Our First Visitors!

On September 7, my sister Elaine and her husband Kent arrived for a two-day visit. They had gone to Germany to visit friends, and they decided to drive to France to see us. It was so wonderful to see them! It was a long, lonely summer here without knowing anyone, so it was great to be able to see family for a couple of days.

The day Elaine and Kent arrived, two things happened: there were torrential rains, and there was a general strike in France. (I'll write about the strike in a separate entry.) The rain caused our garage to be badly flooded. There's a story behind that, and here it is. At the end of July there was a night of heavy rain, and our garage ended up with a little bit of water in it. There's a drainage gutter at the end of our driveway near the garage entrance, and I figured it was clogged up, and that's why rainwater had gotten into the garage. When I tried to lift up the heavy metal plates of the gutter, however, I wasn't able to do it. I called our landlord and told him we had water in our garage. He told me to tell the gardener (whom I had recently hired) to take a look at the rain gutter.

The gardener came to work on our yard a few weeks later, and I told him about the rain gutter being clogged. He said he'd take a look, but I believe he left without doing so. So when we had torrential rains all day September 7, our garage was badly flooded. I called our landlord on the afternoon of the 7th and said there was a pool of water collected in front of our garage, and that the garage was surely flooded. He said he'd come take a look that evening. He never showed up.

Meanwhile, Kent and Elaine arrived from Germany on the evening of the 7th. After dinner we all went to look at the garage situation. When we stepped through the pool of water leading to the garage and opened the door, we saw that the garage was badly flooded. At that point Kent started helping us move furniture around so that we could do some damage control. (We have some furniture in the garage because we're not using it as a garage per se. It's a nice, clean room, so we've been planning on using it as a recreation room. It has a small couch, TV, and old computer in it.) Kent spent a good part of that evening, as well as the next day, figuring out how to clean out the drainage gutter so that we wouldn't have this problem with flooding in the future.

In the end, the damage to the garage wasn't too bad. We had to throw out a big rug and a small rug, but luckily they weren't expensive. There was a lot of mud to muck out, but most of our belongings weren't particularly harmed. And now, since Kent cleaned out the gutter and got it flowing again, we hopefully won't have this problem in the future.

So our first visitors ended up helping us with house projects. (Kent also figured out how to fix our motion detector light.) At least we managed to spend a fun day looking at the sights of Lyon in between the house projects. Not only was it great to see Elaine and Kent, but they also brought us a bunch of brownie and pancake mixes, as well as syrup and other things I had requested that we missed and couldn't find in France. It was so nice that they came!

Two days after the rains ended, the landlord called me and said he hadn't been able to make it that one evening, but he could come this evening. I told him not to bother. My brother-in-law had come from the USA to fix our rain gutter.

We're Connected to the World!

After over six weeks of living in France, we finally got our landline phone, TV, and internet service. We ended up canceling our contract with SFR, since we had a contract with them for about 8 weeks and they didn't deliver the service. (The relocation company had put in our order with them two weeks before we even moved to France.) We switched to the French national telecom company, Orange, and in a little over a week we had all of our services ready to go.

The whole saga of trying to get the telecom services set up helped me see some differences between the way things are done in France versus the US. I guess the main lesson I learned is that there doesn't seem to be the same emphasis on customer service here in France. I say that because SFR canceled two different appointments with us on the day of the appointment without giving any reason why.

Also, things here don't necessarily seem to happen in the most logical manner. SFR was supposed to send a technician to our house to set up our equipment, yet we had to pick up the equipment ourselves. For the first appointment (which got cancelled at the last moment), we had to pick up an internet router/modem at a location in the city. When that appointment was cancelled, I had to return that modem and pick up a second one for the second scheduled appointment. (Why, you may ask, couldn't I use the same SFR modem for the second appointment? I wondered the same thing. It turns out that each appointment has a specific modem that goes along with it.) These pickups/returns are in the city, and since we live in the suburbs, it's an inconvenience to do all of this. Now that SFR cancelled our second appointment at the last minute and we've cancelled with them, I have to return the second modem. The most logical solution for all of this would be to have the technician who is installing the equipment bring it along with him or her on the installation visit.

One of my general impressions of being here so far is that many things seem to be unnecessarily complicated and burdened with paperwork. Efficiency does not seem to be a strong suit of the French. (I remember getting our cell phones at SFR when we first moved here. It took about three hours and I had to fill out and sign six sets of paperwork for three phones.)

