France! in ups and downs...

We've made it! Indeed, we've been here all week, and this update is badly overdue. The days have been full with getting settled, figuring things out, Jesse getting back to work; this is the first I've sat down with my computer for more than a few minutes. (Bizarre for me, rarely more than a few feet from my laptop...)

So, this week. What to say? Where to start? There have been lots of ups and downs. Roller coaster worthy ups and downs!


The first up and down was physical, of course. On Monday we were awake early and boarded a plane that went up in Southampton England and came back down in Nantes France an hour or so later. Everything went great, this time the luggage made it, barely had to do a thing at immigration. We picked up our rental car and headed east.

The next up and down came an hour later: up for the boys, down for me. Everyone was hungry as it was late afternoon and we had only eaten some snacks through the day. After much neck craning across many miles, the single place we could see from the highway to stop was (I wince to type it): McDonald's. Yep. Our very first, exciting, landmark stop in France? The first food to enter our mouths? Cheap American burgers and fries! Josiah and William were thrilled of course.  :)

Arriving to our new home Monday late afternoon was exciting. It's truly lovely. (I'll document with photos in future posts.) We all delighted in exploring the rooms and corners and cupboards. The boys were especially excited to find a "scary room," a dark little basement underneath a storage building. Of course with character and age and charm come squeaks, precious few electrical outlets, and dank spots, but the ups by far outweigh the downs!

Our first lunch, Tuesday, in the house's little courtyard.

Our town, Thouars, is a decent size but in a very rural area; few people speak English. We're proud to say that we've successfully—albeit slowly and with moments of utter bafflement—accomplished several things this week with our negligible French. So far on the phone I've only blurted out "Je suis désolé, au revoir" (I'm sorry, goodbye") and hung up on someone once—after a painful minute of neither of us having a clue what the other was saying.

How long until you think these two will be using baguettes as baseball bats?

On Tuesday morning we got up, dressed nicely, and headed as a family to the bank up the street. We had our passports and lots of documents and had pep-talked ourselves up to tackle the first task of opening a bank account. We marched in at 10:15 a.m. and...marched back out at 10:20. I mean, I guess we had been successful, in a manner of speaking; we had been given an appointment for later in the week. (At home, what functioning bank would tell patrons ready to plonk down money, "Eh...come back in a few days"? It would be a 5-minute process to be signed up and done!) Anyway, after that small downer, we had a major "up" as we continued along the street and visited our first proper boulangerie. No appointments or put-offs there! We toted home a big baguette (and some pain au chocolate, of course), smiling all the way.

I'm thrilled to say that a huuuuuge up came in the form of us purchasing a car. We devoted much time and anguish to it across Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The used car market in France is almost nonexistent, so pickin's are slim and prices are high, but a silver lining is that the nearby options were quickly inventoried. Most dealerships have 5 or 10 used vehicles for sale, most of them still relatively new and costly...maybe 1 or 2 in our price range. We didn't want to buy privately since there was little price difference and we knew we'd struggle to deal with the extensive paperwork without a dealer handling it. Anyway, to make a long story a tiny(?) bit shorter: Next Friday (assuming we figure out how to get a proof of residence document from the town hall next week and obtain car insurance, ha!) we'll be picking up our "new" 2008 Ford Fiesta, 100,000 miles, diesel, manual transmission, around $6000 (ouch...but one of the very cheapest available). It's super basic and, being diesel, sounds more like a truck than a tiny car, but hopefully it'll serve us well this coming year. Presumably we'll make back some of the cost when we off-load it next summer. We're pretty sure that Yves, our very nice and endlessly patient car dealer, has promised to replace the timing belt (Jesse noted it looked worn), fix the wonky passenger window, and do a few other things while the paperwork is being sorted. [Note that "timing belt" was not covered by Madame Turcotte in my high school French class...]  Yves offered a car for us to use in the meantime, since our airport rental had to go back within hours. His loaner is mighty far from being a luxury vehicle but we are so thankful for wheels. Yves made it clear that it was not a "rental" but a free loan, and added that it was a sign of goodwill of the French to the Americans for our help in World Wars I and II. Not that Jesse and I can take credit there!  :)  Anyway, I jumped into the welcome loaner and followed Jesse and the boys 120 km to return the rental in Nantes. Glad that driving stick came back without trouble!  :)

Let's see. Any other ups and downs? William was down for about 4 hours on Wednesday morning. He kept coming out in sweats and weeping that he needed to throw up, completely listless and needing to lie still to keep the nausea at bay. I tucked him in our master bedroom with a bowl, and Josiah and I kept him company when he wasn't dozing. I was sure we were in for a round of the stomach bug in the family, but around noon he perked up a bit. He wanted water. A bit later he ate some toast. Then he wanted plain yogurt and muesli. He never did throw up and has been right as rain ever since. Phew!

Poor kiddo. (But hooray for a dreamy bedroom! Not that William appreciates it like Mommy...  The home's owner is a Canadian artist; the huge gray cloud canvas, not well shown here, is her work. Beautiful paintings are in most rooms of the house.)

The most recent "down" happened yesterday. Down, literally. The teapot cozy here was really grubby, stained, soiled. I tossed it in the wash with a small load I going. When I opened the machine a few hours later to hang out the finished wash (no dryer here), I just about fell over. It looked like a bird had died in there. Yikes. Didn't occur to me that it might be a down cozy—but even if I had thought to check, what foul luck that it burst a seam during the wash. (Or should I say, fowl luck... :)  I've spent absolutely ages getting feathers out of the washer, out of the clothes, out of everything. The boys have helped. There are feathers outside the house, inside the house, everywhere. I think we'll be finding them for a long time to come...reminders of this first crazy week of ups and "downs"!