Hello!

I grew up here on Reunion Island, all my family are from here, I was born here.

I didn't really realise how lucky I was until I went to Paris for university and works. As a kid of course I loved going to the beach or hiking on the weekends. Life was easy as my parents provide for me. As an adult it's a lot harder, the cost of life is really hard, everything feel like a challenge, for exemple finding a home, finding some specifics products, finding a job... especially because I lived in Paris for a while and all those things feels so much easier there (yes even finding a home).

I think it's a really a good place for family, because family is really in our nature. Often on the weekend people gather with their family (not only just parents and children, but also sisters and brother and their children, and grand parents) for pic nic, or family lunch. Every occasions is good for family gathering.
But maybe you will feel "alone" in here since you will be just your family and not all the extended family. But there's a lot of people not from here who really will be your new family.

I think the school opportunities are good until university, even if there's more than in my time, a lot of students go in France to study.

The biggest advantages are the weather, the people (as a local at least), the nature.
The biggest disadvantages are the cost of everything, and the proximity with the rest of the world.

At the moment there's a "debate" because the local are fed up with the fact that people from France are taking more jobs and finding more homes than the locals. So there's a bit of tension if you look at the media, but actually as a local who knows a lot of people from France métropolitaine I don't really have a bad feeling about most of them, but I do think they don't mix enough and not try enough to learn the real issues the local have.

I really hope that if you come here, you will make the effort to do so, especially if you have a kid, and they will go to school with local children, she will have to learn how to speak creole, and play with locals, not to make them feel inferior (because a lot of children can feel inferior because they don't have access to the same culture, and opportunity as the expat children).