Friendships in a foreign land

I was out last night with my friend, she is my closest friend here (best friend feels a bit school girl to me!), and she is American. My 2nd closest friend here is English. Nothing wrong with that of course, but my point is, I live in France and my friends are not French.

Of course I work in an English-speaking environment, I teach English in a French business environment and my colleagues are all Anglophones (Irish, American or English).
It's quite normal to make friends through work, when you have kids you meet all sorts of people too and often make friends with other parents from your kids groups or school. The thing is, it's hard to do that in France.
To start with there aren't mum and baby groups where you can bond with other new mums (my closest friends in England before we left were the other mums from my antenatal group). Part of the reason for the lack of mum and baby groups here is because maternity leave is only 16 weeks, so the structures for mums to meet each other aren't there. The childminders have a massive network though and they get to meet up with each other and socialise the children while the mums work!
I do see other parents at the kids gym classes, music classes etc, but as you only see each other for a few minutes every week it's a very slow process. I had started to make a friend in Laila's gym class the first year, but then they were in a different class the following years, so I haven't seen them as much. The French are not as open and as inviting as an Anglophone mum would be.
The best place to start making friends is now at the school gate. Our children are at school together and will be for the next 7 years maybe more. Here the parents are more willing to chat, there are plenty of mums who don't work and so aren't always in a rush.
I joined the school committee, so I do have a small group of mums whom I know and I am friendly with. I've been to their houses a couple of times either for committee meetings, or maybe a gouter with the kids. But not had real time to chat and get to know them properly. I just feel that something is blocking the way, it's a cultural difference and it's hard to break. I think over time I will be more accepted into this group, but it takes time and I need to be patient. There is also a language barrier, my French is very good, practically fluent. But what I'm lacking are the subtlelties, the nuances, the language needed to convey exactly what I want to say. This is also a problem with understanding, I understand very well what people are saying, but not always what they mean.

Everything I've written above, I have already read in the book "French children don't throw food" by Pamela Druckerman, an American mum in Paris. I really enjoyed her book, as she has made all the same observations as me.

I'd like to write more about the observations of French kids and Anglophone kids in another post, but believe me there are French kids who throw food!

To get back to my girls night out last night with my American friend, we felt a bit strange going for a meal just the 2 of us, we went for Chinese which was lovely. The other people eating in the restaurant were families. The French tend to go out in families, or groups of friends but always mixed. It's extremely rare to see a group of girls on a night out, or even a group of men. It's a culture thing....