Three months ago, we moved into a chateau in the French countryside. Yes, a chateau. I know. Still pinching myself, still half-expecting a very confused French aristocrat to show up and reclaim his property.
But here’s the thing nobody tells you about buying a castle in a foreign country: the building is the easy part. The community is the whole other project.
We are an American family. Our French is...aspirational. And we had a choice: become the mysterious Americans who live up behind the big gate and let rumors fill the vacuum (and in a small French village, oh, the rumors they will fill), or throw ourselves headfirst into the deeply humbling, occasionally wine-soaked, borderline absurdist experience of becoming neighbors.
We chose the latter. Here’s how it went.
First, a Miracle (and also, Los Angeles)
Let’s start with the universe doing something inexplicable.
Through our kids’ school, we met a couple - an Australian father, a French mother, both fluent in English, both warm and funny and just our people in that rare, immediate way you don’t expect to find in rural France. We became fast friends. And then, in the way that the universe occasionally decides to show off, we discovered that nearly ten years ago, we had lived one minute apart from each other in Los Angeles.
One. Minute.
We had to move to a small French village, into a centuries-old chateau, to meet our future best friends who used to live around the corner from our old apartment in Venice Beach. The world is weird and beautiful and I’m along for the ride.
The Welcome Wagon Runs on Pastry and Wine
If you’re new here, welcome! We’re an American family living in rural France, restoring a small château, and figuring it out one awkward conversation at a time. Join the readers following along.
Once we had one friendly foothold, we started knocking on doors. Or rather - because this is France and things work differently here - doors started opening for us.
Our next-door neighbors invited us over for a goûter. In theory, a goûter is a simple afternoon snack. In practice, it involved a spread of cookies and wine, because this is France and wine requires no occasion, justification, or time of day. They are lovely. Their dog is equally lovely, if you don't count his habit of wandering onto our property and leaving us rather substantial gifts on the lawn. We are composting them. We are making lemonade (not with the gifts). We are being very, very good neighbors.
Up the hill, we met the dairy farmers - a couple who runs their farm entirely on solar power, including a panel that rotates to track the sun, which is exactly awesome. They sent us home with fresh milk in a glass jar. I nearly cried. Their kids go to school with ours. This is the dream, people.
Further along, we met a retired farming couple whose little kitchen is lined wall-to-wall with trophies for dairy and cattle excellence. Reader, I did not know that was a category of trophy that existed, and now I want one. They served us galette, flan, and, naturally, wine. Lots of wine. The husband, I eventually realized, was operating at a level of hospitality that bordered on sorcery: every time I looked down at my glass while straining to translate approximately 20% of the conversation, it had been refilled. Silently. Magically. I never saw it happen once. This guy was a wizard.
At some point their son came in, and then their teenage grandson - maybe 16 years old - who walked into the kitchen, gave a cheerful bonjour to the room, and then bent down and gave both of my children, whom he had never met in his life, a kiss on the cheek.
I want to be clear: this was not weird. This is very French. And it stopped me cold, because this teenager was not sulking in the corner, half-present and monosyllabic, radiating low-grade contempt for all adults. He was present. Warm. Genuinely kind to small children and elderly grandparents in the same breath. I don’t know exactly what they’re putting in the galette here, but French teenagers have cracked some kind of code and I would like the password.
The Man in the Mill (Or: How I Almost Ruined a Beautiful Moment with My American Brain)
Now we need to talk about the moulin.
The moulin - an old mill - used to belong to the chateau, back in the day. It sits nearby, gorgeous and ancient, and in it lives an older gentleman who speaks excellent English and wears exceptional sweaters. We wandered up one afternoon, he happened to be outside, and we fell into easy conversation. He told us stories about the chateau, including its connection to the stars (more on that another time, because that deserves its own post). He mentioned a recent divorce. He told us about the custody arrangement for his beloved dog, which is apparently a shared arrangement and which he takes very seriously.
And then he invited us inside.
Now. Here is where I have to confess something.
I am American. I was raised on a steady diet of true crime podcasts, local news, and ambient suspicion of kindness from strangers. And somewhere in the back of my brain - the dumb, overcaffeinated, anxiety-riddled part - a small voice said: is he inviting you into an ancient stone mill...where there might be a trap door...and a dungeon...
I kept my phone charged and close. Just in case.
He sat us down at his kitchen table and told us more stories and was so genuinely, warmly delighted to have us there that I felt like the world’s most embarrassing person for the thoughts I’d been having. He said he’d introduce us to more neighbors. He handed us his business card, which had a lovely photo of the moulin on it and two names - his and his ex-wife’s. He had fixed this situation by crossing her name out in thick black pen. Jagged. Definitive. Zero fuss.
I think about that business card a lot. There is something deeply admirable about that level of pragmatism.
