When I immigrated to France in 1997, I carried two suitcases, a bicycle and a laptop computer to my $550 flight from LAX to CDG. I was quite pleased with my simple lifestyle, the fact that everything I owned could fit in or on my little car. My bicycle was worth more than that deputation-battered Nissan I abandoned for salvage.
Ten years, one marriage, and two Paris-born children later, my life and its style has become, let’s just say, fuller...overflowing. Now, our car (photo above) is worth more than all of our family’s many bicycles, even Michael’s blue tricycle. I did however manage to fit everything we brought with us from France in it or on it, everything I thought we would need for the 2006-07 school year in the States. Look at me there in the Mojave desert. Don’t I look pleased with my frugal self and our practical Subaru Outback.
Moving a family from one continent to another is an opportunity, I tell the other 3 members of my family, to cut the fat, to strip back to the lean essentials. “Travel light” will always be good fatherly advice, but “light” is not the same thing to a solo-flyin’ global nomad as it is to a family of four. My family is instructing me about the difference.
Predictably during this year in the States we accumulated more stuff than I can stuff into a Subaru or two. In ’97, I never anticipated that one day I would have to calculate how many Legos we could/should bring back to France. Our boys, by the way, when transported across 9 time zones take on the quality of precious cargo, very precious.
Anyway, we’ve made a family decision that is severely testing my stuff-it-in-the-car measure of materialism: we are going to ship a 20 foot container o’ stuff to France. The contents will include among other things Mikey’s trike, countless legos & hotwheels, Karen’s Thanksgiving dishes, an iMac and the Subaru. The dollar is still very weak against the Euro. So the money we’ll save by not having to buy a car or a computer when we get back to Europe makes this a wise decision. And we are all happy not to part with certain objects invested with wonderful memories of the French Finley’s American adventure.
The cost for the container, $3,495, is quite reasonable when considering the crazy price of our plane tickets, $5,257! Ouch! Lord willing, we’ll fly back to France on July 4, 2007, Independence Day. The price tag is not what it was when you first sent me to France. But we’ve got to get home somehow. And, as far as I know, no one has ever successfully driven an over-stuffed Subaru across the Atlantic ocean.
20 foot container Port to Port
$3,495
Transit insurance
$545
Coach Airline Ticket LAX to CDG x 4
$5,257
TOTAL $9,297
If you consider yourself a partner in the ministry God has called us to in France, then we would like to invite you to participate in sending us back home and back to work. Contributions can be made online at WorldVenture.com.
