Hey you’re pretty lucky to be moving to the south of France for work».
The Marseille- Aix en provence region to be exact. Yeah, I knew the area was sunny, gorgeous,
with tons of shops and cultural activities, I knew that. I also knew we were NOT
finding any homes to rent around Aix en provence in May or June, so I was not as excited about
the idea as I should have been…

We finally found a house to rent in the end, at the end of June. We were supposed to move
in in July- it was about time! Only thing is, the house was occupied until… September 3rd.
And holiday seasons ends in August, both for work and for school. Our children were going back
to school August 29 to be exact. After a few days, we were able to negociate an August 25 move
in date, but by that time, our movers had filled all their delivery slots and we could only get
our things delivered August 27th.:-/

On top of this, we were expected on the other side of France, about 7 to 8 hours away by car,
for a wedding in the family August 30 th! Yes! How convenient. So we barely had time to open up
some boxes before we hopped into the car for a day-long drive, slept, went to the wedding, slept,
and drove back the following mornig.

Finally, we could look forward to a weekend’s worth of unpacking, before school started and work
started again…And we unpacked, threw away yet more things, and put the remaining items away
ever so neatly.

Now, we didn’t have a phone line at that time. Did I mention the house is brand new? Although
this could sound as a positive point, here it translates into: it don’t work yet. No phone, no
TV antenna, unfinished cupboards, water mysteriously seeping through the floor in various rooms…

The phone story, still unraveling at the time of writing, could make a hilarious Charlie
Chaplin movie. Enter the phone company technician. Which, by the way, in socialism-ridden France,
is NOT an employee of France Telecom, the monopoly provider for land lines, but an outside
contractor. Well well. So much for state-sponsored entreprises with generous worker conditions.

Phone technician is a comical character- if you don’t have to depend on him. He never comes
at the time of the appointment, never appologizes, always complains about the way the wires
were laid, about the way his colleague works, and can’t refrain from SHOUTING in your home.
Poor guy, he was out of luck with us. After two unsuccessful tries at trying to locate where
to link the house to the phone network, and beaucoup de moaning and complaining, we find out
the needed elements had been buried in the ground and covered with grass… Believe it, it’s true.
So he comes back a third time, and there, succeeds in linking the house to the main network, but…
Alas, there is a problem on the other side now, with the main network. And so ten days after
having started to pay rent on a house in the middle of nowhere, we are still phoneless, with
limited hope of ever having access to such a modern luxury.

I’ll spare you the details on the green pool water we had to deal with the day of the signing,
the real estate agent who counts the number of lightbulbs in the house, should we steal them,
but cannot explain how anything in the house works, the 20 page move-in inventory (for an
unfurnished, four bedroom home)…I’ll also pass on the high tech dishwasher we mastered after
two days of head bashing and a call to the owners, who knew the ‘ trick’ to get it to finally
start, as well as having no washing machine for 7 days after the movers damaged it.

I will say the countryside is beautiful, the weather wonderful, and our neighbours very welcoming.

Let’s just say, moving in in Aix en Provence, and in the South of France in general, is
something which has to be earned.