Since I just mentioned getting our cell phones with SFR...here's one more little tidbit about dealing with them. When I got my cell phone, it was a 99 euro phone, but it came with a 50 euro rebate offer. The woman at the SFR store gave me all the paperwork for the rebate and even filled it out for me. All I had to do was mail it, which I did. Last week I got a letter from SFR saying I would not be getting the rebate because I had bought my phone at a store that was not participating in the rebate offer. How could that possibly be true when the employee at that SFR store was the one who gave me all the paperwork for the rebate offer?

A Bald Mouse in the House

The other evening we were in our living room when the girls noticed some movement in our fireplace. (The fireplace is covered with a glass door.) The girls looked and thought at first that it was a frog that was stuck in there. Then they looked more closely and discovered that it was a small black bat. By the way, the word for "bat" in French is "chauve-souris"--literally, a bald mouse.

Needless to say, we were all shocked and worried. (Actually, we were all freaked out, but that doesn't sound dignified.) We watched the bat flutter around the fireplace for several minutes. We decided that we should just leave it alone and hope that it could get out the same way it got in. It turns out that Anna, who has an almost pathological fear of insects, has an equally strong fear of bats. She wasn't able to sleep in her own bed that night for fear that the bat would get out of the fireplace and attack her. So she slept with Jennifer.

The next morning the bat was still there. It was totally motionless, so I thought perhaps it had died. However, it was just in a deep daytime sleep. When it got dark, it started to flap around the fireplace again. Our cat Cookie Dough, who fancies himself a hunter, couldn't tear himself away from the little creature in the fireplace. Cookie Dough spent most of the evening (and probably all night) meowing and trying to bat at the bat. Once again, Anna slept with Jennifer.

The next morning I decided that something had to be done. I couldn't bear the thought of the bat starving to death in our fireplace. Our main worry was that the bat might have rabies. So Jennifer and I locked all three cats and the two girls behind closed doors, gathered up all of our nerve, and commenced a bat rescue mission.

First we taped a large plastic garbage bag around the fireplace door in the hopes that when we opened the door, the bat would just fall in. Then we put on winter coats and gloves, just in case the potentially rabid bat bit us. I grabbed a toilet scrub brush to use to prod the bat. We were ready to go in.

The bat was in a deep sleep, upside down, in the very corner of the fireplace. It didn't move when we opened the door, which meant I had to prod it with the toilet brush. I poked at it, and managed to make it fall toward the bag, at which point Jennifer maneuvered the bag over and managed to catch it. I pinched the bag shut and dashed through the patio door and outside.

Once outside, I ran under a tree near the outer edge of our yard. I wasn't looking forward to shaking the bat out of the bag, but I made myself do it. I shook and shook the bag, and finally the bat fell to the ground. It started to flop around, at which point I ran like a crazy person back into the house, undoubtedly shrieking the whole time. At least we knew the bat was alive. (Zoey would have never forgiven us if somehow the bat had died. She's a die-hard animal lover.)

So it wasn't pretty, but we managed to rescue the bat and get it out of our house. I could have called a pest control company to deal with it, but the prospect of dealing with another French workman was daunting. Besides, knowing how things work here, it probably would have taken several days to get a pest control person to our house, by which time the bat would have died. All I can say is that I hope we don't have any other creatures fall into our fireplace in the future.

The Art of being Patient

I've realized that we Americans are accustomed to instant gratification. When we want something, we want it now. I've only spent 4 and 1/2 weeks in France, but I've already learned that living here is going to teach me patience.

My number one example is our landline phone/internet/cable TV service. We still haven't gotten it. As I mentioned in a previous post, when we moved to Pennsylvania, we had all of those services set up and ready to go in less than 48 hours after moving into our house. Our order here in France was put in almost 6 weeks ago, and we still have no service.

Example number two: our garbage service. We moved into our house here on a Friday, and on the following Monday morning I put in an order for a garbage bin. (You have to have an approved bin to get your garbage picked up by the city of Lyon.) I had to pay for the bin, including insurance in case it gets broken or stolen, but that was okay. What was worrisome was when the woman told me it would probably take about 15 days to get the bin.

Needless to say, by the time 15+ days have gone by, a family can accumulate a lot of garbage. I started putting it outside the kitchen door, but every night some animal would get into it, and every morning I had to clean up the mess. I emailed the garbage bin woman twice during the two weeks to ask if there was any progress with the bin. She said no, I just needed to wait longer.

