interviews with immigrants Marie

An English woman’s story
I asked my immigrant a few questions about her reasons for leaving the UK, about her journey, about her living conditions when she arrived in France and about her integration and her situation today.
Her name is April. She first came to live in France in November 1998; she was 19 years old at the time. Before coming to France, she lived in a town called Oldbury which is about a 15 minute drive from Birmingham city center. This is the second largest city in England. She lived in a little house with her parents and her two sisters who are called Joy and Diana.
Before coming to live full time in France, she worked in France in an English children’s camp as a cook, she got to know quite a few French people who lived in the village and she liked the way of life here. She would come back and live here full time.
Therefore, in November 1998 she packed her stuff up said goodbye to her family and travelled down to Dover by coach and got the ferry over to France.
At the beginning living in France was hard because she didn’t speak French. She didn’t have any English friends near by so mentally it was tiring, even watching the television was hard she just watched the images and tired to work out the rest of the story.
One thing, she had to get used to was paying to see the doctor and having to sort out medical insurance. Whereas it’s free in England, unless you go private.
Another thing, she found strange was that everything stops at 12 o’clock a.m all the shops shut up and then reopen at 2 o’clock p.m. In England they stay open nonstop until 5 o’clock p.m.
Also, at lunch time the French eat a good hearty meal, whereas in England normally we have something light like a sandwich. Also they eat late on the evening around 7-8 o’clock p.m, whereas in England it’s about 5-6 o’clock. It was little things like this that she found strange, but then, she got used to it.
Then, learning to speak the language helped, because at the beginning she felt left out not being able to understand conversations, she felt rejected. People probably thought she was being rude as she didn’t participate in the conversation, but when she explained that she was English they seemed to understand.
In conclusion, it’s now been 11 years since she has been living in the north of France in a little village called Bremes-Les-Ardres. She lives with her French boyfriend and they have just had their first children. His name is James and hopefully he will be bilingual. She can speak and read French reasonably well now. She works for a ferry company checking in lorry drivers who are transporting goods to England. She has a lot of French friends but she doesn’t see them as French they are just her friends, and she still loves living in France. She doesn’t think she will ever go back to live in England but she stayed in contact with her family and she sees them for Christmas.

Marie WEPIERRE 1ES3