What were they thinking??

What's with the website you need to go to in order to rent boats around here??? And the starting age is 16??? Crazy French!

Pictures of the Apartment

Well, I promised pictures and here they are. This is the inside of our new apartment. It is pretty nice, but super small. You can't tell by the pictures. but it is smaller than it looks. As you can see we got cupboards, a sink and a stove top (stupid electric!), but nothing else in the kitchen. To the right of the sink goes a dryer (have to by that still), to the left of the stove goes the clothes washer (it is coming on Friday) and I forgot to take a picture of the tiniest spot possible for the fridge (that is also coming on Friday). Under the stove, where there is a curtain is suppose to be an oven, but actually it is a vacant hole (we bought the oven and that is coming on Friday, as well). We also bought a microwave, coffee maker and blender.
The bathroom doesn't come with an enclosure around the tub or curtain so we have to buy that, as well so we can actually take a shower. I am so tired of spending money I could puke!!!! As soon as all of our appliances come, I will post some more pictures.

Shopping Spree in Stormy Weather

So it took another 3 days, but we finally got the keys to our apartment. It rained the entire weekend and it was also a holiday, but we managed on Monday to get some appliances. So we went to this store called Boulanger (it is sort of like Circuit City) and spent 2/3 hours there buying a fridge, washer, oven, microwave and iron. They didn't have the fridge, washer or oven in stock. What a big surprise that was! So we now have to wait and have them deliver everything on Friday. I had to order a coffee maker (good grief) and it will be here on Wednesday. The other totally crazy thing is that we wanted a toaster and they didn't have that in stock, either. They said it was going to take 4 weeks! For a friggin toaster???? So after that we went to Decathalon. (Pics above) Boy do I like this store! It is like Sports Chalet, but wayyyy better. The last picture is little Presley exhausted from the day and it was only half over at that point! So we got some mats and sleeping bags because we have to camp out on the floor of our apartment for the next month until our stuff from the states arrives. Lord help us!!!

Then we went to some random store that wants to be Ikea and got mentally exhausted by all the crap you can buy. We only came out of there with some hangers and a shower curtain! Michael absolutely hated that place so I venture to guess that we will never go back there.

Then we decided to go to the sea for a quick view. It was really stormy that night. What a bunch of crazies we were!

Next up~pictures of the new apartment

Official Provencial Renter

So I just signed the lease for my south of France apartment. It took more than 3 hours to do the friggin' paperwork! Can you believe it! It is also a totally empty apartment, and by that I mean, no fridge, no washer, no dryer, no oven, no stove! You get nothin' here when you rent and when you leave, you take your stuff with you! Whatever. So now we have to go and by all that junk. Hopefully we will move in on Monday or Tuesday. I am so ready to be done with hotel-camping. Pictures to come!!!

Picnic at the Calanaques

Today was better than most of the days have been around here. I actually got some work done and was invited on a hike and picnic,by the two girls I work with, in the Calanaques. When at the top, you can see the cove of Cassis on one side and the cove of La Ciotat on the other. The weather was great! Warm and sunny, but a bit windy at the top.

Work, as usually, has not gone too well. The internet here is just crap and we can't seem to get any speed. I called Orange France Telecom, that's the company we use (and every body raves about here) and they said we have crappy internet and phones for the business. Duh! So the guy told me about Orange Business Services which is suppose to give you better service. Why didn't they just give us that in the first place instead of stupid residential lines?? We are in a business park! So they gave us there little blah blah blah and told us it would take 1 month to run the lines. In the meantime, I gotta have some decent speed to work an ERP system. Let's hope that they can hurry this up. I hate inefficiency:(

Luckily some time away for lunch today was a much need break. Oh, and say hello to the two girls I work with, Marie and Severine. They are awesome!