Finally, right at the end of the 15-day period, the bin was delivered to the house. I was so excited! It's amazing that an event like that could make me so happy, but after all those days of picking up garbage outside, the bin looked really good to me. I emailed the woman who had helped me place the order to tell her I'd gotten the bin. Her reply was classic. Translated, it was something like this: "See, with a little patience, everything does happen."

There are other things, too. For example, if you go out to eat at a restaurant or cafe, there is no rush. You can sit and talk in a leisurely fashion with absolutely no one pressuring you to leave. This is a pleasant contrast from some places in the States, where you feel like the server wants to rush you out the door, especially during busy times. When I go out to eat here, I appreciate that I'm not rushed. However, when you want to get the check, you need to prepare yourself to be there for the long haul. The servers are in no hurry to bring you your check.

Another example is in check-out lines at stores. Jennifer, in particular, likes to do everything quickly and efficiently, and she expects others to do things quickly, too. Every time we wait in a line at a store, it drives her crazy that the people ahead in the line empty their cart slowly and deliberately, and then take several minutes to dig out their card or cash to pay the bill. (This has happened to us at toll plazas as well. We always get our money ready ahead of time. The people we are inevitably stuck behind, however, apparently have to dig through every possession in their car to find some money to pay the toll.) The etiquette here is that you wait patiently for the person ahead of you to finish their transaction. Muttering in a stage whisper about how long things are taking or honking your horn at someone at a toll plaza are not done, at least as far as I can tell.

More about patience. Most stores and businesses are closed all day Sunday and for two hours around lunchtime on Monday through Friday. Most businesses, including gas stations, aren't open much past 7:30 pm, either. This means that now that we're living here, we have to plan our shopping and our business dealings accordingly. In the States, if you want to go to a store, chances are you can get in your car, drive off, and find the store open. Perhaps that's because it's all about making the sale in the States. In France they don't seem to mind that there are several hours a week and all day Sunday when they could be selling things to customers but aren't.

Things that are different

Everyone knows that if you go to a different country, things are going to be done differently from the way they're done in your home country. I've decided to try to keep track of some of the things that are different about being here in France.

Doors. The style of the doors, door handles, and locks is different here. Not to mention the number of keys! When we moved into the house, we were handed a big bunch of 12 keys. Granted, a couple of them are duplicates, and two of them don't work in any door at all. Here are what the keys go to: the outside gate, the mailbox (one for getting the mail from inside the gate, and a separate one for getting the mail from outside the gate), the front door, the shutters that cover the front door, the kitchen door, and the garage. One might expect the front door and kitchen door to use the same key, but they don't. Now, I want to contrast this group of keys to our Bethlehem house, where we had ONE key that opened all of the various doors, including the garage. Jennifer and I are constantly trying to remember what key goes where here.

Laundry. Most people in Europe don't have dryers, and right now we don't have one, either. We bought a second-hand washing machine, and the wash cycle takes one and a half hours. (When I spent my two summers in Spain, I used a washing machine there where the cycle took two hours.) When the laundry is finally done, we have to hang it to dry. Our garage has a number of clothes lines built in, but things take a really long time to dry there, since it's dark and cool. So the first time Jennifer did laundry here, she spread all of our clothing out in the front yard to dry in the sun. Needless to say, this included quite a few pairs of underwear. We've been told that Charbonnieres les Bains is considered quite a chic town to live in. We think that the town's reputation probably went down a notch the day the Americans had their underwear strewn all over their front yard.

Food handling. In the States, people who work in food service wear plastic gloves when they handle your food. Here, they use their bare hands. People here don't seem to be getting sick in droves as a result of the lack of plastic gloves.

Insurance. The French seem to have insurance for everything. We had to get home insurance and car insurance, which we expected. But we also had to get school insurance for the girls (each school child must have it), and insurance on our garbage bin (in case it gets broken or stolen). And we received notice from our insurance agency that we can get insurance to cover us in case we get sued for any reason. We opted not to get that.

Sundays. Nothing is open here on Sunday, except for the occasional restaurant. I mean nothing.

Lunch break. Most businesses and offices, unless they're really large (like a chain department store), are closed from about 12:00 to 2:30. This happens in Spain, too, where it's called the Siesta time. I didn't know it happens in France.

Neighbors

I realize that it's been a few days since I've written, so I decided I should write an update. First of all, we still don't have a telephone landline, TV service, or internet service (except for a 3G key) at the house. It's been more than a month since it was all ordered. (Thank goodness for cell phones, or we'd be up a creek in terms of communication.) Apparently what we're waiting for is a phone line from French Telecom. I'm thinking they need to revamp something in the way they provide phone service, since you can get a new phone line in the US literally on the same day you order it. It's hard not having a landline, since I'd like to call people in the States, but that would cost an outrageous amount of money using my cell phone.

