Author: seleon04
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Why did you move to Toulouse?
We get this question and the follow ups a lot, naturally. Usually it goes something like this: Where do you come from? California. What brings you to France? Wylie’s job. He’s a researcher with the CNRS and works at the university here in Toulouse. It’s probably a temporary position, right? How long will you be…
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France might have made us ski people
In France, the first school holiday of the new year is the ski holiday. Families flock to the mountains with the ski gear and spend a week on the slopes, at the thermal springs, and eating hearty winter fondue dinners. This may have been one of the cultural norms that I was most nervous about…
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It’s 2025!…Ughhh, this is 2025.
Let’s start with the good. I had a long to do list of things to get kicked off in 2025 – join a gym, start private french lessons, find doctors for me and Mara, intentionally carve out time to meet and connect with people, bring back my and Wylie’s Friday afternoons off together, keep doing…
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Winter holidays part 2
We moved down the coast towards Spain for the second part of our winter holiday trip. We stayed in a very cute town on the water called Collioure. Many people told us about how pretty and charming Collioure is, “it’s like Disneyland.” The Disneyland part threw us a bit not knowing which part of Disneyland…
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Winter holidays in Toulouse and by the sea part 1
Winter in Toulouse is so festive thanks to lights and Christmas trees decorating nearly every street. And the Christmas markets complete with carnival rides, ice skating, sweet treats, savory indulgences, and of course vin chaud make it so easy to get into the Christmas spirit. I went to the markets several times just in the…
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Friends old and new
We are so fortunate to have so many friends in France. Most are people we’ve known for 10 years, since Wylie and I lived in Paris, but also in just a few months in Toulouse we’ve met several families and new friends. It feels like we’ve been more social in the last few months than…
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Making our home in Toulouse
Our first months in Toulouse were all about getting adjusted and settled in. Really, we’ll be adjusting for a while as we learn more and more about family life in France, but we had a great start in fall 2024. Mara started school in September and even though she’s been in daycare in 3 different…
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The actual last leg of sabbatical and THE move
It’s sort of hard to say when the sabbatical year ended. We left Sweden in mid July and went back to our home in California, but that stay was just temporary as we prepared for the real move to France. It’s weird, but maybe accurate, to think of that month in California as actually being…
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The blog is back
We’re back! I decided to bring back the blog, formerly called Sabbatical with a Toddler now called Wander & Nest, to continue to share our adventures, big and little, with friends and family. Also, I love looking back at our sabbatical year and sharing posts and since I downgraded to the basic (aka free) site…
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Our year in review
We’ve been back in California for almost a week now and it’s been really interesting to think back on the year. It was a truly incredible year. We covered so much ground and also managed to stay in places long enough to really get a feel for life there. We lived in Christchurch, New Zealand,…
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Wander & Nest 