Comfortably Moved In

Whew! We are moved in. And after sleeping in an this Easter Sunday, we are rested, contented, and ready to start our vie francais.

We moved from our old place to our new place:


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It took 2 trips to move all our stuff, but once we moved, paid, and got our keys, we were free and relieved. The place is furnished with the bare necessities. And what does one do in that case? Why, go to Ikea of course. Fortunately for us, there is an Ikea in walking distance (by our standards). Ikea in France is just like Ikea in the US and Canada. Same blue building with yellow IKEA, same layout, same stuff, same goofy names, same crowds of pretty women shopping (I don't know why, but Ikea is a primo girl-watching location). So we wandered around looking at all the stuff we'd like to buy if we had more than 2/3 months here. Anyway, we had some things we absolutely had to buy. The total was 29,93 euros or $45 dollars.

Item	Euros	Dollars
A laundry drying rack	5,99	9.00
2 coffee mugs	2 x 0,50	2 x 0.75
candle	1,70	2.50
3 pot set	7,99	12.00
wooden spoon/fork/stirrer set	0,50	0.75
2 pan set	6,99	10.50
2 flexible cutting boards	0,50	0.75
2 drying cloths	2 x 0,34	2 x 0.50
4 knife set	2,99	4.50

After we left, it started to rain. But not long. We made it back with all that stuff in my backpack. Was happy to get back because my feet were starting to hurt. When we got back we found that we are half a block from a pretty nice grocery store called Intermarche or Mousquitaire or something. We went there and got the most important item: a cheap coffee maker--only 11,26 euros. Yay!!! We need our drip coffee--we're Pacific Northwesterners, after all.

We got a bunch of other groceries that we'll be needing like balsamic vinegar and mustard for salad dressing, salt, pepper, paper towel. We tried to find a big yogurt, but the only large containers (like we have in the USA/Canada) were not labeled yogurt but white cheese (fromage blanc). They were in the yogurt section. Elena bought one and it isn't quite the same--less refreshing and too creamy. So we have to figure out the yogurt stuff.

Today we are going to try to find Carrefour--will they be open on Easter? That is like the French version of Superstore in Canada or a SuperTarget in the US.

It's so nice to have internet again. I have a lot of blog maintenance to do. I spent a lot of time yesterday catching up on my blogs. There were like 500 slogs. Yikes! So I got caught up with the goings on in Seattle and on Capitol Hill. Biggest news seems to be a pillow fight.

Also caught up a bit on the election news. Pretty much status quo except Obama is having a pastor eruption.

One more thing we found. Elena kept looking for craigslist in France and complaining that there is no craigslist. We'll, we popped "montpellier d'occasion" into google to see if we could find a market for used stuff (tv? etc). That's when we first found kijiji.fr. So kijiji.fr is the French copy of craigslist. Yay!!!

Elena has already posted a couple of ads looking for people for us to stuff with and she wants a running partner. I'll try to find language exchange and lessons on kijiji as well.