But on a more positive note, we've met some of our neighbors, and they're very nice. Jennifer met the woman next door, who speaks a little English. Then a little over a week ago, a man rang our bell, introduced himself as our neighbor, and brought us some lettuce from his garden. His name is Julien, and he's a retired English teacher. He came every day for four days and brought us lettuce each day, but I haven't seen him for a few days now. I think he likes being able to practice his English with us.

The first day I met Julien, I told him that some of the outlets in our house weren't working, and that I'd checked the fuse box, where everything seemed to be in the right position. I asked him if he knew anything about electricity. He said no, but the neighbor across the street, Monsieur Robert, knows a lot about electricity. Julien suggested that I knock on M. Robert's door.

I debated that for a couple of hours. I felt timid about knocking on this man's door out of the blue, but on the other hand, it was a pain having about ten outlets, as well as our microwave oven, not working. So I got up my courage and knocked on M. Robert's door. He was very nice, and came over and looked at our fuse box and tested the outlets. He couldn't figure out what was wrong, and said that I should call an electrician.

So we've met three of our neighbors, and all of them are retired. Julien said that everyone in our neighborhood is retired, except for one younger couple whom I haven't met yet. There are about seven houses in our little neighborhood, and apparently they were all built in the late 70's, which is when our neighbors bought the houses. Luckily, our house has been completely renovated on the inside, so it's brand new.

To finish up with the electricity story, I got in contact with the landlord's office, and the landlord himself, as well as a team of three men, came over this week to make all the repairs that needed to be made. (There were problems with the plumbing and with some of the doors not locking, as well as with the electricity.) So right now everything is working properly in the house, and that's a relief.

I generally understand what people are saying to me in French, but I've struggled with all of these workmen. They seem to speak quickly and they use very specialized vocabulary (electrical and plumbing terms, for example). So I consider myself lucky that I get the gist of it. At least I think I'm getting the gist of it!

Driving

We have two cars that we're driving here: a rented Peugeot that's the size of a small station wagon, and a smaller Peugeot that we bought used from a British man. Jennifer's company has ordered a Citroen for us to use the years that we're here, so as soon as that comes, we'll turn in the rental car.

Jennifer has driven in France a number of times now, since she drove every time she came here for a business trip. As a result, she tends not to get flustered by the roads and the unique driving situations that you find here. Here's an example of a unique driving situation. When we were staying in the hotel our first week in France, workers started to repave the road that went past the hotel. The road is divided by a median strip down the middle. The first day the workers tore up one half of the road, so it was possible for both sides of traffic to take turns driving on the other side. On the second day the workers tore up the other side of the road, but drivers could then use the first side. On the third day, however, the workers had torn up both sides of the road, rendering it completely unusable. That was the only road that led in and out of the hotel. When Jennifer left the hotel to go to work that day, she was confused about what she was supposed to do. Apparently the workers motioned to her to get on the sidewalk, so she drove down the sidewalk for about a third of a mile until she reached another road. This is one reason why the French have small cars. There's no way an Explorer or an Expedition would have fit on that sidewalk.

Two characteristics of the roads here are different from all the places I've driven in the States. First of all, some roads are amazingly narrow. They barely seem wide enough for one car, and yet they're meant for traffic that goes in both directions. Secondly, there are about a million roundabouts. If you drive for a mile, you'll probably cross three roundabouts.

I, unlike Jennifer, sometimes feel flustered when I drive here. Part of it is that I have no idea where things are yet, so I have to rely completely on the GPS. The other day the girls and I set out to buy groceries at a big grocery store in another town about 20 minutes from our house. I followed the directions of the GPS, like usual. At one point she (we've been calling her "Tammy") told me to take a sharp right turn in a little village. I stopped the car and looked at the road she wanted me to go down. It was the narrowest road I had seen yet. Still, I knew that French roads are often narrow, and I trusted Tammy. I started down the road, which went down a very steep hill and was surrounded on both sides by thick trees. If another car comes toward me, I thought, we're going to crash, because there's no room to pull aside. After driving down the hill quite a distance, I came to a dead stop. There were two metal posts in the road blocking any further descent. The girls and I realized that this was, in fact, a bike path.

