The season one finale of Je Suis un Croissant picks up where Episode 7 left off. Tara is back in France, in a house she'd seen exactly once, and two days later the good girls arrive, delivered straight to the front door. For the first time since August, everyone is under one roof.

Then comes the waiting. Tara takes listeners through living on rented furniture, a first round of holidays without their own things, and the household shipment that took almost four months to arrive. The practical segment covers the French customs paperwork, the conditions for bringing belongings in duty-free, the lithium battery rule, and the delivery day that put two households' worth of furniture in one house. Plus the end tables that don't fit and the e-bike battery saga.

In the last part, Tara answers the question she asked in Episode 1: did they actually step off the hamster wheel? She describes an ordinary weekday and weekend now compared with life in the US, shares her husband's answer and her daughter's one-line review of France, and is honest about what's been harder than expected (the language) and easier (finding community).

The season closes with an instant camera that went missing during the move and turned up a year later in the last place anyone looked.

Programming note: there's no new episode next week while the family takes the school holiday. Season 2 starts the week after. It will be organized by subject rather than month by month, so leave a comment with what you want to hear about.

Music: 'Django's Night Out' by Albert Behar on #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/c/albert-behar

Episode 6 ended with Tara on a plane, alone, leaving her husband and daughter in a hotel room in a town they’d known for two weeks. Episode 7 is what was waiting on the other side: the house they’d lived in for fourteen years, the only home Miss Tween had ever known, and two weeks to empty it.

Tara walks back into a house that looks almost normal, except the dining table is gone and the fridge is empty. Then comes the list: a dumpster, a storage shed she had completely forgotten about, vet appointments, clients, and the final sort of everything that hadn’t made the first cut. She talks about deciding alone what her daughter would keep, the moment it all caught up with her, and what got her back up off the floor.

The practical segment covers the dogs: why they couldn’t fly with her after all, what a pet relocation company actually handles, and how she kept the last boarding drop-off calm so the good girls wouldn’t know anything was different.

Meanwhile in France, her husband handles the keys, the lease and the rental furniture, and Miss Tween picks out her new bedroom at Ikea. There is also one pickup-day scare that Tara could only follow by phone. Back in the States, the movers take two days instead of one, the e-bike ships with no battery, and Tara squeezes in a few last pole classes with her best friend.

The episode ends with a taxi, an address Tara has never seen as home, and a reunion her daughter didn’t know was coming.

Music License code: MISSTLS7K6C4JJKX

Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/albert-behar/djangos-night-out

Episode 5 ended with Miss Tween walking back into the hotel after her first day of school. Episode 6 covers the thirteen days that followed, before Tara had to fly back to the US alone and leave her husband and daughter in a hotel in a town they’d known for less than a week.

The family lived in a hotel room with a kitchenette that couldn’t really cook anything, and they hauled their laundry down the street to a laundromat. With help from a relocation specialist provided by her husband’s company, they toured five properties. The houses included a French "cave," a gorgeous kitchen with carpet everywhere, a ninety-second no, and a charming house with a very French bathroom setup. The one they both agreed on said no.

In between viewings, Miss Tween was voted house captain in her first week, got in trouble over a math book still sitting in the US, and finally broke down at lunch outside Versailles. The family skipped the palace and spent the afternoon at Pop Mart, Sephora and Starbucks instead.

Tara also walks through what renting in France actually requires: the dossier, guarantors, and the pet-friendly lease rule that surprised her. She finally answers the question listeners ask most, which is why the family lives in this town and not in Paris. The episode ends with a quiet early-morning goodbye, a return flight with no lease signed, and the news, a little over a week later, that the house was theirs.

As always: this is one family’s experience, not legal advice. Rental rules vary by region, agency and year.

Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/albert-behar/djangos-night-out