I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can. Can.

Francey Pants is the not-so-secret identity of freelance journalist and self-declared professional expat, Clair Whitmer.

She's a 40-something American woman who somehow ended up living in a small French town and is just trying to get along…as I go along.

Originally from San Francisco, I am now living on the banks of the Loire with my French husband, two Franco-American kids and two rabbits.

Even after five years full-time in this country, I find myself often looking around in amazement and saying to myself: “I seem to be in France. What am I doing here again?”

Every time I tease out a thread of the answer to that question — or the corollary question, “What are all these French people doing here?” — I write it down here.

The last thing I want to do is weigh in on the debate: France or America, which is better?

Instead, as Francey Pants and in real life, I just try to stick to my motto: “Everybody’s got a story.” I chose this motto because I’ve found that people are more likeable — well, some of them merely more tolerable — if I remind myself to make the effort to learn their stories.

As for my story, it’s not so much that I love, love, love everything about France as that I like myself better since I moved here. This is mostly because living here means I am prevented from looking at any random person on the street and even pretending to say: Got you pegged. Or vice versa. It’s stimulating.

Professional addendum: I’ve written the US Guys column for American readers of monthly newspaper French News for the past four years; I also spent two years as the France Editor for the website Expatica.

Before I wrote about France, I used to write about computers. It turns out that explaining 64-bit microchips and overseas tax filings: not so different as you might think.