I had a moment of extreme panic. I now had to either back the car up a very steep hill in order to get back on the main road, or I had to leave the car in the bike path and go get help in the little village. I was too embarrassed to have any French person see that I was dumb enough to drive down a bike path, so I started backing up. At one point the car hit a low stone wall that jutted into the road. Oh great, I thought, now I've blown a tire. It was okay, though--the bump didn't seem to hurt the car. The girls helped direct me as I drove backward and upward. (The road wound around a lot of blind corners, which didn't make things easier.) Finally we made it to the top. My heart didn't stop racing for about half an hour after the incident occurred.

What's so hard about this?

So here's my question for the day: what's so hard about getting a home phone, TV service, and internet set up? We've heard that it can take up to a month to get a phone line set up in France, so the relocation agency that's helping us initiated the process several weeks ago. We actually had an appointment for July 6, but SFR (the phone company we chose that's caused us nothing but grief) cancelled the appointment without giving us a reason. Now we have no idea how long we'll be waiting.

The only reason we have any internet at all is because Jennifer spent two horribly frustrating hours with the SFR people in Lyon getting a 3G internet key we can plug into our computers. (It only works on one computer, though it's supposed to work on all of them. And the speed of the connection is horrible--sort of like the old dial-up days.) Jennifer actually wrote a piece about her experience that she wants to put on my blog, but I haven't been able to get it posted because of technical difficulties. I'm still trying.

The girls are used to spending a lot of their free time with the TV and internet, so this isn't easy for them.

For the record, when we moved to Bethlehem, I called RCN (the local phone/internet provider), had a five minute conversation with them to order our service, and two days later they had installed our phone, internet, and cable TV. Why is it taking us endless frustrating hours of dealing with SFR employees and several weeks of time and we still don't have any service here? (It's not about the language barrier, because Jennifer had two French people from the relocation office trying to help her at SFR the other day.) We're in France, not Africa or Latin America, right?

July 10--Frustration

I feel like so much has been going on, and most of has been frustrating. For example, yesterday morning we checked out of the hotel we had been staying in for a week. Well, we tried to check out. This is what happened. Jennifer had originally booked the hotel room until next Tuesday. Then we found out the movers could come a little earlier, so we decided to check out yesterday and move into our house. We told the people at the front desk of the hotel that we were checking out early. Each time we said that, they told us to change our reservation via their web site--that was the only way to change our reservation. Unfortunately, once on their web site, we couldn't change anything. The web site demanded a reservation number, and the people at the front desk provided that number, but the site didn't recognize it. After I had tried to change the reservation from the laptop in our room several times to no avail, I marched to the front office. I told the woman the situation and asked her to try to change our reservation from her computer. I stood there and watched. She wasn't able to change our reservation, either. So, the woman said, we couldn't check out early. Well, we could leave the hotel, but we would continue to be charged for the room until Tuesday. So Sanofi-Pasteur will be paying for four days of a hotel that we aren't staying in, all because the hotel's web site doesn't work. Has anyone ever heard of only being able to change a reservation via a web site, and not in person or over the phone?

So we moved into our new house yesterday. It's a pretty house, but small, so it's a challenge figuring out how to unpack our belongings. And there are a few frustrating things. The washer that we bought leaks water onto the floor of the garage. The temperature of the water in two out of our three bathrooms isn't set right, so it's either scalding hot or freezing cold. At least we have one functioning shower. That shower will get lots of use, since it's in the 90's and humid and nothing is air conditioned, so we're all sweaty all of the time.

Today we went into the city to meet a colleague of Jennifer's and to do some shopping in a huge mall that's right by the main train station. When we were walking through the parking garage towards the mall, Zoey was walking sort of in the middle of the pavement. At one point, a car came driving through, and according to Jennifer, it nearly ran Zoey over. Jennifer screamed a high-pitched scream that was so loud and so long that all the nearby pedestrians froze and the man driving the car screeched on his brakes. He must have thought that he had run someone over, but he didn't--Zoey was fine. I mumbled an embarrassed "Pardon" to the man, lowered my head, and tried to slink away.

After we had done some shopping in the mall, Jennifer and her colleague decided that we should walk for 20 minutes in the 90 degree heat to buy frozen food at a frozen food store. The girls complained bitterly during the entire walk. Actually, once we finally arrived at the store, it felt good in there. They had some serious air conditioning going. While Jennifer was walking through the aisles, Zoey decided to step outside for a minute. She pushed open a door, and all of the sudden a loud, piercing alarm reverberated through the store. She had pushed open the emergency door, but she didn't know that's what it was, since she can't read French. I had to make another mumbled apology, this time to the store employee who came running through the store upon hearing the alarm. Nothing like being inconspicuous in France and blending in seamlessly with the natives.

