To Lyon from London

I'm Emily, a mum of two girls in my mid-thirties, and with my husband I came to a village just outside Lyon at the start of 2014. Although when it actually happened we were all a bit surprised, we had many reasons for coming here, mostly to do with the frenetic pace and difficult conditions of London living. In addition, my husband is half-French, and, because he had never lived in France before, we wanted to come here in order to explore that part of his identity, and to give our children the opportunty to speak the same language as one section of their family.

Since arrival, my life has changed enormously in every possible way, not least because I am on a career break from a very busy London job and now work much more flexibly: I teach English literature (in English) in a lycée in the sixth; I have kept a part of my London job that I can do from home; I have some French friends who come to me for language lessons; and I have started to write a novel, a blog (lostinlyon.com) and to look for more paid writing work. I am also much more of a full-time mum to the children when they are not at school, which I have surprised myself by enjoying a great deal. My husband has a full-time job in Lyon, and we have had to adapt to the altered family dynamics now that one of us is more responsible for earnings and the other more for our domestic life than we were used to.

Most of all our life has changed because we have tried very hard to integrate into the French way of life, and to make the most of the opportunities we have through being here. So, we now eat very differently, and we shop more locally and frequently. The children are at a local school and their daily rhythm is that of the French children around them. We have French friends and regularly exhaust ourselves by speaking French for hours at a time. We live outdoors and we stay up later. We greet everyone when we see them on the street and we kiss people instead of hugging them.

Our experience has been extremely positive, though not without its tricky moments. When you have always lived in one place it is easy to get stuck in your ways, and coming here has cured us of that.