Je t'aime, fromage!

May 22, 2006 10:17 PM

Help us figure out how to spend 9 months to a year in France.

The girlfriend and I have made a deal with each other: She wants to go abroad and spend a lengthy amount of time in France. I want to spend a comparable amount of time in Japan. Neither of us wants to go without the other, so we have decided that we will visit the two locales in turn, together.

Japan will be easy enough in theory, as we both qualify for the JET program to teach English there. France, however, is proving more of a challenge.

She would technically qualify as an English assistant in France, but as a fluent French speaker and experienced language teacher, that seems like a step down the ladder of sorts. That's basically a post for college students, not certified teachers.

Myself, I speak next to no French, save what I have learned from her and a friend of ours in Strasbourg. I should, however, be a certified science teacher (physics/chemistry/biology) by then (an admirable fall-back after a slightly too low undergrad GPA from several years back kept me out of med school). Also worth noting is the fact that I have 6 years' experience in advertising and web design -- the time between my undergrad and my decision for a job change.

We can both get TEFL certs, I think. We also want, naturally, to be placed in the same town.

We don't expect to make a lot of money while abroad, but it would be nice to be self-sustaining and to be able to line up jobs before jumping the pond.

So, hive-mind -- have any of you done this? Do any of you have suggestions?

posted by kaseijin to travel & transportation (14 comments total)

If you are Americans, France will be problematic for legal work (there are EU citizens who can do the jobs you want to do). Generally I have heard that W Europe is not ideal for ESL teachers, that usually a mix of part time / private gigs is required to make a living there.

Depends on your tolerance for poverty, and your tolerance for the unknown, but my advice would be just to go - a friendly face in a waiting room is much more likely to get hired than some email from the US from someone who might someday show up.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:05 PM on May 22, 2006

WWOOF?
posted by evariste at 11:16 PM on May 22, 2006

Could you possibly go there as a student and study something for 9 months (a study abroad)? Or do a 1 year masters degree? That would probably make it easier for you. You could also see about working for NATO, that would allow you to be a european resident and pay no taxes.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:17 PM on May 22, 2006

If you and your girlfriend got married, you could probably get a spouse's visa while she worked/studied.
posted by k8t at 1:15 AM on May 23, 2006

Some thoughts from an actual TEFL teacher:

1. Get a CELTA - it's the gold standard of TEFL certs, and combined with her bachelor's degree and native fluency in the local language, I bet your girlfriend would be able to get a job with a little footwork, perhaps in advance. I have one and hit the ground ahead of the game here at my first TEFL job in Indonesia, which I set up online and via phone interviews before I came. (Beware: prices are different all over the world - a school in Santa Monica, California wanted twice the price of a school in Krakow, Poland for the exact same experience. I flew to Poland, lived in a apartment with other students, went out every night, taught great students, and still saved money.)

2. Another idea: You teach elementary/middle school/high school science at an international school which caters to expats while she teaches English and/or French at the same school or some other private language school. Living in Paris and the bigger cities might give you more choice. Perhaps pimping your web/design skills to a tech-needy school would get you the position as not every applicant can offer that much. However, I doubt they'd want to hire you for just a year - perhaps if you were on a part-time contract basis? Who knows.

3. Worse comes to worse, she teaches legally, you do web/tech/English/science tutoring under the table and take weekend visa-run vacations to non-EU, non-Schengen Morocco or some other place in non-EU Europe every few months to renew your tourist visa.

On the you-not-being-EU-citizens-thing: if you've got any Italian blood, you can acquire an Italian passport, and thus EU citizenship, through a rather long (but obviously worth-it) process. I'm going through it now. Other than that, perhaps if you offer to pay for whatever visa fees the place of employ might incur as a result of hiring you, that would be enough for them to say yes (no idea if that's an option). And there's Switzerland, which is quasi-Francophone and probably has different labor laws than other EU states. Might be easier to job hunt there.

If you or she want more info about the Italian citizenship hunt, the CELTA experience, or teaching itself, my e-mail's in my profile.
posted by mdonley at 2:00 AM on May 23, 2006

If you're under 35, is there something similar to Canada's SWAP program in the states? I wouldn't be surprised.