The move begins

The Christensen-Goodfellow

MOVE TO FRANCE

2010

The MOVING PROCESS

Preparing for this move was considerably more difficult than preparing for our move to Pennsylvania a year and a half ago. We knew that wherever we ended up living in France, the house or apartment would be much smaller than our 3500 sq ft house in Bethlehem. That meant that we had to sell or give away as much as we could. In addition, there was an administrative/logistical element to this move that just hadn’t been present when we moved domestically. We had to obtain long-term visas, find a school for the girls, sell our cars and large appliances, and we had to have special exams and paperwork for the cats, among other things. In addition, we had to book hotels and rental cars for the one-month period that we would be out of our house in PA and the one-week period before we could get into our house in France. The paperwork and logistics that we worked on for several months prior to the move were mind-boggling. (The paperwork included making numerous photocopies of passports, birth certificates, and diplomas, getting a French bank account, setting up French insurance for us and the girls, getting international driver’s licenses, and wiring money to pay for the rent on the house we picked out, among other things.)

During this period of preparation for the move, the four of us planned to go to France in April to pick out our house. However, two days before our scheduled departure, the volcano in Iceland blew, and all air travel to and from Europe was cancelled for several days. We had to postpone our trip for several weeks, since it hadn’t been easy to arrange those days off from school and work. Jennifer and I ended up flying to Lyon in May to pick out the house. The house we picked out is lovely and all new inside, but it’s SMALL. (European houses and apartments are almost never as big as American houses and apartments.) It’s in a suburb of Lyon called Charbonnieres-les-Bains.

Besides picking out a house, another big thing that we had to get done before our move was getting our long-term visas. We took the girls out of school on a Friday at the end of May and drove down to Washington, DC. After spending several hours sitting in the visa room of the French embassy, we were told that we couldn’t get our visas because of our unusual family situation. (The head of the visa section was on vacation that day, and the underlings didn’t think they should approve our visas without his permission.) We were very frustrated and disappointed, and we had to go to Washington again a few weeks later, when the head of the visa section was there, to get our visas. After our experiences of having a freak volcano eruption and an unsuccessful trip to the French embassy, we began to think that everything about our move was surrounded by bad luck.

After all of our preparations, the move officially began on June 1, when the movers came to our house to begin packing our belongings. We had had to separate everything into three groups: things going into storage in the U.S., things going by plane to France, and things going by ship to France. The movers came a full month before our move date, since it would take that long for our belongings to arrive in France by ship and to make it through customs.

It was very time-consuming and stressful preparing for the date that the movers came. We sold some of our belongings and donated a huge number of things to charity, but we still had a lot of stuff. It took the movers—a team of three men—five full days to pack and move everything. Once our house was empty, we began a period of more than five weeks in which we would rent eight rental cars and stay in nine hotels in two countries.

The FLIGHTS—July 1, 2010

Since we had to move out of our house and into hotels for a month before we actually moved to France, we saved out quite a few belongings that we needed to take with us on the plane. We weren’t able to pack any liquids or any food items for shipment ahead of time, so our only option was to take those types of items on the flights with us. We had a duffel bag full of creams, lotions, shampoos, etc. In addition, Jennifer saved out a number of food items that she wanted in France. We also had a small suitcase full of books that all four of us had saved out for the month, and another small suitcase full of the documents and paperwork that was needed to wrap things up in the U.S. and establish our life in France. All of that, combined with a month’s worth of clothing for four people, meant that we had nine suitcases to take with us on the plane. We also had three cats, three laptop computers, and various other carry-on items.

Luckily, we flew business class, so there was no problem checking our nine suitcases. However, there was a 50 lb weight limit for each bag. When we got to the Air France counter at the Newark airport, we discovered that two of our suitcases weighed more than 50 pounds. This meant that we had to redistribute some items from heavy bags into lighter bags. I opened the first overweight bag and discovered that Jennifer had packed a case of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. She loves to cook with it and thought that she wouldn’t be able to get it in France (which is probably true). Needless to say, the soup was very heavy. It struck me as funny that we were well enough off to fly business class, but we had packed a case of soup. I went to throw the soup in the trash bin, but the woman behind the counter stopped me and had me put it in a lighter suitcase. She said she hated for us to waste food.

Going through security was a challenge. We had to take off our shoes, unpack the three laptops, take the cats out of their carriers, and hold the cats to our chests as we walked through the metal detector. Once through the detector, we had to get the cats back into their carriers and quickly gather up all of our belongings.

