This was our first full day in France. Maybe we tried to do a little too much.
We started by meeting Nelly (our relocation helper-outer) at our new house, for the inspection. Kaitlyn seemed to really like her new room and her new yard and she was way too thrilled with her new pool. Keeping her out of it is going to be an adventure in and of itself, which we knew going in. I told her she can only go in the pool if Mommy or Daddy is with her, but she had a grand time just dipping her fingers in and cleaning the decking. Our rental furniture arrived, so it looks a little like home. Good thing we included our pots and pans in our air shipment, because the rental doesn’t include a pot big enough to cook spaghetti! The tv won’t work with satellite, either, so we’re in for weeks of nothing but Cinderella and Clifford dvd’s. Of course, that’s about all we get to watch anyway.
Knowing we’d need to conduct business (aka spend money) we headed to the bank to pick up our checks and debit cards. They don’t mail them to you here, for fear of fraud. Although, the teller did not ask us for any id. She spoke no English and we spoke barely enough French to make that work. Until we looked at the checks and realized it only printed: M our Mme William Mortland Radeli That isn’t our name. So then we did have to ask to speak to the woman who handles the annoying Americans. She said, oh just sign the checks correctly, and she’d fix it on our next order. (You only get 25 checks at a time)
Next stop: McDonalds so Kaitlyn could have french fries. She and I went to les toilettes while Bill was left to order. The menu was in English, so that’s how he ordered. McChicken sandwich. The girl working there didn’t understand him. After piling our food on the tray, she said something we decided was I’ll bring you your cheeseburger. So we went upstairs to eat. We waited what felt like an eternity and finally Bill went downstairs to find out what happened to his food. She sent him back up. I fought back tears at our inability to do something as simple as order at McDonalds… or ask where our food was! He went back down a few minutes later, and returned with his burger. Then she walked by carrying a tray of food to someone else. Apparently, she did say she’d bring us our food.
We couldn’t give up at that. Not us. Next we decided to head to Carrfour… the SuperWalmart or Meiers of France. We’d been warned to allow a good three hours for our first trip to the grocery store. I have no idea how long we were in there. We started in the non-food area. Bought some children’s books in French, some electricity altering devices and a toy to replace the doll that got lost somewhere from getting in our rental car yesterday and getting out of it at the hotel. Anyway, Carrfour is the oddest place. There is a man who works there and all he does is wander the store with a wireless microphone babbling on and on in French about we don’t know what, because he is babbling in French. We were scared to walk down an aisle where we saw him, for fear he’d ask us a question and stick that microphone in our faces. So we weren’t there for much… just to pick up a few things to get us through the next few days. Spent forever trying to find trash bags. Also realized, we couldn’t even ask someone where to find them. Sugar presented too many choices to decipher with Kaitlyn tugging at one’s arm. Yogurt took up both sides of an entire aisle. I never did find potatoes, which is probably just as well because then I would have had to find a substitute for sour cream. Canned veggies should be ok, we bought by picture there. And for the wine asile, it seemed safe enough to just grab any old bottle. We picked up a 4 Euro bottle, we’ll see how that is. The mini bottle with a screw cap we also bought isn’t too bad. So we filled our cart, got into the line to check out and realized we weren’t sure we could pay. We have our debit cards from the French bank, but not the pins to use them. We picked up our checks today, too, but didn’t have them with us. I noticed as we stood there in line limbo, unsure if it was wise to empty our cart onto the conveyor… the French people all chose to stand in one very long line next to us rather than take a chance behind us. Thank goodness, the place does take regular old American visa cards. (good to know if you come to visit and want to re-stock our shelves)
Now w’e’re back at the hotel for one last night of connectivity. Although, at 9:03 I was informed that our 24 hours of internet use ran out at 9. If I was told that, I forgot it. I have trouble remembering just about everything it seems. And I don’t think it’s because I’m pushing 40, thank you very much.