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 +
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