Un Autre Vendredi

Friday already! It is hard to believe that we have been here for two weeks.  This past week has not seemed as blog worthy. We have spent most of our time looking at apartments, gathering together information for preparing a dossier to get an apartment, and trying to get our mobiles. This hum drum activity has made me ponder the direction my blog should take, and who I am writing it for. I have received several comments on the blog in the comment section, via email and on the phone, but I would love more input. Am I connecting with you? Do you find the posts too long? I think all of my questions boil down to two things. Firstly whether this is more of a journal for myself and Keith, or something that we want people to interact with more? Let me know what you think about this. And secondly, I find that I am just not satisfied with one way communication. Maybe it is a bit of homesickness and culture shock but I want to know what everyone is doing on a daily basis, and no I do not find your daily activities boring. Perhaps I will just have to be patient and wait for proper visits to get all of the juicy gossip.

Regardless of my philosophizing on the merits of blogging, we have accomplished a lot of little things in our daily activities this week. The most exciting of which is we have submitted a dossier for an apartment. In order to obtain an apartment here you have to submit copies of your identity, banking information, work contract, and previous two years’ tax statements. In addition to this, because we are attempting to rent an apartment which is currently more than an a third of Keith’s monthly salary, we needed a guarantor. Thankfully Keith’s boss was completely comfortable with supplying us with copies of all of her personal and financial information for our dossier. This lack of privacy astounds us, but no one here seems to think it is a big deal.  Our completed dossier is now in the hands of the apartment’s agent, who will present it to the owner of the apartment, and it is his/her decision as to whether we are worthy candidates for renting his/her property.  The system is long and fussy, and most likely we won’t even know if we have been approved until next week.

In the meantime we continue to half-heartedly look for apartments just in case we need a “back up.”  I feel like those women on “Say Yes to the Dress” who continue to try on dresses because the “perfect” one might still be out there somewhere.  There are so many different options. How do we know what is the right location? Size? Layout? Price? The decision is somewhat daunting, but time is a limiting factor and if everything works out for the place we have submitted the dossier for we will take it. 

Keith started work on Thursday and is already into the thick of it. This has allowed me some time to mull around and test out my French solo. I can proudly say that I was able to get information about getting a library card and set up an appointment with an agent to see an apartment all by myself. Today the goal is to get my bank card, which may be a bit of challenge.

Numbers in French take a long time for me to process. Yesterday, we were finally able to get a mobile because Keith’s bank card came in. Unfortunately for us the package that we wanted was no longer available as of November 1^st  After much debate and dithering we decided to only get one phone for the moment and test it out, if we like this one we will get a second of the same type, or perhaps we will get a different one.  Having not really used our cell phone in Canada has put us on a steep learning curve here. In addition to this, all of the voicemail is in French. I was only able to get so far this morning before the automated voice started speedily spitting out security numbers and codes. I’m sure the recording wasn’t talking that fast, but I felt like it was on speed. After listening to it almost five times I was still lost.  Thank goodness they have sent us everything via text as well. and we had to start at the beginning with the very patient sales woman.

Just to make our Friday more interesting, Keith discovered fourmi (ants) in our kitchen this morning at 7:00. This resulted in a hasty sweep up. We also sprinkled lemon juice in their path as a home-made repellent. Our concierge suggested this approach until she could come back with a spray. By the end of the day there were no more fourmi – we hope. Ah the pleasures of living in a warm climate.

Here are some of the other pleasures of that warm climate. It is crazy to imagine that roses are blooming here in November, yet at the same time the trees are losing their leaves in the +16°C weather.