Hi everyone! Aujourd’ hui nous sommes le 1ere Novembre 2008. We left Seattle nearly two months ago and my how things have changed! We’ve been in our dorm room since the 12th of September and started classes the following Monday. Since then we’ve fallen in to a bit of a routine. The dream of living in the South of France has gradually turned into life on a planet. We have to go to the grocery store, the bank, the post office and the barber just like everyone else. However, we’ve had to do it all in a foreign language. Each day has been an adventure from asking people what time it is to being asked for directions on the street. Though challenging it is a truly wonderful experience. 

Our dorm room is working out quite well. There wasn’t anything left behind by previous tenants so we had to start from the beginning. We’ve made a few trips to IKEA for the basics we are so fortunate to have one nearby. We also made friends with a guy who was moving out and was getting rid of quite a few things. About a month ago I was sitting downstairs sending emails and this guy came up to me and asked, in French, if I had left clothes in the dryer. I looked at him blankly and said “Je ne comprends” which means I don’t understand. He then smiled and asked in is Mid-West accent “Where ya from?” I guess he knew I was American based on my three-word response to his question. After our exchange of I’m from- he’s from he said “you know- we’re moving out tomorrow, you and your boyfriend should come by and look through the stuff we’re leaving behind.” The next day Linn and I stopped by their studio to see if they had any useful things left. It turns out there was quite a bit. We are now proud owners of a code-free portable DVD player and a mountain bike, a “bialetti” coffee maker, a fruit bowl, clothes- hangers, a bunch of spices and tea. He wouldn’t accept any money from us only the promise that we’d do the same when we’re done using them. Everything we took has come in handy and we are very grateful to have met him.  

While shopping for the basics was fun, our room was still boring! I’ve started decorating with pictures and cards from home, keep them coming Gran and Katelyn! Linn received a poster of different grape varietals on his trip to Italy, that’s up too. We even have our first magnet for the mini-fridge, a birthday present from Jessica. Slowly but surely this place is turning into a little home.  

A routine we’ve developed to spend time with each other and in an attempt to save money. I have class Monday, Tuesday mornings, all day Thursday and Friday afternoons. This allows for me to do most of the grocery shopping, banking, residency paperwork and runs to the post office. Conveniently, it allows me time to practice my basic French while at these places of business. Linn has class every day from 9 to 5. After an hour or so of time on the Internet (we don’t have internet in our room so we have to go downstairs to access the Wi-Fi) we make dinner. We have been doing a lot of cooking at home (Pat, you would be proud) on our two-burner cook-top. Linn has enjoyed coming up with new one or two pot recipes, tonight is Beef-Vegetable soup. We’ve cooked a lot of pasta or rice with meat or fresh veggies. We’ve been buying fresh bread every other day and delicious cheeses each week. We’ve also found decent beer and wine to be relatively inexpensive at the grocery stores. Which is a major reason for even shopping at them. After all, with the twice-weekly farmers markets and the small corner fruit stands, bakeries and butchers there is really no need to go to a mega-market. We’ve found time for going out with friends some nights during the week or on the weekends. We’ve found a couple good bars with patient bartenders and decent prices. On weekends we do a little exploring by taking streets we haven’t taken or busses we haven’t ridden. We have gotten used to making time on Saturday to shop for Sunday and early in the week as most businesses are closed on Sundays. Which at first was an inconvenience and now is nice because we have Sundays free to do homework and don’t have the opportunity to do much. We have taken the busses around but since nothing is open all we can do is window- shop and make notes of where we want to return.  

Last weekend, when Linn was gone in Italy, I went with friends Christina and Rachel (the girls in the photo) to the 60th Annual Foire Internationale. This is a fair at the Exposition Halls in Montpellier. We had to bus out there and pay 6 Euro each to walk around booth after booth of amazing chamois, “beautiful” leather goods, miracle lotions and creams and massage chairs. I was very similar to the state fair expo halls back home. The other thing they had was booth after booth of wine tasting and food for sale. Crepe, sandwich, crepe, sandwich… then just when we thought we’d seen it all. There was a new type of sandwich we’d not seen before. There were demi-baguettes with sliced meat and melted cheese. I know this doesn’t sound different but the way they melted the cheese was genius! They had these ½ wheels of semi-hard cheese cradled by one arm of this contraption. The other arm hinged down over the cut side of the cheese and in this arm was a heating element. They hinge the arm open and scrape all of the freshly melted cheese into the sandwich as they’re ordered. Brilliant!!  (See below)

I mentioned each day being an adventure, some challenging, some not as much. We’ve had a few funny experiences due to the lack of knowledge of the language and culture. The first weekend we moved in we explored the building we lived in and noticed the Manager had on office on each floor, each door reading “Salle de Manger.” We thought that was good for the managers and good for us because we’d be able to find them whenever we needed. It turns out, after learning a few verbs including Manger which means To Eat and vocabulary words like Salle which means Room those aren’t Manager Offices they are “rooms for eating.” It turns out we can reserve them if we have a large group of people that want to eat together. Linn and I had a good laugh over that. Then, just today we went to Carrefour, a mega grocery- plus- everything store to get some groceries and shop around for a while. We have to take the bus to get out there and fortunately it’s the one right by our dorm. We saw one go by as we were leaving so we knew we had about 20 minutes until the next one base on the Saturday schedule. After standing in the gusting wind for 40 minutes it occurred to us that perhaps the day after Halloween “All Saints Day” is actually an observed holiday here. I had to ask the bus driver if it was a holiday and he looked at me like I was nuts and said simply “Oui!” We tucked our tails and got on the bus, who knew!  

Well that is enough for this post, I promise the next one from me will have info about the shopping and the clothes for all my girls that have inquired!