It’s getting harder!     As you noticed, I write less on the blog. This is because the deadlines are approaching and we have to carry out many tasks at the same time. As recently a close friend said to me “in fact you are the project manager of your installation in the USA, with imperatives of cost, deadline and quality!” That’s true.  In a previous life (at the beginning of my professional career), I was a project manager in a company and it is true that I had to face similar challenges: to discuss with many people, to be very careful not to leave spin costs and delays…

I have already mentioned some of these cultural features in other articles: “Words, concepts and attitudes” and “Why I make the informedchoice to live in the US“. These 13 features sum up, in my opinion, some of the most important cultural characteristics of Americans. Attitude toward children: between adoration and hyper demand Americans love children. I have already written about this in many articles. They always have a nice word for them (especially for the younger ones) and get low at their level (literally and figuratively). “Child friendly” makes totally sense in the United States. Yet there is also a high demand for children. It took me some time to…

Another month past, and I felt like I had made some progress … until I changed my mind recently. – Visas Theoretically things were clear: the university that will hire my husband would take action for visas in April. Then came the great chaos: the immigration ban of the new American government against the nationals of 7 countries… For three days my husband and I were confident, thinking it didn’t concern me. Indeed, although originally from one of those countries, I obtained French nationality more than 20 years ago, and I have not returned to my country of origin for even longer. It just happened like that, I always had…

First Published on January 8th 2017 That’s it: the holidays are over (by the way, happy new year to all of you!) And the short break of end of the year is already finished. What I love particularly during this period is the momentary shutdown of my children’s homework and extra-curricular activities, which let us to temporarily take time off from our school support and taxi driver activities. But the first week of the new year is already over and one of the issues I am most concerned about at this beginning of the year is the preparation of our departure to the United States. In the last few weeks,…

Americans are very concerned (some would say “stress a lot”) about what their children do, what they eat, what they learn (especially at school) and the after-school activities they practice. The French, less. But they are not quite left out. There are those who want their kids to try as many after-school activities as possible and spend a huge amount of time transporting them from one place to another, those who pick them up at school every day at lunch time to let them eat at home before bringing them back to school “because the meal served at school sucks” (even if French school cafeterias are quite famous for their…