Andrus Foe Paws

House guests/French Speaking Facilitators

The day after Abi and I arrived in Paris, our first house guest arrived.  Jen…one of our favorite seminary students is a nanny in France this year and she came to visit and to meet up with her sister Kerstin who was on her way home from a Doctor’s Without Borders mission to Africa.  It was great to see Jen and we knew just what kind of help we needed right off…help buying cell phones.  Kersten spent her early years in Rwanda and speaks fluent French and Jen hopes to become a French teacher one day.  They were a big help when it came to convincing Orange (the French Cell phone provider) that we really did want two iPhones…one for Joe and one for me and no we were not going to sell one of them so PLEASE don’t make us wait a week to buy the second phone.

SMALL WORLD STORY

When Abi and I arrived in Paris and were waiting to go through passport control I kept looking at a young woman who was chatting with her black associate.  I kept thinking…I’ve seen her before…where do I know her from?  But it’s weird at 6:30 am in an airport to walk up to someone and say, “don’t I know you?”  so I didn’t.  Turns out it was Kerstin…who was arriving at the same time from Africa…I had met her once before…but didn’t associate her with Jen…funny when she showed up at our door the next day.  🙂

Cook top shmook top

Joe arrived in Paris two weeks before Abi and I did.  He was quite pleased with the apartment except for the cook top.  He couldn’t get it to heat up…so he had to rely on the microwave and the oven to cook his meals.  So frustrating!  Abi took care of that issue the first night in the apartment.  She remembered hearing our friend Rebecca talk about the relative merits of induction cooktops compared to gas…  Voila!  The pot has to actually be ON the right burner before it will heat up!  Something about magnets…

Faux pas 4  ???? The griddle pan we didn’t want to live without that was coming in our boxes from home will not work on this cooktop.  No magnets.  😦

What we didn’t notice while selecting our apartment

I’m not sure…was this a faux pas?  Now that it is staying light longer…it seems ok.  When it was pitch black at 8:30 am and at 4 pm…I had my questions.  I do miss my bright, sunlight filled view of the garden in Hingham.  I think I need to plant window boxes in the spring.  There is a railing outside each of the windows.

Le Appartement: Part 3

The dining area: featuring a painting by the landlord in the cove and a table that will stretch to seat 12

Le Appartement: Part 2

Paris apartments are famous for having small, inefficient kitchens with crummy appliances, small fridges and no cabinet space.  Look at this!  We have new appliances, a built in dishwasher, a built in washer/dryer combo (more about that later) and a tall fridge with a modest sized freezer.  The eat in kitchen also houses our water heater and the boiler for our radiators.  Bathrooms usually have little showers with no tub. The toilets are usually separate from the rest of the bathroom and they do not generally have sinks associated with them.    We are lucky.  We have two full baths and a teeny powder room with toilet AND sink!  You can see why we were so excited to find this place on our house hunting trip!

Le Appartement

Le Grand Salon...Our living room

Boston to Paris

It was hard, but Abi and I managed to pack up in five large checked bags and four carry on bags/packpacks.  We weren’t sure how long it would be before our shipped items arrived in Paris…they were still in the Hull waiting to be crated at the end of October, we needed clothes, meds, toiletries, and PROJECTS to keep us sane.  Brad took us to the airport and we were on our way!

Our first French faux pas occurred while making airline reservations to fly between Boston and Paris.  We paid extra to sit in an exit row so we would have more leg room.  BIG MISTAKE!  Note to self…check the map carefully, it isn’t worth the extra dough to sit in a two person row without overhead bins or underseat storage.  Nor is it comfortable unless you are VERY thin to sit in the seats with all of the gear in the arm rests…

Faux pas number two:  it IS a good idea to pay $60 in advance for an extra suitcase to be checked.  That saves money.  HOWEVER!  do not take the weight limit seriously for each suitcase.  We added a fifth suitcase between us because we tried to keep within the weight limits for each checked piece.  The fifth suitcase cost MUCH more than it would have cost to pay a little extra for the checked pieces that were overweight.

Faux pas number three:  only hire a taxi with a GPS when coming to visit us….or take the train.  The driver will think he knows where he is going when you say 91 rue Saint-Honore…because that is where all the rich people live and where many of the designer stores like Gucci are….BUT when you get to the end of the rue where we live, the road narrows and the road changes one way direction…AND there is a huge construction project going on at les Halles so there are barricades here and there to avoid.  We could SEE where we wanted to go, but we couldn’t get there from here. With 9 pieces of luggage you can’t really get out and walk two blocks.  lol   I bet we spent an extra 15 minutes driving around in circles til we pulled up in front!

Joe stayed home from work to let us in to the apartment…he left the windows in the livingroom open so he could hear the gate to the courtyard open…The elevator in the building is VERY small…it says it holds three…and it does if you stand with arms overhead like sardines standing sideways.  I guarded the suitcases in the courthard, Abi put them in the elevator and pushed the 4th floor button (French 4th floor means 5th).  Joe emptied the elevator and sent it back down to Abi on 0.  Three trips and we were up…ready to crash.  We slept…Joe went to work…it was Friday morning…