Yes, we made it. It took a lot of phone calls and email/paperwork but we got it done. We realized that apparently you really gotta WANT IT...to move to
France. The toughest part turned out to be the unexpected loss of our sweet dog, Belle Kelley.
We thought we'd see her again when we were to come back to the States for our work visas in May but then our arrival was delayed a week because those work visas were ready...and then Belle had to be put down just a week before we left. If there was a reason for this delay in the start of our adventure, it was that Belle was leaving this world and we needed to grieve our loss with our friends and family, while we were still home for the week. She will always be in our hearts.
We were very tired on our arrival, at noon on Easter Sunday. We were concerned that the one demo on getting into our apartment might not have been enough but able to open the 3 doorways into the building and the 3 different locks on our door! We hear the French are quite paranoid about theft. There are stories of people even stealing trees here! But we don't have any trees, so we got that goin for us.
We went for a walk that day on Easter and found one of the only places open, a church...a really huge church! It's St. Etienne, which is only a few blocks from our apartment. We caught the end of a service there and got to hear their grand organ, that sits about 3 or 4 stories high in the back of the church.
After stopping for a coffee and dessert, we headed back to the apartment to try our new sleeping arrangements...we were very tired. And man did we sleep!! We have electric shades on the outside of the windows that close down into complete darkness...I love that. We went to sleep at around 9pm. We woke a couple of times in the night until we both woke up to seeing daylight coming from the other room. I turned on the lights and we both looked at our watches and both said "Oh my God" at the same time. Our watches said 2:20. Could that be right? Yes...it can only be light out when it's 2:20...in the afternoon. So we had slept for something like 17 hours! Holy crap!! By the time we showered and made it to a spot for breakfast, people were saying "bonsoir".