Oh... upon further googling... it appears not
posted by antifuse at 2:39 AM on May 23, 2006

Don't know how you feel about back breaking stoop labor, but a lot of foreigners do farm labor in France, vineyad work, dairies, picking strawberries. The farmer can usually get you papers.
posted by zaelic at 5:25 AM on May 23, 2006

Someone I know is a language assistant in France. She has a french education degree from a Canadian university, and did the LA thing straight out of school. It was hard to get the right kind of work permit / visa for more full-time work in the schools. Private tutoring can fill in some of the gaps.

If you'd like to talk with her for advice/info, send me an email (in my profile).
posted by blue grama at 9:10 AM on May 23, 2006

Word from a Canadian living and studying in Paris:

"you do web/tech/English/science tutoring under the table and take weekend visa-run vacations to non-EU, non-Schengen Morocco or some other place in non-EU Europe every few months to renew your tourist visa."

Americans don't need to go to embassies and get visas to come to the Schengen space as tourists, but they technically are on a tourist visa even if it doesn't say that in their passport. On Schengen tourist visas you're only allowed to be in the Schengen space for 90 days during any given 6-month period: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_treaty#Gaining_entry. So trips to Morocco wouldn't do you any good if your goal is to be here legally.

"Depends on your tolerance for poverty, and your tolerance for the unknown, but my advice would be just to go - a friendly face in a waiting room is much more likely to get hired than some email from the US from someone who might someday show up."

This is bad advice if you want to get a legal job. In order to get a carte de séjour here to enrol as a student or to work, you first need a visa which you have to get in a French embassy or consulate in the States. To get a working visa you have to have a job lined up before you go; if you come and find a legal job on the spot, you'll actually have to return to the States afterward in order to get the visa before coming back again and starting the job. Unless you already have another kind of carte de séjour, as a student for example, in which case you can go through what's called a change of status ("changement de statut"). To get a student visa you need to take steps to enrol and get some documents from the school you'll be going to. Check out the info on the site of the French embassy.

Be prepared, incidentally, to struggle with a lot of really hostile, slow, irrational bureaucracy.
posted by paul! at 9:11 AM on May 23, 2006

if you've got any Italian blood, you can acquire an Italian passport, and thus EU citizenship, through a rather long (but obviously worth-it) process.

This is the second time this week I've heard a reference to this mysterious blood-citizen thing. Could you point us towards it?
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:14 AM on May 23, 2006

hmm. Unfortunately, the both of us are about as Scotch-Irish as you can get. Not a drop of Italian blood.

All in all, this is starting to look very difficult.
posted by kaseijin at 11:20 AM on May 23, 2006

seconding anotherpanacea's request. I see a lot of scammy looking websites when googling it, but nothing of substance.
posted by j at 6:45 PM on May 23, 2006

From the Italian Consulate in Los Angeles:

If you were born in the United States (or any other Country where citizenship is acquired by birth) and any one of the situations listed below pertain to you, you may be considered an Italian citizen.

...

1) Your father was an Italian citizen at the time of your birth and you never renounced your right to the Italian citizenship.
2) Your mother was an Italian citizen at the time of your birth, you were born after January 1st, 1948 and you never renounced your right to the Italian citizenship.
3) Your father was born in the United States or a Country other than Italy, your paternal grandfather was an Italian citizen at the time of his birth, neither you nor your father ever renounced your right to the Italian citizenship.
4) Your mother was born in the United States or a Country other than Italy, your maternal grandfather was an Italian citizen at the time of her birth, you were born after January 1, 1948 and neither you nor your mother ever renounced your right to the Italian citizenship.
5) Your paternal or maternal grandfather was born in the United States, your paternal great grandfather was an Italian citizen at the time of his birth, neither you nor your father nor your grandfather ever renounced your right to Italian citizenship. (Please note: a grandmother born before 01/01/1948 can claim Italian citizenship only from her father and can transfer it only to children born after 01/01/1948.
posted by mdonley at 7:37 AM on May 24, 2006

I think a similar process exists for Ireland as well - if you parents or grandparents were born in Ireland, you can snag an Irish passport. But I'm too lazy to look it up.
posted by antifuse at 8:27 AM on May 24, 2006