 Tomorrow is sign the lease agreement for an over priced apartment day. Wish me luck! I don't have any more time to shop around ;D

Poster Child of France

First weekend in Provence

Well, we made it through the weekend. I can’t actually say it was all good, but Sunday evening was nice. Michael and I took a walk near a lovely golf course which had a hiking trail nearby. Definitely want to do that again. The hotel is called Dolce Hotel and Resorts Fregate Provence. Apparently a fregate is a golf course around here. Whatever?  Here is their site.

http://www.dolce-fregate-hotel.com/

So on Saturday I had to go to work. The internet at our hotel stopped working on Friday night so the only way to conduct business was to go to my office. That worked out fine since Michael is still trying to figure out what to do with the internet connection at my office. While he was messing around with that (he calls the wiring here a “clusterfuck” by the way), I was still trying to fool around with my work email. I still can’t get Outlook here, and I hate webmail. Anyway, I found out that the lady who we want to rent an apartment from is being a really big pain. She keeps thinking that we are going to skip out on her and not pay the rent or something. I have given her so much paperwork it is ridiculous. So she tells me I need to have some sort of guarantee from my boss that I am a good person. So my boss writes this letter and I send it to her. Now she says she needs a copy of my work visa. I wish she would just get her act together and tell me everything she needs all at once. So I emailed her my visa and a copy of my lease agreement in the USA showing that I lived in the same place for 2 years and they loved me soooo much after the first year that they allowed me to stay a second. Then I sent her the phone numbers of the 2 people I rented from when I was here (after I got their ok) and told her to call them for a character reference. I also sent her the immigration lawyer’s info so he could tell her “yes- she is all good and legal”. If that much info doesn’t convince her then I don’t know what will and I don’t want to even rent from her. I will be truly pissed, though, because she originally told us “yes” and we could move in this past weekend so we stopped looking for apartments and concentrated on other things. 

So after working at the office for a few hours, Michael and I went off to a town called Aubagne, just up the road, but it cost you 2. 40 euros round trip. Well, guess what. We got stuck in the toll booth because all I had was paper money and the toll booth only takes coins. So we had to push the attendant button and wait for some French guy to slow-as-molasses walk over and give us some change while the cars behind us started lining up and honking like crazy. Eventually, we got through and now we keep change with us at all times.

 In Aubagne, we went to a store called Darty to do some research on what to do with the clusterfuck at the office and also price out appliances. When you rent an apartment in France you have to have your own appliances, and then when you move out, you take them with you. Weird. So we stayed at Darty for while and then we had to go to the car rental place to show them the damage on our car. It is kind of messed up with a big scrap down the driver’s side where the kid’s scooter hit and along the window where his helmet hit. Needless to say, the car company wasn’t thrilled. The lady took pictures and told us to come back on Monday with the police report.  So we took off for Carrefour (which is a super cool market here  sort of like Costco) and made sure we did some grocery shopping because nothing is open in France on Sundays except for the police stations, hospitals and churches. So we loaded up on food (so far shopping for groceries has been the only successful thing we’ve been able to do here). Then we headed back to my office to do some more work. We ended up staying there until 10:30pm. After that, we went home and made tacos (yes –you read right) good old fashion Mexican food with rice and chips. It was great. Then went to bed at midnight!

On Sunday, we went back to the office to use the internet to print out some Google maps. The internet is still not working at the hotel.  We needed maps to get to Marseilles because today was the day that we had to go to the police station to pick up Michael’s accident report.  I tried to get some more work done with my folders, but was not too successful. It is really too time consuming using webmail.  So off we went at 12:30pm to Marseilles. Needless to say the street signs here don’t match what Google says at all, but we found our way. Once in the station, and letting the officer at the front desk know who we were, all the officers came around to us (about 10 of them) and they all had to say “Oh the American from California-hello!!” in a real jolly sort of way. We sort of became celebrities to them and they were all smiles and nice to us. I sure as heck don’t get treated like that in the states! So they gave us the report and the officer said she thought it was the kid’s fault and not Micheal’s, so let’s hope that holds up. They all said “good-bye” to us (really!-in English) and we headed back towards the office. We arrived back around 1:30pm so Michael could continue fooling around doing research for this place. I swear it takes forever to get NOTHING done around here! While at the office Michael was using Marie’s computer and the little ball fell out of the mouse. How does she work like that! We left the office around 4:30pm to go home to eat and then headed off for our walk. I guess that 2 hours of peace and quiet during the whole weekend is going to have to be good enough. I still can’t get a damn thing done here, though. I don’t know how these French do it.

By the way, there are 3 things that piss me off more than anything:

1.When people cost me money.

2. When people waste my time.

3. When people are not helpful. 

So far this week, all three have happened. I am not in a good mood!  The only people who have been helpful are Marie and Severine. Thank God or I would have been stranded more than once!

Well, tomorrow is the start of a new work week. I am trying to keep the faith +