We’ve been waiting more than six months to receive the message above from the French government which translates to “Congratulations, you have obtained your driving license.”

You may remember that we wrote about this in a January post, “Favorable” !!!, that detailed our initial efforts to pass the written driving test in French. In the intervening months, we worked with a local driving school for assessment and then instruction in French, four hours for each of us with a very particular instructor, then he accompanied each of us for the practical driving test on the road with the French examiner. This test is also given in French, no English was spoken before, during, or after.

I took my test yesterday and Greg took his two weeks ago. Greg snapped this photo of me yesterday starting the test:

We both passed with almost perfect scores (overachievers!) and are now licensed drivers in France. This is big because French licenses are good FOR LIFE and they are usable, exchangable, and accepted all over the EU for rental cars, etc. This has been one of the most difficult things we’ve ever done and we are feeling pretty proud of ourselves for overcoming this huge hurdle. Especially since our French is still terrible.

The timing of this win is important as we have been in the country now for over 11 months, and our auto insurance provider has been sending reminders non-stop that if we didn’t acquire our licenses in the next three weeks, they would cancel our policy as US licenses are only good for one year after arriving in France.

We have one other funny thing we have to do in the next few weeks. We’ve each been summoned to the French Office of Immigration and Integration for a medical appointment to show that we are healthy, mainly to show that we are not bringing tuberculosis to France and preferably to show that we are vaccinated. Seems like that’s something you’d want to do with immigrants early on in their stay in France, but we’ll have ours done 10 days before the expiration of our first year visa.

Lastly, on May 6th we’ll pick up our French resident card called a “titre de séjour” that enables us to stay in France another year on a visa. This is the last part of the first year administrative hurdles.

Since we’re at the end of our first year in France, you may be asking: so what’s next? We have plans, but we’ll save that for another post. In the meantime, we’re off tomorrow for a week to visit the Spanish cities of Murcia, on the Mediterranean side, and Málaga, on the southern Costa del Sol side. We’re looking forward to sunny days, inexpensive wine, and spicy food! Adiós!