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belphegor1982Well, it's been busy these last few days.
We've learned that François' (middle) school (or is it junior high?) will be inside Bordeaux (which is good news, we get to stay in a city we love) so we've been searching actively for a flat, neither shabby (a rather unfortunate experience of mine involving a ground-floor, badly-lit, sad thing complete with damp unused basement underneath, mice, cockroaches and various other critters, and living in there practically alone for a year) nor too expensive. And with easy access to the bus/tram lines we need to get to our respective workplaces :o)
So far, we've seen flats that go up and down the scale from worst (a lot, including one honestly scary) to best (the ONE downside is, there's no parking lot or garage in this one - and in an ideal world the toilet wouldn't be in the bathroom). But I think we'll settle for a compromise, since a priori we're only staying a year or less; there's no reason François won't be granted tenure at the end of the school year and if he is we're almost certainly moving out of my lovely South West and into Paris and its surroundings.
(You'd think anybody would be glad to have a chance to go to Paris, but I rather dread it: life there is very expensive, you can't afford not to have a car but the road and street traffic there is insane, a lot of the people are snobs (sometimes frankly rude) and always have to go so damn fast... The region around Paris is what we call "les banlieues", and they're like suburbs inverted - lots of poor people squeezed there because the rents are cheap, and since it's not mixed enough socially and economically bad things tend to happen, so we're keen on avoiding that as well...)
...So for three days we're waltzing between calls to estate agents (thank goodness for unlimited phone on land lines) and visits to potential flats. My shoes already ate one blister plaster and my heels are as ugly to look at (hurts quite a bit, too) as they were after a day's trekking in the forests of Brittany :o/
So term starts on Thursday, with what we call "pre-start-of-term" (for the staff) on Wednesday. I have mixed feelings about this, because we still don't know where we're going to live (we've given notice for early October, so there's no hurry, but it's a bit stressful) and how far it's going to be from my bus line (with somewhaterratic irregular stop times) which is the only one that goes where I go (I want to avoid driving as much as possible, absolutely hate it).
I can't wait to be settled in our future new flat with my fiancé and for routine to start :o)
We've learned that François' (middle) school (or is it junior high?) will be inside Bordeaux (which is good news, we get to stay in a city we love) so we've been searching actively for a flat, neither shabby (a rather unfortunate experience of mine involving a ground-floor, badly-lit, sad thing complete with damp unused basement underneath, mice, cockroaches and various other critters, and living in there practically alone for a year) nor too expensive. And with easy access to the bus/tram lines we need to get to our respective workplaces :o)
So far, we've seen flats that go up and down the scale from worst (a lot, including one honestly scary) to best (the ONE downside is, there's no parking lot or garage in this one - and in an ideal world the toilet wouldn't be in the bathroom). But I think we'll settle for a compromise, since a priori we're only staying a year or less; there's no reason François won't be granted tenure at the end of the school year and if he is we're almost certainly moving out of my lovely South West and into Paris and its surroundings.
(You'd think anybody would be glad to have a chance to go to Paris, but I rather dread it: life there is very expensive, you can't afford not to have a car but the road and street traffic there is insane, a lot of the people are snobs (sometimes frankly rude) and always have to go so damn fast... The region around Paris is what we call "les banlieues", and they're like suburbs inverted - lots of poor people squeezed there because the rents are cheap, and since it's not mixed enough socially and economically bad things tend to happen, so we're keen on avoiding that as well...)
...So for three days we're waltzing between calls to estate agents (thank goodness for unlimited phone on land lines) and visits to potential flats. My shoes already ate one blister plaster and my heels are as ugly to look at (hurts quite a bit, too) as they were after a day's trekking in the forests of Brittany :o/
So term starts on Thursday, with what we call "pre-start-of-term" (for the staff) on Wednesday. I have mixed feelings about this, because we still don't know where we're going to live (we've given notice for early October, so there's no hurry, but it's a bit stressful) and how far it's going to be from my bus line (with somewhat
I can't wait to be settled in our future new flat with my fiancé and for routine to start :o)
