Moving: And The Struggles That Comes Along With It.

Hello! Our apologies for our absence, it has been a busy few weeks settling into our new (and permanent) apartment.  The biggest issue has been a lack of internet, but I digress.

We finally have French bank accounts. Bank accounts are definitely a bit different from how they are in Canada.  It definitely took some doing to get things setup.  Also I keep forgetting that Interac is a Canadian thing.  There was a bit of an adventure involving wiring some money to ourselves and then walking through a less-than-savory neighborhood with several hundred Euros in Jes' purse, but no one died so that was good.

We have French phone numbers! This was a bit of an interesting process. You need a bank account to start a phone plan and you need a phone number to open a bank account. Luckily, we had temporary UK numbers that a friend procured for us before we moved which made some impossible things possible.

Most importantly, we are no longer "between homes". After almost two months of not having our own place and our own property we finally got to sleep in our own bed, watch our own TV, eat off of our own dishes, and just generally enjoy the comforts of home.  There was one minor caveat though: in France, when people are renting an apartment they typically take their kitchen with them.  Even renters own their own appliances and cupboards. We were lucky in the fact that our kitchen at least comes with cupboards (no drawers though) but we did have to buy appliances.  Attempting to purchase a full set of appliances in French was another grand adventure.  But again we had some help from a fellow Canadian that speaks much better French than we do.

Our apartment is not actually in Paris, we now live in a suburb of Paris called Le Plessis Robinson.  The best way to describe it for people back home is to think of Le Plessis Robinson as St. Albert is to Edmonton. We are about a 30 minute train (RER to be more specific) ride in to the centre of Paris. Here is some information on our little "town" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Plessis-Robinson. Within walking distance we have a few grocery stores, a huge farmers market (Tuesday/Friday/Sunday) several restaurants and most other amenities. There is also an American style mall a short bus ride away.

The final bit of adventure was getting internet access.  Although we both technically had mobile internet, our apartment is somewhat of a dead zone for 3G on our provider.  I had 2 weeks of finding the best signal strength in the apartment and leaving my phone there as a WiFi hotspot.  But eventually we had proper internet (and TV and phone) installed.  We actually have fibre into our apartment.  All-in-all, 500 Mbit internet with no download caps for 45 euros per month isn't too bad.

Altogether it has been quite a rollercoaster of a month.  We are both starting French lessons soon so hopefully things will start to get easier.  But at least we have a comfy home to hide in and speak English.