16.19 - France Gets Into Everything. Even the School Run.
FRANCE AS IT HAPPENS — A village school with no English, a grandmother who swore in French, and the discovery that time here runs on completely different minutes. This week's edition is personal.
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Bonjour mes ami(e)s !
It’s wonderful to have you back here with me today. Bienvenue !
A New Chapter for MyFrenchLife™ Magazine Contributors
In this newsletter, you’ll find these wonderful fresh articles taking you to France beyond the cliché,
Don’t miss the PAID subscriber edition of le Bulletin in your inbox: “16.19a - The Clothes Know. So Does the Calendar - It’s not too late to upgrade & read it←
À bientôt !
Warmly,
Judy - 16.5.2026
1. A New Chapter for MyFrenchLife™ Magazine Contributors - check out these new profiles
Profile #4 - Betty Carlson
To Find THE LIST of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine CONTRIBUTORS:
[https://myfrenchlife.org/p/contributors-myfrenchlife-zine ]TO FIND BETTY CARLSON’S WORK:
[https://www.myfrenchlife.org/t/betty-carlson ]
Betty in MyFrenchLife™ Magazine: Can be found here
CONNECT WITH BETTY CARLSON - France in Between→
2. MyFrenchLife™ Magazine: new articles
“There are many talented Contributors to MyFrenchLife Magazine and I thank all of you for sharing your experiences with us in such an engaging manner.
You take us right across France & deep into many worm-holes.
We delight in discovering
and learning more about France beyond the cliché”
Judy
Introducing New Contributor, Kamille Longstreet
I’m an American writer who traded a tiny Los Angeles apartment for a three-hundred-year-old French château - a decision that continues to surprise me.
I live in rural France with my husband Sean and our two young children, and I document the whole chaotic, beautiful project on my Substack, Once Upon a Castle: the château restoration, the village, the seasons, what it’s actually like to raise an American family in rural France, and the ongoing negotiation between the life we imagined and the one we’re actually living.”
Below you’ll find Kamille’s first article published in our magazine. Please help me welcome Kamille.
a) What No One Tells You About Putting Your Kids in Full French Immersion.
by Kamille Longstreet
When we moved to France, we made a very brave - some might say questionable - decision. We enrolled our young children in the local village school. Not an international school, not a bilingual program, just a normal French public school where not a single soul spoke English. Total immersion.”
The logic was sound. Everyone - books, blogs, actual French people - said it was the best way for kids to learn the language and the culture. Also, the nearest international school was forty minutes away, and we didn’t move to the French countryside just to spend three hours a day in a commuting loop. So we did it. We dropped our kids into a completely foreign environment with nothing but love and hopeful stares.”
And it was hard. For them. For us. For our poor, tear-streaked steering wheel…”
b) On Time
by Pamela Clapp
Time isn’t a personality trait in France.
It isn’t languid DNA. The French get anxious, too. They get flustered, they rush, they mutter at traffic lights, they curse at steering wheels when the city pushes back. My French husband thinks I drive like someone trying to annotate the street rather than beat it. « Sois plus agressive ! » he says, hand braced on the passenger handle. Paris time lingers, but it honks. Just not on the same minutes Americans honk on…”
c) How to Find Your French Family (or, where are you, camille?)...
by Laura L Barkat (LL)
Start by knowing very little.
Commence par en savoir très peu.
That your mother always told you, “We’re French and Indian.”
That she said your grandmother swore in French. But on the day, as a four-year-old, you swore at a car, in English in a parking lot—little black-patent-leather shoes and pretty dress notwithstanding—it was because, so your grandmother admitted, she had sworn in front of you while driving. (You have no memory of ever riding with your grandmother)…” writes Laura.
d) Same Building. Two Floors. Ninety Years Apart
by Judy MacMahon
What a bartender’s white jacket, Hugo Matha’s silk neckerchiefs, and George Orwell scrubbing pots in a Parisian cellar taught me about the most French idea I know.
I was supposed to be working. Instead, I was reading a magazine about bartenders’ jackets. Bartenders’ clothing in Paris, does that count as ‘work’?”
It was the Financial Times weekend supplement, How To Spend It, glossy and full of things I admire from a respectful distance. The piece was about the white dinner jacket: why it has never really gone away, what it means when a bartender wears one, and how different bars around the world are reimagining it. London, Tokyo, New York, Copenhagen. Details I adored: one Mayfair bartender sourced a fabric so washable he soaked it in coffee and grenadine for three days to be sure the claim was true. Another bar permits any tie, except green. Red is also out. Don’t ask why.” Judy MacMahon
3. Merci mille fois
“Thank you for subscribing to ‘le Bulletin’, the newsletter of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine.”
Judy MacMahon
Merci mille fois d’être ici, mes ami(e)s. Thanks for being here.
Some of the best writing about France starts not with monuments or explanations, but with small moments that don’t quite behave the way you expect — a school gate, a passing remark, a different sense of time.
That’s this week’s France as it happens.
À bientôt,
Judy
judy@myfrenchlife.org
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I follow Betty and Pamela. Two of my favourite French based writers. Merci Judy 👍