He now texts us his favorite French music and adorable photos of himself with his dog. Including - and I want to make sure you appreciate the full glory of this - face swap photos. His face on the dog. The dog’s face on him. Beaming. Joyful.
I love him.
The Neighbor Who Doesn’t Ask, She Schedules
One afternoon, we left the chateau gate open. Within a short time, people were simply...appearing. Popping in. Saying hello.
One particular woman looked us up and down, smiled, and said: “You will come to my house tomorrow at two for a goûter.”
Not a question. A calendar event, delivered in person. (This, by the way, is a whole phenomenon here - appointments are frequently assigned to you rather than proposed. You are informed when you are expected. You show up. This is its own post, its own lifestyle adjustment, its own spiritual practice.)
We showed up. We walked in to find approximately ten people seated and waiting, specifically to meet us. There was galette. There was flan. There were brownies. There was, of course, wine.
My kids had been skeptical of these neighbor visits - until they understood that each one is, structurally, a dessert party. Now they are extremely pro-community.
I, meanwhile, have discovered that social anxiety plus language barrier equals eating everything placed in front of you at a rate that has no relationship to actual hunger. I am stress-consuming my way through an entire region’s worth of baked goods. If we keep meeting neighbors - and we will - I am going to need larger trousers and possibly a cardiologist.
We Met the Mayor (No, Really)
My husband suggested we reach out to the mayor.
In the U.S., this would sound bizarre - or like you were petitioning about something, or in some kind of trouble. But in small French villages, it’s actually a perfectly normal, even lovely, thing to do. So we wrote an email. Introduced ourselves, explained who we were and why we’d landed here.
A reply came from his secretary: the mayor would see us the following week. Time and date included. No “does this work for you?” Just: here is when you will appear.
We appeared. We stumbled through our best French, which is, to be generous, a work in progress. There was no dessert (thank god). And we had a genuinely wonderful conversation with a man who turned out to share more with us than we expected. It was warm. It was official in no way and human in every way.
We walked out into the afternoon sun feeling, for the first time, like we might actually belong here.
What We’ve Actually Learned
We’ve been here three months. We’ve eaten more galette than I thought one family could survive. We’ve nodded along to conversations where we caught maybe a third of the words and smiled through the rest. We’ve been invited in by strangers who turned out to be exactly as kind as they appeared, and felt sheepish about every moment we doubted them.
It has not been easy. Putting yourself out there is hard under any circumstances. Doing it in a second language, with children in tow, in a culture where the social codes are subtly but meaningfully different? It requires a certain willingness to be awkward, to be imperfect, to laugh at yourself and keep going anyway.
But here is what we’ve gotten in return: we are not the weird Americans behind the gate. We are aware that 'American' carries some baggage in the world right now, and we are working through it, one goûter at a time. Now, when we see our neighbors in town, at the school, at the market, we wave. We stop and chat - familiarly, warmly, with a lot of je ne sais pas and goodwill. We are becoming, slowly, part of something.
Our kids are watching us fail gracefully in French and try again. They’re watching us sit at tables full of strangers and stay. They're watching us decide, again and again, that building friendships is worth the initial embarrassment.
Our French will only get better. These people will be here for years, maybe for the rest of our lives.
And somewhere along the way, between the face swap dog photos and the magic refilling wine glass and the business card with the jagged black cross-out, this village has started to feel a little bit like home.
A Completely Unofficial Field Guide to Meeting Your French Neighbors
In case you ever find yourself in a similar situation, here is what three months of fumbling has taught us:
Bring nothing. Expect everything. Every visit will involve more food than you planned for and more wine than you thought appropriate for the hour. This is correct. Do not fight it.
Learn these words before anything else: goûter (your social life will revolve around it), santé (you will say it constantly), and je ne comprends pas (I don’t understand) - though fair warning, saying it doesn’t always slow anyone down.
Leave your gate open occasionally. Apparently this is an invitation. We did not know this. We know it now.
Appointments are not negotiated here, they are delivered. You will be told when to appear. Appear.
The business card cross-out is a legitimate administrative solution. File that one away.
Show up anyway. With bad French, nervous energy, and a willingness to eat whatever is placed in front of you. That’s the whole secret. That’s genuinely all of it.
If you’re new here, welcome! We’re an American family living in rural France, restoring a small château, and figuring it out one awkward conversation at a time. Subscribe for the ongoing adventure.
Paid subscribers can follow along in Castle Diaries, where I share the renovation in real time: plans, tradeoffs, timelines, sourcing, and design details.
This is the content I'm here for! The combination of humility, humor, and genuine openness to being awkward in a new place — it's everything. Rooting for you and your expanding trouser situation ;)
Kamille, I truly love the way you write. Have you written in other formats too?