The cats were well behaved on the flights. They did meow a lot on takeoff and landing, which were both bumpy. And Cookie Dough meowed through a lot of the flight from Newark to Paris. When we landed in Paris, the plane became very quiet except for the loud, choral meowing of the three cats. Several of the passengers in business class craned their necks to see where all of the hullabaloo was coming from.

ARRIVAL—July 2

Once at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, we had to get off the plane and take a long, slow, crowded bus ride to the terminal. Then we had to walk a long distance, go through passport control, take another long walk, and go through security again. After another long walk, we were at our gate for the flight to Lyon. The girls hadn’t eaten much of anything on the flight to Paris, since they’re such picky eaters. So once we got to our second gate, I dashed off to try to find food for them. I was able to buy chocolate croissants and drinks and get back to the gate just in the nick of time before the final boarding. We got on another overcrowded and stifling hot bus that took us out to our plane.

I haven’t mentioned yet that the weather in France had been very moderate for the whole spring and summer up to the week that we arrived here, but it turned very hot a couple of days before our arrival. Jennifer and I were covered in sweat after our bus rides, long walks, and rush through the Paris airport. When we landed in Lyon and walked out the door, we were greeted with hot, humid air that was in the 90’s.

Jennifer had arranged for a van to meet us at the airport in Lyon. The van driver loaded up our luggage and then drove me into the city, where I went to the relocation office to get the keys to our new house and our bank cards. (The people at the relocation office were the ones who helped us find our house, set up our French bank account, etc.) While I was in the city, Jennifer and the girls were at the airport renting a car. We all met up at the hotel outside of Lyon a couple of hours later.

Once we had checked into the hotel, we all needed some food. Jennifer and I left the girls in the room, and we set out in the car to find some food and to buy a litter box and litter for the cats. We told Anna to lock the door of our hotel room from the inside while we were out on our errands. We wanted the girls to be safe. Jennifer and I had a rough time on our expedition. The people at the hotel reception desk had told us that there was a small grocery store about a mile away. We found it very easily. Unfortunately, though, it was closed from 12:30 to 3:00. We were there at 2:00. So we had to find another place to buy food and cat supplies. The rental car came with a GPS, but it was hard to use and seemed to give very circuitous directions. We drove around the suburbs of Lyon, lost, for quite a while. We knew that the girls were starving back at the hotel. Finally we found a McDonald’s and decided that that was better than nothing. The cat supplies would have to wait. Miraculously, we found our way back to the hotel.

We got to our hotel room and knocked. There was no answer. We rang the bell repeatedly. There was no answer. We couldn’t even put our key into the lock, since the other key was in the lock inside the room. We went to the reception desk and used the phone to call the room. There was no answer. The man at the reception desk said that the only way to get into the room if the door was locked from the inside was to call the fire fighters. We knew that the girls had fallen asleep in the room—after all, we’d missed a night of sleep. We decided that it would not make a good impression to have the fire fighters come to our hotel room on our first day in France. (The man at the reception desk also said that he had never seen this happen before. He said that everyone except us knows not to lock a door from the inside.) We knocked, rang, and called off and on for over an hour. Meanwhile, Jennifer and I were outside in the hot sun. We couldn’t believe that the girls were sleeping so hard. What if they slept through the whole evening and the night? Would Jennifer and I have to get another hotel room? We were hot, exhausted, and frustrated. Finally we called and Anna answered the phone. She said that they were, indeed, sleeping. She let us into the room. After all of that, though, we still hadn’t found a place to buy the cat supplies. Jennifer and Zoey ventured back out into the suburbs later in the afternoon to buy cat supplies and fans. After all, we arrived in France during a mini heat wave, and the French don’t do air conditioning. (Or at least not in most places, and not in our hotel.)

Apparently Jennifer and Zoey had quite an adventure when they went shopping that first afternoon. They went to Carrefour in Ecully. It’s a huge grocery/department store—sort of like a Super Walmart. They didn’t know where the cat supplies were, so Jennifer said to a clerk, “Les chats—pee pee.” It seems rudimentary, but it did the trick, and they found the litter boxes. At one point Zoey got separated from Jennifer in the huge, packed store. She managed to convey to customer service that she’d lost her mom, and Jennifer managed to find her. It was good that they were successful in their expedition without the benefit of my language skills.

