Top posts & a look back at 2018

Here’s a look back at what I did in 2018:

• Started Facebook Live broadcasts in the first quarter of the year. I’ve shown you cities like Angers and also taken you to the pharmacy, grocery store, marché and more. See them all here. (Note: If you don’t use FB, most of my broadcasts are uploaded to YouTube so you can watch there)
• Went on vacation to the Mediterranean Coast to do a cycling trip with Purely Pyrenees. It was a fantastic way to see the beautiful coastline and sure beats a road trip in a car!
• Tom and I met my brother and sister-in-law in Scotland for a family vacation in early summer. I loved visiting the UK and can’t wait to go back. Here are a few things I found interesting.
• Caught the Tour de France in person when it came to my area.
• Went to Perpignan for my job a few times (did a FB Live as well)
• Rebooted my YouTube channel which is an extension of my blog. I hit 1000 subs back in November and was thrilled to hit that milestone. I made a behind-the-scenes at a French bakery which was a hit with you, so have a look if you missed it. I hope to make videos regularly but in all honesty, my job has me very busy so I haven’t been able to put as much time into YouTube in the past month as I would have liked. It’s a goal for 2019.
• Dagny turned 7. This holiday season also marks my 7-year anniversary of living in France. Where does time go?
• We went to the US for Thanksgiving to spend it with my family and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, as usual.
• Earlier this month, I became an aunt to a beautiful baby boy. My brother and sister-in-law had their first child and I’m so happy for them (and my parents too, who now are grandparents).

Here are my top posts of the year. Out of all the posts I shared on Facebook, these are the ones with the most shares/views, with 1 being the most read.

(Keep in mind they aren’t necessarily posts I wrote in 2018 or that got the most page views overall from all traffic sources. I didn’t use page view stats from Google Analytics to rank them because some of my most viewed posts are people searching for specific things in search engines. FB is where my community lives so I ranked them using Facebook.)

1. Why are the French afraid of air conditioning? This hilarious guest post is one of my favorites and so happy to see you feel the same way. It got really popular over the summer when a major heat wave hit many areas of France.

2. The strange noises French people make. I wrote this post years ago and recording the audio and coming up with the examples was a lot of fun. This ranks as one my top 5 all-time faves on my entire site. Still makes me laugh…

3. 5 Endearing habits of French people. You can’t help but love them!

4. What we can learn from Bradley Cooper speaking French. This post is the first post written in 2018 to crack the top 10 and I’m so glad because I loved writing this. It’s not the fact that he can speak French that’s remarkable since a lot of people speak more than one language; it’s what we can learn from him that’s impressive and what I admire.

5. Top 5 polite French words & phrases you need to fit in. Also written in 2018, this post lets you read about and hear the top 5 simple phrases that go a long way toward making a good first impression with the French.

6. 22 Things you can do in the USA that you can’t in France. Every roundup needs a fun list and this one performed the best. Have a look at the comments on the post as well for even more things to add to my list.

7. 17 Things I can do in France that I can’t in the USA. This is the reverse of the list in #6 which was almost as popular with readers.

8. Gilets Jaunes: Is Paris safe for tourists? This post is from a couple of weeks ago when the Yellow Vests seemed to be taking over France.

9. 10 Facts about Paris you don’t know. Are you a Paris trivia buff? See if you know all of these facts in this guest post from podcaster Oliver Gee.

10. Hugging in France: Don’t hug French people (and what to do instead). French greetings aren’t always straightforward, so if there’s one thing to learn it’s what I talk about in this post. Don’t hug to say hi or bye!

 

In addition to my top viewed posts, here are my favorite posts that I wrote in 2018:

Posts that made my list of favorites are posts that I feel resonated the most with readers and were the most thoughtful and meaningful to me. These posts didn’t do as well on social media, but I think they’re the most important things I’ve written this year. If you like something you read, would you mind sharing it? Merci!

So here they are:

This post was one of my real talk posts that I needed to write.

People seemed to really identify with this personal essay.

Stress affects all of us and here’s how I deal with it:

My life in France is a much slower paced life and I talk about why that might be the case:

A foreign accent means we speak a 2nd language and that’s a beautiful thing, not something to be ashamed of or ridiculed for:

It’s easy to talk about the positive aspects of life abroad but I think there’s value in showing the flip side of the coin:

Nerves often come with speaking a foreign language especially when we’re just starting out. Here are my tips on how to get over that nervous feeling and speak with confidence:

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