Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Dreaming of Paris

In 1995 my wife, Dianny, and I left Colombia, our home country, in need of a change. Because of the drug cartels and the numerous guerrilla groups, the 1990s was a period where the majority of Colombians did not feel safe; in fact, many felt like hostages in their own homes. We moved to Costa Rica, looking for the safety and peace we had lost back home. 

We started a small business there and did that for three years, but since I had always wanted to get a master's degree in writing, in 1998 I finally decided to apply to a few programs and got accepted into Carnegie Mellon's professional writing graduate program. So we left Costa Rica and moved to Pittsburgh for a year and a half, and once there we decided to stay in the United States and take advantage of the great job market at the time. Upon graduation we moved to Seattle, where I had landed an technical editing position with Microsoft.

Microsoft has consistently been recognized as one of the best companies to work for, and for me it was the best place I could ever dream of working at. We couldn't complain about Seattle either; well, except for the rain. Tucked into the northwest corner of the country, it's a beautiful place to live in, and we loved the laid back atmosphere. But because it's in the farthest corner of the United States from Colombia, for us it was like living on the moon, geographically and psychologically. 

After a successful tenure on the microsoft.com content group, in 2011 I decided to leave my position at Microsoft and start working freelance, from home. I could work from anywhere, and the possibility of leaving Seattle played a big part in that decision. After 16 years away, we were getting tired of the long and expensive back-and-forth trips to Bogotá and Dianny was starting to feel a bit homesick. I guess we never expected to be away for so long. And now that we had children, we wondered if we should get back to our roots. After all, Colombia was where our entire extended family lived and was the place we'd always gone back to for Christmas and other important milestones throughout all those years.

Despite the improvement in Colombia's circumstances over the previous decade, it still faced development and security issues, so moving back was not an easy decision for me. It was still a complicated place and I was realistic about the challenges we'd face and that, after so many years away, it would be hard to re-adapt. I was pushing back. 

One gray, rainy day in March, Dianny and I were discussing the future. Seeing that we were at an impasse, she asked"And if we moved to Paris?

Although her question seemed to come out of the blue, I'm sure she had been pondering this option for a while, and it actually didn’t take me by surprise. We had fantasized about living in Paris many times, and I think Dianny probably heard the call from "that siren, Paris," as the writer Francine du Plessix called the City of Light. 

Ever since we'd been to Paris together, we'd fallen under the city's spell. To love Paris may be a cliché, but the truth is we loved everything about it: the monuments and the boulevards and the architecture and the bridges and the sidewalk cafés and the language and the atmosphere and the wine and the food. It was like we belonged there. We became incurable Francophiles and Paris became the place we always wanted to go back to.

Life got in the way and we were finally able to return to Paris in the summer of 2010. By now we had three kids, so we had to adapt the trip to suit them, but that was fine, all we wanted was to be in Paris. For the simple pleasure of being there. 

Although we tend to think of Paris as a city for adults, it's a child-friendly city and we found lots of things to do. Besides doing all the typical sightseeing, we climbed up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, we visited places like the Metamorphosis, an old barge docked near Notre Dame that was converted into a restaurant and a magic theater down below, the Jardin d'Acclimatation, a mini amusement park for children that also has a puppet theater, a huge playground and a collection of farm animals and birds, the Fête des Tuileries, a traditional funfair that takes place in the Tuileries Gardens every summer, discovered great playgrounds at both the Tuileries Gardens and the Luxembourg Gardens, got on just about every merry-go-round they have in Paris, and also learned the hard way not to order hot dogs in brasseries!









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We were happy to see that the kids seemed to like it—although it's not clear if it was all the parks and playgrounds we visited, all the merry-go-rounds they got on or all the crêpes they had, or just hearing us say all day how great the place is. I remember telling them to enjoy it as much as possible because we didn't know when we'd be back.

So although we had just gotten our Paris fix, I think Dianny saw the opportunity we suddenly had. Because now that I was going to work on my own there was a lot of flexibility in terms of schedule and location. And the kids were young: Andrea, our older daughter was 8, and Nicolás and Daniela, the twins, were 7, so they were at a great age to move anywhere. Even I, the more practical one in the family, could see it wasn't that crazy. In fact, it sounded really cool. Besides, it was not like we were moving forever, it was just for a year. 

It was already March, and when you have kids, a lot of things revolve around school, and I was already starting to see the challenges ahead. So if we wanted to do this, we'd have to move fast. 

"We’d need to find a school for the kids right away," was all I could think of saying.

Dianny couldn't believe it. This was a big shift in plans, and I'm sure she expected me to shoot down the idea or at least put up some resistance. After all, moving to Paris is one of those things you usually dream about and talk about but end up dismissing as crazy.

But not this time. Moving to Paris sounded like the best idea I’d ever heard.

It’s a bit risky and intimidating to just uproot your family and move to a foreign country, even if it's just for a year. And there’s always a good reason not to do this kind of thing or put it off for later. But this was one of those things that can't wait till you're retired, or till you get all your ducks in a row. It was something we really wanted to do, the timing was right, and we knew it would be a great opportunity for the whole family. We looked at each other and with a sense of purpose and determination said, “Let’s do it!”

Paris is always a good idea.