July 3

The day after we arrived, we set off to do more errands. We wanted to get cell phones right away, since we wanted to be able to be in touch with each other and with the business people we’re dealing with. (The land line phone wasn’t due to be installed for several days at the new house.) Jennifer and Zoey had seen an SFR phone store at the mall with the Carrefour, so we headed back out to that shopping center.

We entered the SFR store and I began talking to one of the salespeople, a young woman named Marie-Laure. (Jennifer asked if anyone in the store spoke English, and no one did.) ML described various possible cell phone plans to me, and I passed the information on to Jennifer. Then Jennifer, Zoey, and I picked out cell phones that we liked. (Zoey originally wanted a phone that cost 249 euros. We said “no” to that. However, when Jennifer expressed interest in the same phone, we were told that it would cost her only one euro. We’ve heard that the French often think they know what’s best for people, and in this case, they had a pricing plan that let us know that they didn’t think an expensive phone was appropriate for a child.) After we picked out the phones and heard about the various plans, which took probably about 45 minutes, ML went up to the front counter with me to write up the contract, and Jennifer and the girls went to Carrefour to buy a new TV.

The way that the phone store worked was a sight to behold. There were four employees working there, but only one small counter/work space. The store was small and crowded with customers. ML had to print out extensive paperwork for me to sign, so the paperwork and the sundry boxes for our three phones were spread out over the counter. Every time one of the other salespeople needed to use the counter, various papers and boxes got knocked onto the floor. When ML was trying to use the computer and cash register for my transaction, other employees would break in to ring something up for their customers. I had to sign six documents for every cell phone that we got. When it was all over, I had spent over two hours in the store getting the phones. I felt like my experience there was a mini demonstration of the French penchant for bureaucracy that one always hears about.

While I was waiting endlessly for Marie-Laure to finalize my contract, a middle-aged couple came into the store. The woman asked an employee a question in broken English. The employee turned to me for help translating into French. I heard the customers talking to each other and realized that they were Russian. So I ended up translating from Russian into French for the Russian couple. Marie-Laure and her colleagues were quite impressed with my language skills.

July 6

Today I took the bus from the hotel here in Marcy l’Etoile into Lyon to meet with the people at the Chambre de Commerce de Lyon. I had already been offered a position teaching English at the Chamber of Commerce in the suburbs—that had happened when we took our “discovery” trip to Lyon in November. But the people at CCI Villefranche had passed my name on to their colleagues in Lyon with the thought that I might be able to teach at both places.

The people at CCI were impressed with my credentials, and especially the fact that I have an MBA, since much of their training is aimed at business people in French companies. They would have offered me a contract on the spot, if not for the fact that I reminded them that I don’t have a work visa. (You have to be guaranteed a certain number of hours per week at your job to get a work visa, and CCI can’t guarantee that many hours, so I can’t get a work visa. I found all of this out when I talked to the people at CCI Villefranche during the spring.) The people at CCI Lyon were very helpful and tried to suggest ways that I might come up with a work visa, but in the end there was nothing they could do for me. They told me to call them when I get a visa.

I walked back to the bus stop feeling very dejected. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the number of things that we need to do here to get our household setup, and now once again I was met with bad news. When I got to the bus stop, there was a group of about 20 four- or five-year-olds, accompanied by their daycare providers, waiting to get on the same bus. They were headed to a huge park that’s near the hotel we’re staying in. One of the little girls took a look at me and said, “Oooo, vous etes vieille.” (“Oh, you’re old.”) That felt like the icing on the cake after my frustrating experience at CCI.

July 7

I wanted to say a few words about everything we had to do in the States to get our cats ready to come to France. They had to have special medical exams and international ID microchips inserted under their skin. They had to have their shots updated. After all that was done, the vet in Bethlehem filled out extensive paperwork, which I had to FedEx to the USDA office in Harrisburg. The official Pennsylvania vet certified that our cats were healthy, and then he sent all the paperwork back to me. We carried all of the cat documentation with us on our flights. Unfortunately, not a single official in the U.S. or France asked to see any of the paperwork. The whole process from start to finish cost us well over $600.

Well, back to today. We bought a used fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine from a British man who is moving back to the U.K. (Actually we bought a used Peugeot from him, too, that I'll be driving.) So we arranged for some deliverymen to bring the appliances to our house in Charbonnieres and then set everything up. Talking to the deliverymen reminded me of how many things I don't know in French. They tried to explain things about what they were hooking where, and they mentioned various tools. I got the general idea of the technical explanation, but I didn't understand everything. The French I know tends to be general stuff and stuff related to linguistics. I guess my linguistics knowledge doesn't help me much in the real world.